Singular
Western adventure
Whoever
you are in Occident, whichever are your reactions of unbelief or of
faith, you cannot escape the influence of your history. And our
History is marked by the confrontation of extreme difference. The
gestation of the Occident through a radical confrontation becomes
paradigm of universal fruitfulness of encounter with Other ones.
Europe,
Occident, Modernity. The three unite. Europe
like a geographic-historical space becomes native soil and hearth of
Occidental culture. Occident
as a project of civilization and culture which, historically,
overflows Europe. The Modernity
which translates the 'Western' relevance in the topicality of today.
The rest of the world, whether it likes it or not, for its happiness
or for its misfortune, did not remain and could not remain out of
this adventure. Whether you regret it or are delighted about it, it
is a historical fact. It was bound to happen that Occident was
conquering the world and imposing its model.
By weapons, by techniques, by seduction. Why didn't the Chinese,
inventors of the compass, use it for the discovery of the world? And
why, having invented the gunpowder, didn't they use it for dominating by force? Why Occident? No human culture has ever known
something approaching such an explosive exaltation of human liberty.
Everywhere else, even among Greeks, remained too absolute the divine
or cosmic destiny. Here, on the other hand, human liberty was
infinitely opened, at the image and the resemblance of the liberty of
God himself.
The
meeting of difference is fertile.
The meeting of extreme difference is infinitely fertile. If the
'same'
one
remains closed on itself, never anything else will be. Innovation is
child of the difference which clashes dialectically. Also was the
encounter of Athens and Jerusalem. The most gigantic collision of
conceivable difference! Nowhere else met so big differences than in
our Occident. Nowhere else has released a greater dynamics.
Why
the extraordinary dynamics of this adventure? There seems to be only
one answer. It was the dialectical
dynamics resulting through reciprocal challenge and confrontation
from the inter-fecundation of gigantic differences
between the pagan component
and the Judeo-Christian exponent.
Starting
from
this inter-fecundation of the 'thetic' components
of the Neolithic revolution and the 'antithetic' exponents
of the Judeo-Christian revolution will arise, after a very long
gestation, an extraordinary deployment of growth and acceleration. It
occurs as if the Neolithic 'mechanisms' started to function
exponentially. The tool producing a tool which overtakes it. A huge
tool system inflates and overflows. The invention provokes an
increasingly bold invention. More and more enormous ones arise.
Occident
was not born by parthenogenesis! Occident was born from father and
mother. Our mother is pagan. Our father is Judeo-Christian.
In
this single new cultural space, by the irruption of the
Judeo-Christian innovation, man was provoked, defied, with becoming
creator of History, creator of historicity. Also the
only cultural space where anguish penetrated deeply. Here were broken
the atavistic defense mechanisms against the temporal urgency. Here
was broken the circle of eternal return. That can be exciting. That
cannot miss being at the same time infinitely distressing.
Man
is projected out of himself. Out of its safety measures.
Irremediably embarked in History.
Having to
risk the
adventure… From now on man becomes responsible
for his present and his future! And nobody writes any more his
history in his place. From now on it pertains to man to write the
history of the gods! With God undoubtedly. But in a personal
relationship which leaves man responsible and opens to risk. An
infinitely exciting task but at the same time infinitely distressing.
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