edgar morin He says that life is a struggle between prose and poetry. The thinker argues that poetry is love, collective friendship, fascination or emotional intensity, while prose is boredom and monotony. Knowing what he is saying because he is 101 years old, the philosopher invites us to fight for a poetic life and thinks that those who really want to ‘live’ to the full must experience existence in harmonious sonnets or rhymes. The opposite is to surrender to boredom. I like prose as a genre and Pessoa was very intense to me, I like this metaphor. It is the dichotomy between light and dark. Between taking certain risks and surrendering to fears. Between the carpe diem attitude and the handling attitude. Edgar Morin’s vital portrayal exudes poetry in its purest form, and as such I will surrender to this literary genre from now on.
Morin is a part of the anonymity provided by today’s cities. threaten people’s well-being and quality of life because it leads them to loneliness. He thinks the same about the increasingly rigid and rigid robotization and excessive obligations. It makes us think about emergency medical appointments, pharmacy shifts, minutes where we have to pay fines, making SSI inquiries or allowing bank payments via mobile app. I think of traffic lights showing the seconds remaining to cross the street, and I realize that we are living in a constant countdown. No one can relax here, it is conspicuous by its absence of poetry and, as Edgar Morin proclaimed, the quality of coexistence is inferior.
The day I enjoy reading the thoughts of the French philosopher, I receive an advertisement for a new real estate project. I think I was gossiping about the prices of their houses for a while and got on their contact list. The advertisement describes the benefits of living in a privileged place with approximately two hundred floors divided into blocks, with 24-hour security, swimming pool, gym, tennis court, meeting and celebration hall, green area, large garden where children can play. After reading it, I come to three conclusions. First, and after seeing the prices they deal with, that I am not the target audience of that company. Second, a new urbanism model seems to be emerging. promotes homogeneous mini-cities, fenced and built with their backs to the city’s resources. Where they appear, public spaces disappear. Parks, pedestrian streets, cultural centers or sports centers. Places where coexistence, discussion, togetherness and relationships are developed, producing many ‘Morinius’ poems. In turn, car-driven streets, large shopping malls and fast food restaurants emerged. And I don’t know why, but I feel like there’s a lot of prose in that picture.
While I think about the power of city planning on our quality of life, I will read Benedetti for a while because and this is my third conclusion, I just want poetry around me.