For a month I don’t watch TV or read the press (reading can be very tedious) and, given my numantine or suicidal resistance to social networks, I still don’t learn about the news of the world. It’s a liberating feeling, I don’t have Stockholm Syndrome, my depression really appreciates the escape from information. And when I turn on the TV on the way back, I want my well-being to continue. No dodgy stuff, monothematic nonsense, advertising, indoctrination, hysteria. In other words, I’m watching a beautiful documentary on Filmin dedicated to Umberto Eco’s invaluable library.
I am pleasantly amazed by the immense culture, the intelligence of the Renaissance, the way of expressing oneself through people and books, the sense of humor and irony, the clarity of this amazing man. It enlightens you, it’s never predictable or dogmatic, it makes you laugh. And you understand that it was in the medieval abbey The Name of the Rose was invented that the great danger to the established order, and for which this blind and elderly monk murders, is whether anyone has access to an impious book that claims to be laughter a driving force of humanity. He considers it subversive and sacrilegious, it can undermine faith, attack what exists and what is imposed, allay the fear of believers, bring joy, cause doubt and subversion.
A different kind of terror will also come to the monastery. It is the Inquisition that tracks down witches and warlocks and burns heretics, real or imagined. It is absolute power, torture, the thought police. How terrifying and terrible the Inquisition is. And the worst thing is that it doesn’t correspond to any specific time. It has always existed and will exist.
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