You are what you say

Today in class we have spoken about communication and the ways people use to express their point of view and listen to other people’s ideas.

The first part of our discussion dealt with the difference between a debate and a dialogue stressing that the latter has got more positive features than the former. Dialogues do allow interlocutors to talk about their ideas and learn something that can possibly make them change their mind. Unlike a debate, in a dialogue you must not uphold your opinions in order to defeat your opponent’s ones, but every point of view is worthwhile and respected even if not necessarily accepted.

As a dialogue is usually constructive, people talking must have discussion skills to avoid any useless misunderstanding, fight and insult. Moreover attention must be paid to how your body moves while you are talking, as your body language can be misinterpreted. For instance a same gesture can have a different meaning for people who have a different culture. For this reason you have to control both your language and body thus showing diplomatic skills and understanding.

In the following list you can read some useful body language tips: 

• When we talk to other people it’s important to keep eye contact but without exaggerating: if we stare at people too much they can think there’s something wrong in them, but if we look at them only once in a while they’ll probably think that we lack interest in them or in their conversation. 
• A good posture helps you feel more comfortable and less nervous when you talk to someone. 
• When you are listening to someone it’s better to tilt your head from left to right once in a while. 
• When we talk to someone it’s important to keep our arm movements midway. If we cross our arms we show disapproval. 
• When we move our bands, palm down gestures are usually considered as dominant and also aggressive. Conversely, palm up gestures are seen as open and friendly. When we shake hands it’s better to keep our hands in a vertical position to convey equality. 
• When we are standing or sitting in a face-to-face or group situation we must be careful not to be too close or too far away from the others.

Love and hate, pleasure and despair… the essence of humankind

 Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.

Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. [Catullo, Carme 85]

I hate and I love. Why I do this perhaps you ask.

I do not know, but I sense that it happens and I am tormented. [Catullus 85]

The feelings human love generates are always the same, but the way they are expressed have changed down the ages. If in the past love sentiments were usually revealed through the verses of a poem, nowadays they are often shown through the lyrics of songs.

As soon as you fall in love you feel joyful, excited and in emotional turmoil, but when you realize that your love is unrequited or unattainable you suddenly fall apart: you think you are the only obstacle to your love fulfilment as you feel inadequate for your angel-like beloved who “floats like a feather in a beautiful world” you can’t reach.

When you are in love you have a distorted view of reality, thus seeing only the positive but often unreal features of things. You are like the people Plato describes as trapped in a cave where they could only see the shadows of things and not their essence.

In these unfavourable circumstances you tend to detest yourself until you hate yourself. This kind of feeling can be found both in classical poems of literary tradition, like Petrarch’s Sonnet number 134 or Wyatt’s Elizabethan sonnet “I Find No Peace”, and in Radiohead’s song “Creep”: “Odio me stesso”, “I hate myself”, “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo”.

Even if it seems to be paradoxical and unexplainable, as in Catullus’ “Odi et amo”, sometimes people like suffering for love as we can read in many poems and songs (”And my delight is causer of this strife”). However this masochistic pleasure has been and still is the source from which many unforgettable lines spring up.

“Happy Degrowth”

The French scholar Serge Latouche is one of the most important leaders of the movement called “Degrowth” which should be carried out giving people a sense of happiness and fulfilment. This political, economic and social movement bases its ideas on ecological economics, anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism. Its main aim is to reduce consumption without decreasing human well-being. In order to get that, all the humankind on the Planet Earth should start thinking and behaving differently. That was also the utopic desire of Thomas More in the 16^th century when he wrote his famous work “Utopia”. He thought that if all able-bodied people worked six hours a day, we could produce all the essential goods for everyone, thus leaving many hours for free time activities. However leisure time should be devoted to improve your education level or to give cultural and artistic contributions to your community; nonetheless people who cannot do it, could spend more time on their working activity.

The utopic aspect of these ideas is the difficulty of convincing rich people – landowners in the past and capitalists nowadays – to give up all their non-essential material goods.

In the past few decades some countries tried to realized a government ruled this kind of ideas but unfortunately they failed, even because they often turned into dictatorships.

These days a happy Degrowth would be desirable because what we actually produce and consume exceed the Earth’s ability to regenerate its resources. Moreover acting this way people would be less stressed and more careful about conserving and protecting the environment against excessive exploitation.

I have been to Hong Kong … at least on the wings of fantasy

I dedicate this text to my schoolmate studying in Hong Kong.

Last July I flew to Australia for a three-week holiday. I travelled with a friend of mine called Caroline. She’s from Sidney where her grandparents still live. As there wasn’t any direct flight, we decided to stop over in Hong Kong where she had lived and studied Chinese for a couple of years. We stayed there only two days, so Caroline made me visit the most attractive spots.

As soon as we got off the plane we realized that it was steamy outside: after all Hong Kong lies on several islands and it looks like a modern and larger Venice. As our hotel was on Lantau Island, on the first day we walked to Po Lin Monastery which was built by three Zen masters in 1920. There are many temples in it and most of their interior walls are painted vermillion red. On both walls and ceilings we could see dragons and many  others different Chinese mythical figures. Not far from the monastery there is one of the most stunning attractions in Hong Kong, the Tian Tan Buddha. It is a large bronze statue of a seated Buddha that is 34 metres tall. It was completed in 1993 and up to 2007 it was the tallest bronze seated Buddha in the world. To get there we had to climb 240 steps. Only when we reached the top we found out that there was also a small winding road we could have walked on. We bought two tickets to go inside the statue. There are 3 floors beneath the Buddha that are called “The Hall of Universe”, “The Hall of Benevolent Merit” and “The hall of Remembrance”. On our way back we sat down on a bench in the tea garden close to the monastery. Not far from there, there is also Lantau Peak, the second highest mountain in Hong Kong, but we hadn’t the slightest intention to climb something again.

To have dinner we went to Lau Kwai Fong that is a small square of streets in Central district. There were many bars, clubs and restaurants but finally we chose one near an art gallery. We tried some typical local food: everything was delicious but the bill was pretty high because the area is considered a tourist spot and also upmarket in price.

On the second and last day of our stay in Hong Kong we went back to Central district because we wanted to do some shopping. After a couple of hours we took the Peak Tram, a funicular railway that  took us up to the Peak Tower on the Hong Kong Island. It is soared by Victoria Peak which is 552 metres high. From the top of the Peak Tower we had a wonderful view over Central district, Victoria Harbour and the surrounding islands. In order to see something even more amazing we had to wait for night, so we spent some time in two large centres. We went into a tea shop where there was a very wide range of teas and teapots. Two kind shop assistants offered us a cup of cinnamon-flavoured tea and as it was very good I decided to buy a box of it.

At about nine p.m. we went up the Peak Tower again to see “A Symphony of Lights”, a multimedia show which involves more than 40 buildings on both sides of Victoria Harbour. Coloured lights, laser beams and searchlights performed in an unforgettable spectacle synchronised to music and narration: they celebrate the energy, spirit and diversity of Hong Kong.