Soaressilva/philosophy

"Europe's luck was its initial poverty. For a very long time, Europe remained far removed from the existing cultural centers in Asia. Europeans were barbarians, inhabiting distant, freezing northern shores. And they knew this about themselves. Studying classical languages, and thereby imbibing a civilization wholly different from their own, made them conscious of the fact that they were stinking barbarians, who needed to wash themselves with the soap of higher civilizations. The Romans were well aware that they were culturally inferior to the Greeks. But they also had the courage to admit it. And that is precisely what gave them the strength to absorb the Hellenic civilization, and spread it to the lands they conquered. The essential characteristic of European culture is that it is ex-centric. Not in the sense of an Englishman who takes a bath wearing his bowler hat, but in the sense that the two sources of her civilization, Athens and Jerusalem, lie outside the geographical area of Europe itself. European culture is based on the recognition that we are barbarians who civilized ourselves by internalizing `strange' cultural sources." (Great interview. Thanks to DGS.)

"Coldly or ruthlessly regarded, it would seem quite odd that a man could grow so fond of a mere rabbit that he would feel deeply saddened by its death, yet I find myself warmly affected in that way; for lately I witnessed the last moments of my wife's rabbit: how he could barely struggle to his feet, his head hung low in utter despondency; how, as my wife stroked him, he made two or three last, pathetic noises, albeit quite loud, stretching his whole body with each one; and then that he died. I admit that I have been feeling rather upset about it. Now, apart from telling me to pull myself together and act like a man, you may say, in light of all the misery and suffering to which my fellow humans are subject, of the deaths of fathers, mothers, siblings, and children, not to say of the vast and incalculable suffering of all animals, that I am indulging in "sentimentality", or even guilty of indecency, by holding in mind just a particular rabbit. Well, I might try to tell myself that it is just a rabbit; but it would be to no avail. Compassion is not some finite resource to be parcelled out mechanically, or at least I cannot harden my heart to believe so. Besides, to the world at large, it may have been just another rabbit, but to me, he was rather a fine little fellow. Late of an evening, I would talk to him, and tickle him under the chin, whilst he sat next to the settee upon which I lay. Naturally he never understood a word I said, but I am used to that; yet we had a warm bond, an ineffable understanding."