Why is the Present Era afraid of the Ancient Classics?

Many of the best things, and even the worst ones, come from America as is known. So, even the crusade against classical culture that started at Howard University in Washington is likely to have its effects on us soon. Should we expect the elimination of Latin from high school curricula? Even worst. Maybe, while they are there, the champions of the culturally correct will also abolish high schools tout court. Perhaps starting from the Classic which – from this point of view – presents itself as the den of all iniquity: even the seditious thoughts (in ancient Greek!) Of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Aristotle are passed off; and the very bad plots of the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; and the seeds of universal discord of Stoic philosophy.

Now, the phenomenon has already been correctly framed by some intellectual more attentive than the average. For example, Marcello Veneziani in “La Verità” has rightly highlighted how the war against classical Western culture is consonant with a precise “note” of our time. In other words, the connection between the purely material, consumerist needs of “growth” of stateless and transnational turbocapitalism, on the one hand; and the Orwellian, detective and censorial obsessions of a certain very touchy “world”: that, to be clear, of the antifa, of the metoo, of the obtuse anti-racism, of the cancel culture, of the gender ideology.

Indeed, neoliberalism needs consumers with no specific identity, no defined gender, no deep-rooted tradition. While the new "ideologies" above (paranoid, aggressive and intimidating to anyone who does not align) provide the ideal "human type" that the Competitive Evo needs. All true, but that's not all. There is another aspect to consider. At stake is not only the will to crumble and disperse "traditions" in a broad sense: and therefore the concepts of country and nation, religion and family, language and cultural specificity. At stake, there is also (if not "really") the deliberate intent to annihilate a peculiar form of culture: that is, the classic Western one.

The latter is the true polemical idol and final target of the destroyers. They want to blow it up like the Taliban pulverized the Bamiyan Buddhas. The alibi is that, ridiculous, of machismo, misogyny, racism, "whiteness" and so on and so forth, of imbecility into imbecility. The truth is that the Single Dominant Thought hates classical culture for another, but concealed, reason: because it is the homeland of philosophy, that is, of free and independent reflection, of the dominion of reason over instinct, of logic over irrationality, of thought on matter, of virtues over vices, of the ethical order over moral disorder, of self-control over the attitude of servitude, of the law over chaos, of justice over iniquity.

In short, in classicism there is the root of the best that the "divine" part of the human being has ever been able to give birth to. And this is an intolerable fault for the lords of a completely angelic "agenda". Rather, it aims to degrade man to the rank of grazing beast or robotic appendage of a digital matrix. In which only the "belly", the "heart", the "emotions", the "tastes" have to function. In a scenario of psychological dulling and individual and collective numbness, in which no one is able to remember (or understand) who we are, where we come from and where we are going.

Francesco Carraro

www.francescocarraro.com

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The article Why the Present Era Fears Ancient Classics? comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/perche-lera-presente-teme-i-classici-antichi/ on Sat, 24 Apr 2021 12:20:53 +0000.