One of the
greatest mistakes — and successes — of idealism is convincing its victims, that
is, the idealists themselves — who are not its protagonists but its casualties
— that they can and should change the world, reality, or anything else.
It's a mistake
because such a belief, offered with the seductive force of a deceitful and
fanatical imperative, even with claims of moral superiority to those who
discuss or reject it, only leads to failure. And it's a success because whoever
manages such a powerful pseudo-moral imperative entirely controls the will and
strength of all idealists, who, devoted and ignorant, constitute the human
resources of others' success and one's own defeat.
Religions,
philosophies, and ideologies have been and continue to be the main managers and
promoters of all kinds of idealism. Standing against them, always, has been
literature — the biggest party pooper among all artisans of any idealisms.
Literature has saved more lives than philosophy, which — of course — more than
religion and all ideologies combined.
Literature,
that intelligent and demanding art form, so indigestible to the Anglo sphere
and its mercantile obsessions, has always been hostile to — almost — all. In
fact, the relationships that literature has historically maintained with
philosophy, religion, politics — we could also say with the market or commerce
— have always been conflict-ridden and belligerent. Unsolvable.
Literature is not as profitable as film simply because it's more critical, less propagandistic, and requires much more intelligence. Forgive me, the knowledgeable ones — now called experts — but cinema has always been more expensive than wise and more cunning than intelligent. Also, more profitable than valuable. A movie that isn't understood is a disaster; however, a brilliant literary work is, due to its originality, always incomprehensible to the rationalism of its contemporaries. Cinema cannot afford this lack of understanding; however, literature can because it not only exhibits it as a ...
