Descartes and other worlds

I imagine you too are wondering why you are here.

Not abstractly, I mean: you specifically.

Why, in the infinite realm of possibilities, did God chose just me to live?

As I look around me, I soon realize an answer isn't easy.

I can't pretend to arrive at “the” answer, would be incredibly content of finding just one. But, as I see how many incredibly wonderful and luminous people are around me, I question why just me.

By the way, S/he hasn't surely made an error, isn't it? (We all like to find provisional justifications like this, I noticed - this seems to me quite universal).

Meanwhile, the doubt remains I am just unworth the incredible amount of natural resources I need to just stay alive. Would I have born a tree, OK, that wouldn't have been a big trouble. But as large-size animal... No, worse even: an energy-devouring mammal, a top-of-the-food-chain predator... I'm so, so costly, isn't it?

Maybe, we aren't here for something spectacular, like finding the final medicament against cancer or inventing the definitive cultivation procedure defeating hunger forever.

This is true for me, at least.

Sure, sooner or later someone will do, hope as soon as possible.

But who knows, maybe a reason He/She wants me being here, fully active and operational, is no less then be in the right place at the right moment.

Maybe, to see and testimony Her/His plot unraveling.

As you look back, you have to admit moments like “this one” repeated almost ceaselessly, unpredictably.
This is the account of one of these happy encounters.

It was 198xxx (I don't remember exactly the year), in the overcrowded Milan underground, red line. You know, as you are pressed as pilchards in a box you may find not simpleto interact, so I was trying to spend time attempting to learn something new. In the moment, my task was quite difficult, as the reading I chose was the Discourse de la Méthode by René Descartes.

I had a quite hard time, and not only because the book was written in French (a language I can read, with difficulty, but I'm not able to write or speak).

I was sitting, something impossible on 7 AM, and the seat on my left was occupied by a young man who, by physical appearance, came from somewhere in Maghreb. (On these years Italy was experiencing the first wave of migrants coming there from various countries, especially in Northern Africa).

He did see the book.

And we began to speak.

The following twenty minutes are, in my memory, one of the most revealing moments in my life.
The man opened to me a bit of his life. He come from Morocco, where work wasn't available. He had tried hard, but his degree in philosophy wasn't very useful to find a job, so tried again as a truck driver.

Nope: also this wasn't a good idea, it seemed there was very little to transport. Finally, he decided to leave Morocco and come to Italy.

He, the philosopher, one of the very few people I knew who can not only read but also understand Descartes writing, finally found a job as servant in a restaurant, considering himself incredibly lucky.

To date, it's 2009 as I'm writing, in Italy there is an overt wave of xenophoby, alimented (it's sad to admit) by many politicians and opinion leaders. Lots of people are so afraid to lose their tiny privileges and the illusion of welfare they currently enjoy, but more than anything else they are afraid they may have to change, adapting to a changing world.

They are literally frightened by “foreigners”.

In the same moment, they know no single one of them.

How little we all know of the World. Before of that moment I identified the Northern Africa as The Desert, where a tiny bunch of Arab-speaking people did their best to survive in incredibly harsh conditions.

But immediately after, I was on the way of discovering something quite different. A large continent of French/Arab speaking people. A huge coastal area, with high mountains covered on high altitudes by coniferous forests. And snow! (With even ski stations). And right, the desert behind. Stony and complicated, not sandy as you might imagine as a child.

An immense multitude of people who, one by one, are just as we are, humans.

We can speak with, maybe dispute. People with the same identical problems we face, just under a bit different sky. The same, identical deep interest for difficult questions, and the identical passion for beauty. The drive to survive, find a job, make a family.

And so many, many of them with stories we can immensely learn from.

People better in many cases than we are, too, so that we'll never be spared of examples to imitate.

Someone will always say you should be afraid, that doing evil things to them is justified, or whatever else.

But I know, personally, this isn't true.

I know that angels, the messengers, exist after all (maybe a bit different from how we imagine them: in flesh and bones, maybe professing another religion, or none at all).

Thanks, to them all.

Mauri