I read again “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco. If anyone who has seen the beautiful movie thinks the book is equally fascinating, you are wrong. A beautiful book, but not for everyone. We could say, recommended only for those with a good culture of medieval history and philosophy, with a particular focus on Church history.
Beyond the plot, much of the book focuses on the following theme: in the Middle Ages every aspect of human life and thought is linked to religion. All that was good was within it, who thought differently was a sinner and a heretic. For ordinary mortals, the Church despised every yearning for their earthly life, which was abjured by turning away from God.
“The name of the rose”, for history and philosophy lovers hungry for knowledge, is perfect. For the others…. boring. With this voluntarily attracting to me the bull of excommunication for ignorant foolishness. But not on this in particular I want to captivate the interest of the reader, because first of all I want to focus on the human thought evolution aspect: a feedback of how evolved thinkers and all those who have thought have brought thought to the current general condition expression of freedom and possible progress. An instrument still persecuted in many parts of the world today, but also in these conditions able to organize any type of reflection, action and result.
Today anyone is able to think and has all the tools to develop this “sixth” sense. The lazy do not wallow themselves in the inability to think, the losers of the profession, those for whom it is easier not to think: in every circumstance the thought is in everyone’s capacity, not forced by fear of sin as in the Middle Ages. Thought is irrepressible, like air, no one can put it in a bottle. I not chained to philosophy, science, and physics. But linked to everything that goes through the mind of those who think. Like the wind, one cannot buy, unless it is the desired effect, to be bought by the thought. Thinking lightly, to generate doubts more than to create certainties, an insane absence of arrival points, always a starting point.
Let’s train it with knowledge at school, with reading or any other tool, but let’s make it compete without a specific purpose but an evening serenity before lying down. Immediately questioned in the morning: thinking ready to start again on the prairie of uncertain things to think about. I tried to carry out an investigation into the use of words, to understand how much the increase in knowledge of them has positively influenced thought over the centuries. I did not come up with a satisfactory result. Very pragmatically, I went back to two episodes that I think can give the measure of how, only in the last century, the tools for freedom of thought have grown so much.
I was ten, we are in 1970, I was listening to the news. The lack of confidence in the “complicated” words led me to ask my father: “Dad, are many really feel so bad every day?”, After another incipit of the journalist “This morning ….” at the end it brought me closer to the term more similar for me “This morning, another one feeling bad…”.
Coming to nowadays: two years ago, my nephew at the table, three years old, at my request “would you like more pasta?” he replies, “No, I’m satiated.” I think the word satiated, in my vocabulary, has yet to enter. And this, beyond the lines, makes you think about how much, in the dark ages, in the voluntary or forced state of conservation of ignorance, has harmed the healthy growth of thinking. Combined with the laziness of not thinking. Today this is no longer the case; we do not look for excuses: we think.
