On Saturday morning, as I was walking towards the gym on Park Avenue, I saw waves of young adults (although acting like teenagers or frat boys) wearing green (some just a t-shirt or sweater, some a full leprechaun costume) on a procession towards their favorite Irish watering hole to “celebrate” St. Patricks Day in the only way that they seem to believe to be appropriate, besides a 5th Ave. official parade: drink until you pass out.
A few days ago, in a meeting at the Setai Hotel in NY, Michael (with over 3 decades of experience working with US and Spanish corporations) perfectly described what is like to do business between the USA and Spain:
A struggle between American arrogance and Spanish pride
Last week I went to 3 exhibitions/events that have allowed me to see the importance of context in the interpretation (and enjoyment) of a work of art. Note that I differentiate “interpretation” and “enjoyment”, although for many of us, those two concepts go hand in hand. But this is just a short post, so the Phenomenological Aesthetics will have to wait (you can read Dewey, Hartmann, Adorno, Ortega y Gasset, Sartre, etc, etc in the meantime 😉 )
When Émile Durkheim wrote on the concept of anomie (expanding on Jean-Marie Guyau`s work) in his 1897 book Suicide, he spoke of one end of anomie: a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion causing a destructive mismatch (moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations).
This is happening in the XXI century world, in many countries: those totalitarian (military or religious) societies where the social rule, expectations, and repression conform a cage around individuals, deposessing them of their individuality, their aspirations, subtly (or otherwise) imposing a social corset where the individual can not be itself, concentrating only on breathing, surviving.
As I walk towards my office, I see an ad that makes me sick (as a matter of fact, I see many, but this one points to something other that the consumerism-sexism-excess that we are so dangerously getting used to).
The ad says “Turn now into memories”. How wrong is that?!!
Now is now. Now has to be now. Now should be now. Now has to remain now.
When you strive to “turn now into memories”, you are missing out on the real now.
Intelligence could not represent for a long time the part of the heart.
François de la Rochefoucauld
