International Day of Democracy

               Last Tuesday 15th of September, all the world celebrated the day of democracy. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at http://www.un.org/en/events/democracyday/. The second was published at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx? The third published http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/09/24.The fourth was published at http://thecommonwealth.org/media/news/international-day-democracy-statement

              Democracy is a universal value based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems and their full participation in all aspects of their lives. While democracies share common features, there is no single model of democracy. Activities carried out by the United Nations in support of efforts of governments to promote and consolidate democracy are undertaken un accordance with the U.N. Charter. The U.N. General Assembly, in a resolution of 2007 encouraged governments to strengthen programmes devoted to the promotion and consolidation of democracy, and also decided that 15 september of each year as the Day of Democracy. Globally, the role of civil society has never been more important than this year, as the world prepares to implement a new development agenda. However, for civil society activists and organizations in a range of countries, space is shrinking, or even closing, as some governments have adopted restrictions that limit the ability of NGOs to work or to receive funding. That is why the theme of this year's Day of Democracy is "Space for Civil Society." It is a reminder to governments everywhere that the hallmark of successful and stable democracies is the presence of a strong and freely operating civil society, in which governments and civil society work together for a better future, and at the same time, civil society helps keep governments accountable.

                 "Stop the erosion of democracy," U.N. rights experts urge governments across the world. Speaking ahead of the International Day of Democracy, the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic international order, Alfred de Zayas, and the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of association, Maina Kiai, deplore, the increasing erosion of democracy as a result of repressive policies, but also by virtue of the increasing influence of vested interests at the expense of the public will. This year's theme for the Day of Democracy is space for civil society. The U.N. endorse this necessary and achievable goal. But democracy today has become an over-used word, invoke even by tyrants. A country does not become democratic simply by holding elections. What matters most is what happens between those elections: Can people speak out, engage and influence the leaders they have elected? Is there a correlation between the needs and will of the people and the policies that affected them? Can people peacefully assemble when other ways of expressing their grievances fail? Is peaceful dissent tolerated and encouraged to flourish, so that the marketplace of ideas is not monopolized by one group? On International Day of Democracy 2015, we call on states to recognize that civil society space is the vehicle that allows this to happen. Indeed, it is essential for a true democracy. Unfortunately, space for civil society is shrinking. There is a growing disconnect between elected officials and the people. We see this disconnect manifested in the recent surge of large protest movements throughout the world. People perceive a failure of governance and democracy, and protest is often their last resort in making themselves heard. Increasing, governments are responding to this type of dissent with more repression, distorting the concept of democracy beyond recognition. Meanwhile, we are also witnessing a worrisome erosion of democracy as a result of the increasing influence being exercised by powerful actors that have not democratic legitimacy, including the military-industrial complex, transnational corporations and other lobbies. Democratic governance is being corrupted by players that are not subject to democratic controls and who use their largesse to ensure that their interests are prioritized over those of the general public. Civil society must reclaim its rightful place by demanding genuine participation in governance, including decisions on peace initiatives, and environmental protection. "Fast-tracking" legislation or treaties, enacted without consulting stakeholders and without responsible debate is unacceptable in a democracy. Democracy is much more than a label. 'Representative democracy' can only be called democratic when and if 'representatives' actually represent their constituencies by pro-actively consulting with them and facilitating their participation in decision-making, thus making the goal of greater space for civil society meaningful. Democracy should not be reduced to an empty word, is a necessary instrument for securing a more stable world. We therefore call upon Member States to ensure greater space for civil society, so that they may take their rightful place as key players in democracy.            

              We pause today to reflect on and celebrate democracy and the free and open debate it entails. We celebrate democracy not because it is perfect, for it is obviously neither of those things. We celebrate democracy because it is rooted in the will of the people, and, as such, does a better job than any other form of government in respecting the rights of individuals, solving problems peacefully, and building enduring prosperity. Only democracy allows a country to benefit from the full energy and talent of its citizens, and the unconstrained flow of ideas can create. That is why ordinary people everywhere are working to make this fundamental principle a reality. This past year, we saw an outpouring of popular support for constitutional term limit in Africa, and the courage of activists around the world who are demanding governments that are accountable, inclusive, transparent, and honest. There are few ideas more powerful, more infused with universal aspiration than democracy. But democracy has never been an automatic fact. It is an opportunity that must be renewed and revitalized by each generation.

             Day of Democracy is an occasion to celebrate the progress towards achieving a world in which all individuals are able freely and regularly to express their choice as to who should represent and lead them, and about decisions affecting the future of their lives and livelihoods. Democracy includes a commitment to the inalienable right of individuals to participate in democratic processes, and  to shape the societies in which they live. In practical ways and as advocates for the continual sedimentation of a robust culture of democracy. In which citizens' rights, quality governance, development and growth for all, can be best achieve. Democracy is also about practicing inclusion, empowerment and participation, respecting human rights, and promotion transparent and accountable representation. This culture of democracy has been greatly advanced by the role of civil society in democratic nations by promoting dialogue, respecting pluralism and diversity. We pay tribute to the leaders of democracy who ensure that the voices of all are heard and are taken into account and also to all those who contribute to advancing the culture of democracy. To all those helping to reinforcing the foundations on which democracy is built. Through their activities, civil society organisations have helped strengthen some of the most fundamental rights necessary to build stronger and better democratic societies. Undertaking these activities has not been without cost. In some instances, members of civil society have been harassed, persecuted, imprisoned and lost their lives because of their commitment to democracy and its principles. We will continue to celebrate and encourage the voice of civil society and freedom of expressing at the heart of healthy and flourishing democracies serving their people.

750th Birthday of Dante Alighieri - Part III

              The tribute to Dante continues. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at  http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/dante-turns-seven-hundred-and-fifty. The second was published at http://dantealighieridpba.weebly.com/the-legacy.html. The third was published at  http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-divinecomedy/#gsc.tab=0. The fourth is a very small piece of the chapter I from the book, "Theory of the Novel". Written by Gyorgy Lukacs and was published at  https://analepsis.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/georg-lukacs-the-theory-of-the-novel.pdf

              On April, Samantha Cristoforetti, Italy,s first female astronaut, took time off from her regular duties in the International Space Station to read from the Divine Comedy. She picked the opening of the Paradiso. As Cristoforetti spun around the globe at the rate of seventeen thousand miles an hour, her reading was beamed back to earth and shown in a movie theater in Florence. Ten days later, The actor Roberto Benigni recited the last canto of Paradiso in the Italian Senate. That same day, Pope Francis made some brief remarks about the poet, officially joining what he called the "chorus of those who believe Dante Alighieri is an artist of the highest universal value. He can, help us get through the many dark woods we come across in our world." The Holy Father said. Italians kids first encounter Dante at school, when they are in the equivalent of seventh grade. They return to him after to study more depth. In secondary school they stay with him. I recently asked the high-school-aged son of an Italian friend of mine about the experience. "It is boring, and it never ends, but then you get to like it." He told me. There are, of course, many possible explanations for Dante's hold on Italy, including, after seven hundred and fifty years, sheer momentum. Language, too, clearly plays a part. When Dante began work on the Divine Comedy, None of the different dialects spoken in Italy's many city-states had any claim preeminence. Such was the force and influence of the Divine Comedy that the Tuscan dialect became Italy's literary language.

               Today, Dante's influence still lives and is apparent in many different works. He is considered as having one of the greatest minds in literature of all-time. He has been compared to the most famous poet ever, Shakespeare, and has often been said to be the only writer to be in the same class as him. Dante's Divine Comedy is still one of the most glorified works of literature after 650 years. The work of art is a major part of 'The western Canion', a collection of the greatest books in history. Dante once said, "The secret of getting things done is to act".

               Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) wrote his epic poem, while in exile from his native Florence. There are three parts to this massive work: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. In each section Dante recount the travels of the pilgrim, his alter ego, through hell, purgatory and heaven. The greatness of the Divine Comedy lies in its construction as a summation of knowledge and experience. Dante was able to weave together pagan myth, literature, philosophy, theology, physics, astrology, mathematics, literary theory, history and politics into a complex poem that a wide audience, not only the highly educated, could read. As one of the greatest works, not just of the Middle Ages, but of world literature in its entirely, the influence of the Divine Comedy has been incalculable. The poem was immediately successful, Dante's own sons, Pietro and Jacopo, wrote the first commentaries on it, and it continues to be read and taught today. Many of western literature's major figure were indebted to Dante's masterwork. A selective list includes: Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, William Blake, Victor Hugo, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges. If this impressive list were not testament enough, one has only to consider the four to five manuscripts of the Divine Comedy in existence, the four-hundred-some Italian printed editions and the hundreds of English translations to get some idea of this work's impact on culture.   

               This is the paradox of the subjectivity of the great epic, creative subjectivity becomes lyrical, but, exceptionally, the subjectivity which simply accepts, which humbly transforms itself into a purely receptive organ of the world, can partake of the grace of having the whole revealed to it. This is the leap that Dante made between the Vita Nuova and the Divina Commedia that Goethe made between Werther and Wilhelm Meister, the leap Cervantes made when, becoming silent himself, he let the cosmic humour of Dom Quixote become heard, by contrast, Sterne's and Jean Paul's glorious ringing voices offer no more than reflexions of a world-fragment which is merely subjective and therefore limited, narrow and arbitrary. This is not a value judgement but a definition of genre: the totality of life resists any attempt to find a transcendental centre within it, and refuses any of its constituent cell the right to dominate it. Only when a subject, removed from all life and from the empirical which is necessary posited together with life, becomes enthroned in the pure heights of essence, when it has becomes the carrier of the trancendental synthesis, can it contain all the conditions for totality within its own structure and transform its own limitations into the frontiers of the world. The epic is life, immanence, the empirical. Dante's Paradise is closer to the essence of life than Shakespeare's exuberant richness. The totality of the transcendent world-strucuture is the pre-determined sense-giving, all-embracing a priori of each individual destiny, so the increasing comprehension of this structure and its beauty, the great experience of Dante the traveller, envelops everything in the unity of its meaning. Dante's insight transforms the individual into a component of the whole, and so the ballads become epic songs. The epic hero is, strictly speaking, never an individual. It is traditionally thought that one of the essential characteristcs of the epic is the fact that its theme is not a personal destiny but the destiny of a community, of a society. And rightly so, for the completeness of the value system which determines the epic cosmos creates a whole. The omnipotence of ethics, which posits every soul as autonomous is still unknown in such world. When life finds an immanent meaning in itself. An individual structure is simply the product of a balance between the part and the whole, mutually determine one another, it is never the product of polemical self-contemplation by the lonely. Dante represent a historical-philosophical transition from the pure epic to the novel. In Dante there is still the perfect immanent distancelesness and completeness of the true epic, but his figures are already individuals, consciously and energitically placing themselves in opposition to a reality that is becoming near to them, individuals who, through this opposition becomes real. The combination of the presuppositions of the epic and the novel and their synthesis to an epic is based on the dual structure of Dante's world: the break between life and meaning is surpassed and cancelled by the coincidence of life and meaning in a present, actually experienced transcendence.  

750th Birthday of Dante Alighieri - Part II

                 This post is a summary of three articles. The first witht the title of, "Happy 750th birthday, Dante," Published at http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/happy-750-birthday-dante/. The second at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/happycatholicbookshelf/2015/05/dantes-750th-birthday-pope-francis-and-some-good-reading/. The third with the title of, "Lessons in Manliness from Dante." It was published at http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/12/07/lessons-in-manliness-from-dante/

                John Kleiner says it is impossible to convey how vital Dante is to contemporary Italians. They start early with them in the schools. Excerpts: Either because of or despite pedagogical programs, Italians, to a surprising degree, stick with Dante. Since 2006, The actor Benigni has been staging traditional lectura dantis, a form that goes back to 14th century. A typical lectura opens with a detailed gloss of a particular canto, followed by dramatic reading of it. Benigni's performance in Rome, Florence, Verona, and other cities have been watched by more than a million.  Millions more have turned into them on TV. Similar, if stodgier, lectures are delivered all over Italy at societies set up expressly to foster appreciation of the Divine Comedy. In Rome, for example, the Casa di Dante sponsors a lecture dantis every Sunday. It is not unusual for two hundred Romans to attend. For the last nine months, I have been living in Rome, and the experience has helped me to appreciate more of Dante's appeal. Though he may be forced-fed to 7th graders, applauded in the senate, and praised by the Holy See. Dante is, as a writer, unmistakably anti-authoritarian. He looks around and what he see is hypocrisy, incompetence, and corruption. Yes indeed, Dante was a rebel, but you might call him a subversive orthodox. He denounced the institutional order of his time, not because he wanted to replaced them, necessarily, but because he wanted them to reform themselves, and be what they are supposed to be. I hope the book, "How Dante can save your life," is translated into Italian and published there. The book is, in effect, a love letter to Italy's greatest son. I would love to see how the Italians react to this book.

                 On the eve of the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, the Holy Father expresses his hope that during this year the figure of Dante and his work will also accompany us on this personal and community path. "Indeed", he remarks, "the comedy may be read as a great itinerary, or rather as a true pilgrimage, both personal and interior, and communal,  ecclesial, social and historical. It represents the paradigm of every authentic journey in which humanity is called upon to leave what Dante defines as 'the threshing-floor that makes us so ferious' to attain a new condition, marked by harmony, peace and happiness. And this is the horizon of every true humanism. Dante is, therefore, a prophet of hope, herald of the possibility of redemption, of liberation, of the transformation of every man and woman, of all humanity. He continues to invite us to rediscover the lost or obscured meaning of our human path and to hope to see again the shining horizon on which there shines in all its fulness the dignity of the human person.

                Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture, 'The Thinker', is probably the single most well-known depiction of the poet Dante. Originally entitled 'The Poet' itself, the statue has since become as much of an icon of the strength of the human intellect as the man who first inspired it. Crouched in life as in Rodin's bronze over some of the greatest problems life has to offer, Dante remains one of history´s foremost thinkers, a visionary who places man at the center of his own epic journey between good and evil. A poetic journey through the flames of hell, purgatory and heaven, the Divine Comedy  Takes place on a truly massive scale. It has resonated with each passing generation for the last seven hundred years, never ceasing to inspire readers of every walk of life with its immortal themes of sin, suffering and redemption. Along with its author, the Divine Comedy has long been a touchstone of the Western intellectual tradition, ensuring an enduring legacy for those who would seek to learn from the life and work of "the central man of all the world." About two hundred years before Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo etched into tradition the archetype of the multi-talented Florentine, Dante had already taken the stage as a kind of "pre-Renaissance man". Dante maintained an enormous appetite for learning throughout his life. The arts of philosophy, linguistics, music, painting, politics and sciences were all pursuit he engaged with the same discipline and intensity, completely immersing himself in a chosen subject for its own sake. Diverse though they were, much of Dante's success lay in his ability to incorporate his many interests into the service of his larger work. The Divine Comedy is in many ways the first poem of its kind, an epic written not in classical Greek ot Latin, but the vernacular of the common people. To achieve this, Dante essentially standardized the language we know now as Italian, applying his abilities as a linguist to synthesize the varying dialects that stretched across medieval Italy into a single, cohesive whole. Breadth of study is no hindrance to a mind that can harness its resources towards a singular goal, bringing to bear the weight of one's discipline and experience on the subject at hand. To borrow a line from Mark Twain, Dante may have studied much, scholarly work was an essential element to his intellectual formation, but he was far from letting it be the only one. Not content with simply playing the part of the studious observer, Dante approached life with the same vigor he applied to his studies. During his time in exile, Dante traveled extensively, often attending meetings trying to restore peace between the political factions. But it was far from a bed of roses. Dante's intensity as an intellectual was likely the result of the fact that he experienced much of the darker side of life. By the time he began the Divine Comedy Dante was a man whom life had chewed up and spat back out. Hardened by war, conflict, betrayal, and the burden of exile, Dante had seen firsthand the coarseness of the world, and it let an indelible mark on him and his work. Moral courage can take different forms. At times, it may require a man to defend the principles he lives by, or even to do the right thing regardless of the consequences. At others, it could mean something a little more basic. Justice was much more than a nice idea in Dante's mind. It was real, the standard of a higher moral order that bound the actions of all men. Right and wrong were not just arbitrary designations, but degrees of talking about the inherent value of human behavior. His life in politics and exile had shown the face of corruption and treachery, and knew that the perpetrators of both and many more ills rarely received any punishment for their deeds. But that did not mean they should not be held accountable for what they did. The standard that evil is to be punished and good rewarded is written into the very fabric of the Divine Comedy, and it is a standard Dante uses to measure the deeds of all men, even his own. Moral judgments require courage, beacause in so judging, a man must hold himself and his own actions to the very same standard. The vision that allows one to see evil for what it really is also illuminates his own rights and wrongs.