oxymorons and dreams

There's a very nice novel by Alessandro Baricco, called "City", in which it is shown that intellectual honesty is an oxymoron. I remember I was reading it many years ago on a bus on my way to the office, and I felt it was something important, even if when I arrived I had to look up the word oxymoron in the dictionary.

The "essay on intellectual honesty" is proposed by one of the characters of the novel. He's a High School teacher. After 15 years of thinking about it, he finally writes it down on a flyer of a sex shop, while he's in the peep-show. It goes in six arguments more or less as follows:
- People have ideas
- People express those ideas. That's the beginning of the problem. Since it is very complex thoughts, when it's time to put them in words it is difficult to explain them clearly
- While expressing their ideas, people end up getting distance with them. The simplification of explanations of the mental process which brought to the conclusion, during the arguing, defending their truth, little by little makes that the real origin of the idea gets lost
- While defending the ideas, and in particular if it is in public, the arguments became weapons
- While using ideas as weapons, the relation with the original thought is completely lost
- Intellectual honesty is an oxymoron

When I read it, I found it funny, witty and indisputable. My colleagues at the office, however, just laughed lightly and did not seem to agree.


Anyway, recently I've realised I don't have a dream. I mean: there's something I would like so much, which implies becoming something different to what I am today (yes, at my age). But if you ask me to describe how exactly will I be when I achieve that new state, I cannot tell you a word - that's why I say I don't have the dream. What is it? I don't believe I can make it? I don't really want to make it? Should I build up my dream, that's all? The answers to those questions are only important for me, but it is amazing how much I've been talking about my no-dream.


Baricco's character goes on saying: "in another life we will be honest; we will be silent". Auurrrg!!

dogs are all clowns

I've just seen one, I was walking back home, the dog was big, black and strong and had a ball or something in its snout, head and neck looking up, moving the tail, challenging its master. They all enjoy playing so much, all the time, and jump and behave like clowns. I really love dogs.

(Well, not so much, probably, since I dont have one at home.)

At my parents' there was always one or two dogs when I was a child. It was painful when they got lost for ever or died, however I was growing up and after I had to miss a few animals I realised there was always another one to come which was essentially the same, and I found at least a sort of comfort on that idea.

Some people have criticised me a lot when I dared to explain, told me I'm a monster and I dont really like dogs at all. One friend suggested with irony I should maybe apply the same concept to people.


Completely unrelated, a question follows: if our life expectancy was let's say five thousand years, would be behave differently? Yes, for sure, but in which way? Difficult one, ah. I'd like to think we would get wiser (after one thousand years or so?) And I guess a lot more people closed to us would die. I mean, nowadays in the west you hardly see people dying, besides unfortunate accidents, serious illness, and your parents, who necessarily will die sooner than you; death is not in our day-by-day worries.

Then, imagine the situation: my life expectancy is five thousand years and I fall in love with somebody five hundred years younger (not so much). I die a natural death and she has five hundred years ahead without me, and she's still ok, she's only four thousand five hundred years old. What is she expected to do? After a ten years mourning, surely she'll find a better clown.