‘I feel European, but for me, Europe is best described by a citation from Saint Augustin: When I don't ask myself what it is, I know what it is. When I ask myself, I no longer know.
Cafe Babel is always full of interesting articles and interviews ...
They ran a series on Blogging back in December with a series of articles from across the spectrum.
And then there's the interview with Claudio Magris – ‘When Europe is one state’
Magris can't wait until ‘Europe is one state - maybe a federal one, but with a real parliament.’ And this needs to happen at the earliest possible opportunity. Europe, unlike Oriental or American culture, maintains a ‘peculiar relationship with the individual and the whole. It’s a society in which the emphasis has always been placed on the individual, but not in an anarchic way.’
Europe thrives on its cultural, historical, social and literary heritage which brings the individual to a ‘progressive self-interest in which the ‘I’ also encompasses the community.’
4 comments:
Have enjoyed my flying visit! :) You sound busy ... and glad you're feeling better.
Thanks chiefbiscuit ... I have stopped with the flu whining.
Mark suggested I blog about my actual life but I think everyone's had enough of the whining by now :)
Europe is less a country than a continent. It is filled with people who all think differently but yet they all have DNA, brains -or so I hope, but sometimes doubt with some-, organs, etc. -not going to describe the whole human body, just follow some biology if you want to know more. However great this small continent is, unifying people is very hard, certainly when there are euros to be made and be lost. But we'll see where this small little EU project will go. .
I'm not sure what Claudio Magris is talking about when he states:
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"Europe, unlike Oriental or American culture, maintains a ‘peculiar relationship with the individual and the whole. It’s a society in which the emphasis has always been placed on the individual, but not in an anarchic way.’
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All I can currently witness is the neverending inclusion into the EU of countries that are desperately poor and who couldn't care less about "European identity".
The profoundly impoverished people of Romania (the latest to join the EU) don't care about 'European values' - they only care about the EU cash.
A sad fact, but probably a realistic translation of (quote):
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'which brings the individual to a ‘progressive self-interest in which the ‘I’ also encompasses the community.’
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