Beyond Socrates’ Dia-Logos. Luigi Giannachi
a biological need, as if we canât leave our mark in some other way than preserve our body. Actually, there are potentially endless ways to become immortal, which have more to do with psyche and memory, or even the soul of a person. Immortality results from fulfilment capacity during our mortal existence. Paradoxically, we could become immortal during our mortal life, even if we see the effect of what we did only at a later stage.
Death isnât something to be ashamed of, but rather a limit in our possibility to learn. Our possibility to teach in distance doesnât end with death, to people we will never know, but inevitably they will keep us in their heart, if they have seen sincerity and passion in our teaching.
However, I think that has never been taken into account how great is the manâs ability to learn and evolve, and how much this ability depends on the relationship with the other, with those around us, with those who make us feel good, but even with those who try to oppose us. In trying to survive to himself and to the world, the individual suffers constant metamorphosis to which heâs exposed, because he intentionally agrees to participate in the research of a motor and spiritual equilibrium. Body gradually ceases, wastes away over the years, but the spiritual growth should, at the same time, be able to proceed indefinitely. However, if man made so much progress in technology, his adaptability and learning ability from every situation deserves credit, regardless how he came to find out something.
It isnât new that some discoveries were made by necessity during war periods or that discoveries can happen randomly, pursuing other objectives considered ex-post less worthy. This doesnât mean that war or serendipity are useful in that connection, itâs rather remarkable that man can sometimes make a virtue of necessity.
Lost in the whirlwind of the huge and frightening amount of information that daily comes from every planet corner, man risks to lose his ability, unique in animal world, to select information, from every source, and to make them useful for the common good and for his knowledge application. If itâs true that every individual has infinite potential at birth to prune during lifetime, with the choices that have been made during his personal evolution, what outcome can ever have choices no longer dictated by his own experience or social logic but conditioned from the mass media grapevine visited without a constructive criticism? In a kind of existential impasse the fake news, the wickedness from an already determined fate, the selfish actions of overbearing people are going to prevail in the collective imagination, as if there wasnât any alternative.
The greatest danger, in which we may end up, is to arouse fears towards the other and the different, increasing conflicts between schools of thought and between religions, giving more importance to errors and sinsâ negative valence, forgetting virtuesâ enrichment capacity and the potential of living beings.
A little magic light, found in the whirl of thoughts, spurred me to start a journey to plumb the multiple learning capacity that humanity has produced in activities sometimes distant between them, but with a focal common ground: human mind.
Like every good traveller, I also have a fear that I could got lost without your help. I would even say: after the terror of death, the fear of getting lost, without any reference point, ends up becoming the greater anguish able to oppress our ambitions. There is no son, in his destiny realization, who may forget to thank at least once his father, the one who saw him born or grow up. There is no poet, musician or painter who, in the childhood of their being artists, can forget the emotion of the first time at reading that poem, listening that music or viewing that painting. Contingent references of our mortal life render immortal the memory transmitted to others.
The family, that Iâm going to surround myself to make this journey, are the adventure companions you have shown me, at times they will get lost with me in the windings of the human mind, at other times they will be the propitiators of concepts and philosophical figures intended to be developed in the future, perhaps by readers who are still waiting to born.
They will lead me through these secrets, in the turning point of these dialogues, to know characters who have given a push for humanity with their actions and their writings. The unexpected look of these encounters will be the simplicity with which I have discovered their invention of the world and the dullness with which the world has noticed them.
Just as illness sometimes arises from the inability of mind to clean up the past dejections and troubles getting the knowledge up the streets of experience, so we can maybe find solutions for social malaise accepting the inheritance of philosophical discoveries left behind but still available for getting up the social development.
1. Open-mindedness
Even this, like every journey, started without any notice or forewarning.
«Maybe we would like to get some help at birth, but the awareness of living, in that moment, is so far away that be able to breathe is more important, crying and yelling» I heard his voice, which I had never heard, whispering to me like a brotherly friend.
At 49 years old, just when I would have been, in a handful of months, in the half way through the journey of our life (even supposing that life ended at 100 years old) I found that I was in a wood of thoughts, so confused was the way to take for the knowledge of myself and for the depth human cognition. I couldnât tell when the poet stood before me to cheer me up, but he was there in a moment without being requested...
...Then quieted a little was the fear, which in the lake-depths of my heart had lasted...
I didnât immediately realize who I had by my side
so full of slumber was I at the moment,
but in the escape from barbarism, that it is usual nowadays, I looked back for a moment realizing what I feared, what I was leaving behind,
to look again upon the step which was never permitted anyone alive.
I, only then, had the awareness that, if I hadnât broke step, I would have risk to die: not physical death, but the spiritual one, surely worst and, however, often prior to bodyâs death. I realized inside myself, at the same time, how important was life. You donât know it until facing fear and labours are going to become bigger, âtil you almost have the feelings it gets out of hand, that you canât control it, but that you can get inside like a tiny little element of nature, like a canoe on the river.
Some time had now from early morn elapsed, and with those very stars, that in his escort were, the sun was rising, when Love Divine in the beginning moved those beauteous things.
It was spring when God gave the first movement to sun and stars, it was the right season to start a never done journey.
The wild beasts that I had to beat not far from where the ascent began werenât any easier as the Leopard, the Lion and the she-Wolf, if they were transferred in todayâs time. They were the fake profit, the petty cunning and the exploitation of media and laws brought to such a vile acts, that I lost the hope I had of winning to the top.
However, after the poet appeared in front of me in all his splendour, I didnât dare ask him, for modesty, the question that my curiosity pushed forward into my soul: who was the Hound of the prophecy?
Until the Hound shall come, and bring her to a painful death, the wild beast alloweth none to pass along her way ... that never doth she sate her greedy