Concerning Intellectual Suicide in the Human Race

Debates on the Human Condition

De: Massimo Fantini

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Intellectual suicide corresponds to the more or less conscious decision to switch off the brain and renounce rational thought in favor of attitudes dictated by superstitions, by established habits, by prejudices, by common places. The effects of irrational choices – made with the brain switched off – can be devastating for oneself and for others. Examples range from conformism to religious superstitions and ideological fundamentalism, just to name a few possibilities.

Tommaso, the protagonist of this debate, is the victim of his parents’ intellectual suicide, perpetrated through procreation. Procreation – the unilateral act by which a couple throws innocent individuals into the stillicidium of life, without weighing the consequences that the hell of existence will have on them – is the most heinous form of intellectual suicide in humankind, not least because of the scale of its consequences.

The author’s intention is to shine the spotlight on the one reality that unites us all, that accompanies our lives from birth until death, but which is cast to our periphery: the human condition.