Are there two different species of humans? On the curious cultic behavior of earthlings

Two cultic images staying near each other in a church in the small Italian town of Bibbiena, in Tuscany. 
(h/t Paolo and Luciana) 

Just a few days ago, I was visiting a small church in an Italian village and I saw myself as an alien just landed on this planet. What was going on in there?

Earthlings have this curious habit of kneeling in front of images of non-existing beings. But what I noted in that church is how different these beings can appear. On a side, there was an idol in the shape of a human male, obviously in great pain having been nailed to two crossed planks of wood and wounded in the chest. Nearby, there was a completely different image; a smiling human female nurturing a small child. Granted; the behavior of earthlings is often difficult to understand, but, here, it is truly puzzling: how can two such different deities cohabit the same cultic place?

The solution came from a book written by an earthling named George Lakoff, "Don't think of an elephant." Apparently, there are two kinds of earthlings; at least according to Lakoff. The "nurturant" ones (the left, the liberals, the US democrats) and the "patriarchal" ones (the right, the conservatives, the US republicans). In this subdivision, Lakoff perfectly explained what I had been seeing in that small church. Let me leave the description to him  (p. 148-149).

Conservative Christianity is a strict father religion ... First, God is understood as punitive - that is, if you sin you are going to go to hell and if you don't sin, you are going to be rewarded and go to heaven. But since people tend to sin at one point or another in their lives, how is it possible for them to ever get to heaven? The answer in conservative Christianity is Christ. What Jesus does is offer conservative Christians a chance to get to heaven. The idea is this; Christ suffered on the cross so much that he built up moral credit sufficient for all people, forever. .... If you accept Jesus as your savior, that is, as your moral authority, and agree to follow the moral authority of your minister and your church, then you can get to heaven. But that is going to require discipline, You need to be disciplined enough to follow the rules, and if you don't, then you are going to go to hell. ...

Liberal Christianity is very, very different. Liberal Christianity sees God as essentially beneficent, as wanting to help people, The central idea in liberal Christianity is grace, where grace is understood as a kind of metaphorical nurturance. In liberal Christianity, you can't earn grace - you are given grace unconditionally by God. But you have to accept grace, you have to be near God to get his grace, you can be filled by grace, you can be healed by grace, and you are made into a moral person through God's grace. In other words, grace is metaphorical nurturance ... In a nurturant form of religion, your spiritual experience has to do with your connection with other people and the world and your spiritual practice has to do with your service to other people and to your community. 

Seems clear: the two idols in that church are different deities worshiped by two different categories of humans. The nurturant humans worship the virgin Mary, the mother of God; the patriarchal humans worship Jesus, the son of God who suffered on the cross.

So, are there two species of humans? Could be; surely these two categories of humans look so different from each other that any good alien should wonder if they can even interbreed with each other. Apparently, indeed, some data indicate that they rarely do. Earthlings are, indeed, curious creatures.

Book of the Beast: Ugo Bardi's Il Libro della Chimera

Reproduced from Linda Lappin's blog july 2013

"We are all Chimeras" -- Ugo Bardi


by Linda Lappin


Not too long ago, I made a trip to Florence to visit an old friend who has dwelled in my unconscious for a very long time, ever since I first laid eyes on her at the Archaeological Museum: the Chimera. This bronze statue, cast in one piece, depicting a three-headed beast composed of a lion, a goat, and a snake is considered by many art historians to be among the major masterpieces not only of Etruscan sculpture, but of all ancient religious art that has come down to us from anywhere the world over. After years of absence, she does not disappoint, radiating electrifying power and intensity.

The sculpture, eighty centimeters tall, shows a regal beast on the defense, with a jagged mane of spikes, its sinuous body tensed to pounce, ribs protruding from its sleek, gaunt sides, suggesting hunger. Its open jaws roar in pain and fury. The extremely realistic, flat-eared goat head sprouting from its spine leans downwards, shedding drops of blood on the base of its neck. Soulful eyes gaze out helplessly as a vicious serpent, which is the Chimera’s own tail, stretches out to strike, seizing the goat’s horn in its jaws.

The Chimera, as notes Ugo Bardi distinguished chemistry professor at the University of Florence, environmental blogger, and author of a study on the beast, Il Libro Della Chimera, (edizioni Polistampa, Florence, 2008,) is portrayed in a moment of suffering. She is a fighter, but she is losing. Bardi goes on to say that the Etruscan artist who made this Chimera, roughly in about 400 B.C. may have wanted to express the fate of his people who at that time were gradually being overcome by the Romans. Or perhaps he wished to express his own destiny, that of all human beings, who will eventually be overcome in a final, individual battle. “We are all chimeras,” Bardi suggests.

Once face to face alone with this astonishing creature your first desire is to reach out and caress its smooth sides and haunches, then to run your hand across the cold bronze spikes of its mane and hackles and test the sharpness of the claws. But your next immediate response will be a question: But what does it mean? for this curious three-headed combo must mean something. What Ugo Bardi sets out to do in his thought-provoking study is to illuminate that meaning on many levels.

First, he provides us with a historical account of its discovery unearthed by workers digging outside the Arezzo city walls in 1553, her transferal to Florence where she captivated Cosimo I De Medici, and soon became a symbol of Tuscan cultural and political identity. He describes the vogue for Etruscan culture to which she contributed, as scholars tried to link the undeciphered Etruscan language to Hebrew and sought traces of the mysterious race who were the forefathers of the Renaissance Tuscans, rivals to the Renaissance Romans. He explains why indeed she is not a fake, as some have claimed. He investigates her mythic background as a fire-breathing female creature who laid waste the land of Lycia until she was slain by the hero Bellerophon, riding on Pegasus. To kill the Chimera, Bellerophon shot a wedge of lead to the animal’s throat, where it melted on contact with her fiery breath, causing her to die of suffocation. Bardi reminds us that the Chimera was no monster but a goddess. Later accounts attempted to rationalize the myth, by claiming that she represented a volcano.

Readers will find all this and more in Bardi’s exhaustive study which includes a fascinating essay on the origins of the myth of the Chimera and the female archetype it represents, akin to both the Sphinx and the Great Mother. Citing both Freud and Joseph Campbell, he traces the recurrence of this archetype in religion and art from Mesopotamia to the present day, offering a psychoanalytical interpretation for the myth as an Oedipal rite of passage.

Thus far, we might say that in the Libro Della Chimera Bardi has assembled all the known facts and lore about this mystifying beast, along with a beautiful selection of photographs and drawings, but he goes even further, to make a momentous discovery of his own which may indeed lead us to solve the enigma of her essential meaning.

When the Chimera was pulled out of the earth, she was found to have a word engraved on her right foreleg TINSEVIL, which over the centuries has been interpreted in dozens of ways, related to the Etruscan god of thunder, Tin. Bardi conducts his own linguistic research on this term and finds connection with one of Europe’s most ancient and mysterious languages: Basque. From this he derives an extraordinary theory as to the Chimera’s true meaning and identity.

In many cultures letters and words are sacred, not mere abstract symbols of sounds, but seeds from which may germinate emotions, visions, entire universes. When spoken aloud or merely formulated in the mind, words can conjure gods and demons, materialize blessings or curses, shatter a brick wall into fragments or even make the limbs of a statue shudder to life. Such power may lie dormant in the word TINSEVIL, for it has also inspired Bardi’s newest literary project, a novel, about which soon I hope the world will have news.

Il Libro della Chimera is at present only available in Italian but much of the material can be found in English on his wonderful website Ugo Bardi Chimera Site 

The book in Italian may be purchased here
www.polistampa.com/asp/sl.asp?id=4441

Ugo Bardi, one of the most followed environmental bloggers in Italy, writes beautifully in English on some very scary topics about which he is expert: collapsing systems and planet plundering. Follow him here
www.cassandralegacy.blogspot.it

The war of the sexes: the origins of gender inequality

 The story of Scheherazade of the 1001 Arabian Nights is the quintessence of the "war of the sexes" and of how women tend to lose it. It is said that King Shahryar would have a new lover every night and every morning he would have her killed. He stopped only when Scheherazade started telling him stories. It shows, among other things, that males behave much better when they listen to females. Picture: Scheherazade and Shahryār by Ferdinand Keller, 1880

Some time ago, I was chatting at home with a friend who is a researcher specialized in "gender inequality". I asked her what were the ultimate origins of this inequality but we couldn't arrive at a conclusion. So, I happened to have in a shelf nearby a copy of the "Malleus Maleficarum", the book that Kramer and Sprenger wrote in the 16th century on the evils of witchcraft. I took it out and I opened it to the page where the authors dedicate several paragraphs to describe how evil women are. I read a few of these paragraphs aloud and my friend was so enraged that she left the room, without saying a word. Later on, she told me that she had done that to avoid telling me what she thought I deserved to be told just for keeping that book in my shelves. Maybe she was right, but the question of the origins of gender inequality remained unanswered (BTW, later on, we became friends again). 

Why are women so commonly discriminated in almost all cultures, modern and ancient? Of course, there are plenty of studies attempting to explain the reasons. It is an interdisciplinary field that mixes history, anthropology, psychology, social studies, and even more; you can spend your whole life studying it. So, I don't even remotely pretend to be saying something definitive or even deep on this subject. It is just that, after much thinking on this matter, I thought that I could share with you some of my conclusions. So, here is a narrative of how gender inequality developed over the centuries in Europe and in the Mediterranean world. I hope you'll find in it something worth pondering.

So, let's go back in time, way back; when does the phenomenon that we call "gender inequality" starts? You probably know that Marija Gimbutas has been arguing for a long time that the pre-literate ages in Europe were characterized by a form of matriarchy and by the predominance of the cult of a female goddess (or goddesses). That is, of course, debatable and it is hotly debated; there is very little that we have from those ancient times that can tell us how men and women related to each other. However, when we move to the first examples of literature we have, then we see at least hints of a different world that involved some kind - perhaps - if not female dominance at least a more assertive role of women. Indeed, the first text for which we know the name of the author was written by the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna at some moment during the second half of the third millennium BCE. From these ancient times, there comes a very strong voice: the voice of a woman asserting the rule of the Goddess Inanna over the pantheon of male Gods of her times, hinting at an even larger role of female goddesses in even more ancient times.

If we follow the millennia as they move onward, it seems that the voice of women becomes fainter and fainter. In Greece, we have Sappho of Lesbos, renown for her poetry, but she comes from a very early age; the seventh century BCE. As the Greek civilization grew and was absorbed into the Roman one, woman literates seem to dwindle. Of the whole span of the Western Roman civilization, we know of a modest number of literate women and there are only two Roman female poets whose works have survived to us. Both go with the name of Sulpicia and you probably never heard of them. As poetry goes, the first Sulpicia, who lived at the times of August, may be interesting to look at. The second one, living in later times, has survived in a few lines only because they are explicitly erotic. But but the point is that it is so little in comparison with so much Greek and Latin literature we still have. Women of those times may not have been really silent but, in literary terms, we just don't hear their voices.

On the other side of the sexual barrier, note how the "Malleus Maleficarum" bases its several pages of insult to women largely on classical authors, for instance, Cicero, Lactantius, Terence, and others; as well as on the early Christian fathers. It is not surprising for us to discover that, from the early imperial times to the early Middle Ages, most writers were woman-haters. They thought that sex was, at best, a necessary evil that one had to stand in order to ensure the perpetuation of humankind; but no more than that. Chastity, if one could attain it, was by far the best condition for man and woman alike and, for sure, sex with a woman was only a source of perversity and of debasement. An early Christian father, Origen (3rd century CE) is reported to have taken the matter to the extreme and castrated himself, although that's not certain and surely it never became popular.

With the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, there appeared something that had never existed before: the monastic orders. Never before so many men and women had decided that they wanted to live in complete separation from the members of the other sex. Read a book such as the "pratum spirituale" by 6th century CE the Byzantine monk John Moschos, and you get the impression that everyone at that time, males and females, were obsessed by sex; how to avoid it, that is. Chastity had never been considered a virtue before and, yet, now it had become the paramount one. At least, however, it seems that women had gained a certain degree of independence, seeking for chastity in their own ways and with a dignity of their own. Reading documents from that age, you get the well-defined impression that men and women had somehow decided that they wanted to avoid each other for a while. It was a pause that lasted several centuries. But why did that happen?

I think there are reasons, but to understand them we must go back to Roman times and try to understand what was the relationship between men and women at that age. And we may find that it was deeply poisoned by a sickness that pervaded the society of those times: social inequality and, in particular, the institution of slavery.

It is well known that the Roman Empire heavily based its wealth on the work of slaves. Their number is variously estimated as around 10% of the population, but it was larger in the richest regions of the empire. Probably, during the 1st century CE, some 30%-40% of the population of Italy was composed of slaves (1). Slavery was an integral part of the Roman economy and one of the main aims of the Roman military conquests was capturing of large numbers of foreigners, who then were turned into slaves.

Now, most slaves were male and were used for heavy or menial work, in agriculture, for instance. But many of them were female, and, obviously, young and attractive slaves, both male and female, were used as sex objects. Slaves were not considered as having rights. They simply were property. Caroline Osiek writes that (2).

To the female slave, therefore, honor, whether of character or of behavior, cannot be ascribed. The female slave can lay no claim to chastity or shame, which have no meaning. In the official view, she cannot have sensitivity toward chastity. Her honor cannot be violated because it does not exist. .. No legal recognition is granted to the sexual privacy of a female slave.

To have a better idea of how female slaves were considered in Roman times, we may turn to a late Roman poet, Ausonius (4th century CE) who had gained a certain notoriety in his times. He was not only a poet but an accomplished politician who had a chance to accompany Emperor Gratian in a military raid in Germania. From there, he returned with a Germanic slave girl named Bissula. He wrote a poem in her honor that says, among other things,

Delicium, blanditiae, ludus, amor, voluptas,barbara, sed quae Latias vincis alumna pupas,Bissula, nomen tenerae rusticulum puellae,horridulum non solitis, sed domino venustum.

that we can translate as

Delice, blandishment, play, love, desire,barbarian, but you baby beat the Latin girlsBissula, a tender name, a little rustic for a girla little rough for those not used to it, but a grace for your master

It is clear that Ausonius likes Bissula; we could even say that he is fond of her. But it is the same kind of attitude that we may have toward a domestic animal; a cat or a dog that we may like a lot, but that we don't consider our equal. Bissula was no more than a pet in terms of rights. It is true that her master was not supposed to mistreat her, and we have no evidence that he ever did. But she had strictly no choice in terms of satisfying him sexually. In this sense, she had no more rights than those pertaining to a rubber doll in our times. In modern terms, we can say that she was being legally raped. And nobody seemed to find this strange; so much that Ausonius' poem that described this legal rape was considered wholly normal and it was appreciated.

If we can still hear Ausonius' voice, we cannot hear that of Bissula. Probably, she couldn't read and write, to say nothing about doing that in proper Latin. So, what she thought of her master is anyone's guess. Was she happy that she was getting at least food and shelter from him? Or did she hate him for having been one of those who had, perhaps, exterminated her family and her parents? Did she ever dream of sticking a hairpin into Ausonius' eye? Perhaps; but we have no evidence that she ever did. If she had done something like that, by the way, she would have condemned to death all the slaves of Ausonius' household. The Roman law practiced a strict interpretation of the principle of common intention and when it happened that a slave killed his/her master, it required that all the slaves of that master were to be executed. And we know that this law was put into practice in several occasions.

So, we cannot hear Bissula's voice, just as we can't hear the voice of the millions of sex slaves that crossed the trajectory of the Roman Empire, from its foundation to its end in the 5th century CE. Exploited, without rights, probably turned to menial work whenever they got older and their masters lost interest in them, their voice is lost in the abyss of time and we can only imagine their plea. But, perhaps, we can get a glimpse of their feelings from their reflection on the other side; that of their masters who, in Imperial times, dedicated pages and pages of their writings at insulting women. Yes, because the silent side, that of the slaves, was not without weapons in the war that the masters were waging against them. The masters may have expected gratitude from them, perhaps even love. But they got only hatred and despise. Imagine yourself as Bissula. Do you imagine she could have loved Ausonius? And can you imagine how could she have taken some revenge on him? I am sure there were ways, even though we can't say whether Bissula ever put them into practice. No wonder that so many men in these times accused women of treachery. In the war of the sexes, the women had to use guerrilla tactics, and apparently they were doing that with some success.

If slavery turned woman slaves into sex objects, the resulting war of the sexes must have had negative effect also on free women. They were not supposed to be legally raped as the slaves, but surely they could not ignore what their husbands were doing (and, by the way, free Roman women were not supposed to rape their male slaves and, if they did, they were not supposed to write poems about how cute their male sex dolls were). Very likely, this situation poisoned the male/female relations of generations of Roman citizens. Thinking of that, we cannot be surprised of the avalanche of insults that Roman male writers poured on women (want an example? Seneca in his tragedies [11 (117)]: "when a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil")

That kind of poisoned relationship continued for a long time but, at a certain moment, not much later than Ausonius' times, the Empire ceased to be able to raid slaves from anywhere, and then it disappeared. Slavery didn't disappear with the Empire: we had to wait for the 19th century to see it disappear for good. But, surely, the whole situation changed and slaves were not any more so common. The Christian church took a lot of time before arriving to a clear condemnation of slavery, but turning people into sex toys was not seen any more as the obvious things to do. So, things changed a lot and we may understand how during Middle Ages men and women were taking that "pause." It was as if they were looking at each other, thinking "who should make the first move?" A shyness that lasted for centuries.

And then, things changed again. It was an impetuous movement, a reversal of the time of hatred between men and women: it was the time of courtly love. With the turning of the millennium, the amour courtois started to appear in Europe and it became all the rage. Men and women were looking again at each other; and they were looking at each other in romantic terms: they loved each other. The love between man and woman became a noble thing, a way to obtain enlightenment - perhaps better than chastity. From the Northern Celtic tradition, the legend of two lovers, Tristan and Iseult, burst into the literary scene. And it was a dam that gave way. Lancelot and Guinevere, then Dante and Beatrice, Petrarca and Laura, Ibn Arabi and Nizham. West European and Mediterranean poets couldn't think of anything better to express themselves than to dedicate them to noble women whom they loved and respected.

And we hear again the voice of women: and what a voice! Think of Heloise, pupil and lover of Abelard, the philosopher in a tragic love story that took place during the early 12th century. Heloise  burst onto the scene with unforgettable words: "To her master, nay father, to her husband, nay brother; from his handmaid, nay daughter, his spouse, nay sister: to Abelard, from Heloise. And if the name of wife appears more sacred and more valid, sweeter to me is ever the word friend, or, if you be not ashamed, concubine or whore." What can you say about this? I can only say that my lower jaw falls down as I utter "Wow!!"

It was a long journey from Heloise to our times. Long and tormented, just think that not much later than Heloise, the French mystic Marguerite Porete wrote her book "The mirror of the simple souls" in a style and content that reminds the works of the Sumerian Enheduana, four thousand years before. And Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake for what she had written. And, some centuries later, the war against females continued with the various witch hunts, fueled by books such as "The Malleus Maleficarum" (1520). And think that it was only in the second half of the 20th century that women were generally considered smart enough that they were allowed to vote in general elections. But we have arrived somewhere, to an age in which "gender inequality" is considered something wholly negative, to be avoided at all costs. An age in which, at least in the West, the idea that women are equal to men is obvious, or should be. And an age in which using woman slaves as sex toys is (or should be) considered as an absolute evil.

And yet, if history moves forward, it also moves along a tortuous road and sometimes it goes in circles. The similarities of our times and Roman ones are many. Certainly, we don't have slaves any more, not officially, at least. But that may not be so much a social and ethical triumph but a consequence of the fact that our society is much more monetarized than the Roman one. The need for money can easily make a man or a woman the monetary equivalent of a slave of Roman times. We call "sex workers" those people who engage in sex for money; they are supposed to be free men and free women, but freedom can only be theoretical when, if you really want it, you have to pay for it by starvation. And while the armies of the globalized empire do not raid any more the neighboring countries to bring back male and female slaves, it is the global financial power that forces them to come to the West. They have little choice but to leave countries ravaged by wars, droughts, and poverty. In general, the social equality that the Western World had been constantly gaining after the industrial revolution, seems to have stopped its movement. Since the 1970s, we are going in reverse, social inequalities are on the increase. Are we going to re-legalize slavery? It is not an impossible thought if you think that it was still legal in the US up to 1865.

So, maybe the rich elites of our times would again turn women into sex objects? Maybe they are doing that already. Think of Italy's leader, Silvio Berlusconi. Enough has been diffused of his private life for us to understand that he behaved not unlike Ausonius with his female toys, except that, luckily for us, he has not imposed on us some bad poetry of his.

So, is the war of the sexes going to restart? Are we going to see again the relations between men and women souring because of the deep inequality that turns women into sex toys? And maybe we are going to see the monastic orders returning and, perhaps, in a far future, a new explosion of reciprocal love? It is, of course, impossible to say. What we can say is that the world empire that we call "globalization" is all based on fossil fuels and that it is going to have a short life; very likely much shorter than that of the Roman Empire. Maybe the cycle will not be restarting, maybe it will; we cannot say. Humankind is engaged in a travel toward the future that is taking us somewhere, but we don't know where. Wherever we are going, the path is something we create with our feet as we march onward.

h/t: Elisabetta Addis



1. Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425. Cambridge University Press, 2011,

2. Carolyn Osniek, Female Slaves, Porneia and the limits to obedience, in "Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue" David Balch and Carolyn Osniek eds. Wm. Eedermans publishing Co. Cambridge, 2003

The shadow line of narrative: on the failure of historical novels

I don't know how it was that, over a few rainy days of February, I found myself reading this novel by Juilene Osborne-McKnight. But, as the task is accomplished, I thought I might write a note about the experience. It was - I must say - a little tiresome.

I don't mean to say that the author of "I am of Irelaunde" didn't make a considerable effort to understand what Ireland could have looked like at the time of St. Patrick. But the final result is just flat. The plot continuously bounces from Patrick's first person narration and the Ireland of the Fianna warriors of the Fenian cycle. The two parts never really match with each other and Patrick's character comes up petulant in his continuous worrying about losing his chastity. The whole novel moves on with the same ease of a steam engine chugging on along a steep upgrade,

Is this a problem with this specific novel or general of historical novels? I think it is a general problem. Can you name a modern historical novel that takes place in a remote time and that's really, really good? I can't think of one (*). I can only think of reasonably good novels - or, at least, entertaining ones - that don't try do describe times older than one-two centuries. Think of the civil war, some 150 years ago. I have in front of me Connie Wilson's novel "Lincoln Dreams" - a very good story that bounces up and down from our times to those of the Civil War. And I can think of "Gone with the Wind", surely an entertaining novel. Conversely, I tried once to put together a novel that would have taken place in Florence, during the Renaissance. I know the place, I know the language, and I would have been describing people who might have been my ancestors. But, working on it, it turned out to be too difficult - impossible. Five hundred years are too much to bridge for me. Had I tried, the results could have been as bad as another novel taking place in the Florence of the Renaissance: "Cupid and the Silent Goddess" by Alan Fisk. Perhaps humankind might not have survived the existence of another novel as bad as that one.

So, there seems to be a barrier that limits what a novelist can do. To describe it, I could borrow Joseph Conrad's title, "The Shadow Line" to define a barrier that separates the manageable from the unmanageable in literary terms. And I also think that there is a logic in that shadow line being placed somewhere between a hundred and two hundred years in the past. It is in the fact that, no matter how literate our society has become, we are still people who speak with each other (even though speech may be replaced by "texting" one day, but we are not there, yet). And if we speak to each other, a lot of our knowledge comes from oral sources. So, it may well be that the shadow line corresponds to the time that our grandmothers lived as young children. The barrier that separates stories about real people from stories about the mythical world of the "dreamtime" of aboriginal Australians, where heroes and gods live.

And that's the whole point: whatever story comes from before the shadow line can work only if it is transformed into mythical narrative plots, fantasy in short, without attempting to be realistic. We just can't revive historical characters, such as Patrick of Ireland, whom by now live in the Dreamtime. It is the shadow line of narrative, also the shadow line of history.




(*) all rules have exceptions. In this case, the exception is "Memoirs of Hadrian", by Marguerite Yourcenar, set some 1800 years before the time of the author. But this is the work of a literary genius who defies rules and classifications

The Countess of Castiglione and How France gained a World Empire

In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte had managed to create a sort of West European Empire that would have generated a much different Europe, today, if it had lasted. 

History is supposed to be driven by gigantic and impersonal forces that govern the economy and the movements of nations. What happens, it is often said, happened because it had to. And yet, sometimes, we see that history is on the balance. We can imagine that just a little push on one or another direction could have changed the destiny of whole nations and empires. Of course, thinking of these tipping points is just an exercise in fiction; but it is a fascinating one. So, here is a pseudo-history of Europe that could have taken place if the Countess of Castiglione had not seduced the emperor of France, Napoleon III,  If you want to read what happened in reality, you can do that in the blog "Cassandra's Legacy"  in a post titled "Coal, Wars, and Beautiful Women." Here is, instead, the fiction. (don't take it for anything political, it is just that: fiction) (revised and modified in August 2020)


In 1858, some momentous events take place in Paris. It is said that Emperor Napoleon III is so influenced by his mistress, the Italian Countess of Castiglione, that he has promised to her to help the King of Piedmont, Vittorio Emanuele II, to carve out for himself a much larger reign than the North-Western corner of Italy where he reigns: the whole Italian peninsula. 

But a curious twist brings doom to the beautiful Countess. As she walks in Paris, she is hit by a falling tile blown by the wind. Taken to the Hôpital Général, she is pronounced dead on arrival. It is said that Napoleon III is devastated, not the same appears to be the case for Empress Eugénia, his wife.

The death of the Countess has momentous consequences. When Count Cavour attempts to have Napoleon III sign the treaty that they had agreed upon, he finds that he has changed his mind. More negotiations follow, but Napoleon III doesn't budge. In 1859, Cavour attempts to force the game: the Piedmontese army attacks Austria even without the French support. 

It is a disaster that repeats the outcome of previous attempts by Piedmont to push Austria out of the Northern Italian plains. But this time, it is way worse. Not only the Austrians hold their ground against the smaller Piedmontese forces, but an enraged Napoleon III declares war on Piedmont and annexes the regions of Nice and Savoy, North and West of the Alps. 

Defeated on both sides, the King of Piedmont, Vittorio Emanuele, abdicates, but it is too late. The Austrians don't stop their advance and the French cross the Alps to stop them to annex Piedmont completely. In the end, Vittorio Emanuele finds refuge in Sardinia. Piedmont is partitioned between Austria and France. The French flag is raised in Turin. 

in 1861, A desperate Vittorio Emanuele tries a last resort attempt to turn the tables. With the help of Great Britain, a military expedition led by an Italian adventurer, Giuseppe Garibaldi is launched against the Kingdom of Southern Italy. It is another big gamble that fails.

With the protection of the British navy, Garibaldi lands unopposed in Sicily. Then, he manages to soundly defeat the Neapolitan army and his men march North, nearly unopposed. But Napoleon III is outraged and reacts by sending a corps of 10,000 elite troops, the chasseurs, to Italy. The joint French and Neapolitan armies stop Garibaldi advance in the Southern tip of Italya. Garibaldi himself is wounded and captured. Transferred to the fortress of Gaeta, off the coast of Naples, he will end his life there, old and forgotten. With the disappearance of their leader, Garibaldi's troops melt away and the King of Naples, Francesco II, regains control of Sicily, mopping away the last resistance pockets. 

In the years that follow, the political situation in Italy remains unchanged. Austria and France agree to keep Britain away from the peninsula and to maintain its fragmentation in statelets, convenient for both. The North-Eastern region of Italy is increasingly Germanized, the rest of the peninsula is gradually becoming more and more French. Already in Piedmont the language most commonly spoken is French, and it gradually spreads south, where the Kingdom of Naples remains occupied by French troops. 

In the rest of Europe, the rising star is Prussia: a young state that commands the richest coal mines of Europe, in the Ruhr region, and that developed an efficient army with advanced artillery technologies. The plan of the Prussian government is to annex the statelets of German-speaking central Europe and create a strong German state, able to dominate Europe. 

In 1864, Prussia and Denmark clash in a territorial dispute known as the 2nd Schleswig war. It is a quick victory for Prussia at the Battle of Dybbøl. France tries to intervene to help Denmark, but it is too late and Napoleon III is caught unprepared. It is a lesson that he won't forget, though.

In 1866, Prussia turns on Austria-Hungary for a decisive war that will decide the fate of Central Europe. Austria's forces are easily beaten by the Prussians, but this time Napoleon III is not letting Prussia do what they want. As the Prussian troops are engaged on the Austrian front, the French occupy the Ruhr and its rich coal mines. The Prussians are enraged, but it is the Fait-Accompli.

In 1870, the two largest powers of Central Europe, Prussia and France, face each other in a series of battles that will decide the destiny of the continent. The French are badly defeated by the Prussians at Sedan, but a strong contingent from Piedmont and from the friendly Kingdom of Naples arrives in time to stop the Prussians from annihilating the French army. Napoleon III himself narrowly escapes capture, but he is saved by the Piedmontese cavalry. Eventually, the combined French armies manage to stop the Prussians. A treaty is signed and Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck agrees to cede the Ruhr to France. The French-Prussian agreement is the last political act of Napoleon III, who dies in 1873, handling the crown to his son, Napoleon IV.

Under the leadership of the new Emperor, France continues to encroach the Western Mediterranean region. The French had already taken Algeria in 1830, they occupy Tunisia in 1881 and Morocco in 1904. In 1911, France occupies unopposed the region called Libya. The Kingdom of Naples feebly protests about that, but it remains occupied by French troops and cannot mount an effective opposition. The Mediterranean is becoming more and more of a French lake. The British cannot stop the French expansion, and decide not to try. It is the start of the decline of the once powerful British empire, gradually overcome by the expanding French Empire.

In 1914, the Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Serbia. That leads Austria to invade Serbia in an action that inflames the whole Balkan region. The French Empire intervenes with all its military might, rapidly defeating Austria and forcing all the parties involved to start negotiations. In the end, Austria is awarded most of the Balkans in exchange with the Austrians ceding the Northern Italian regions to France. By now, Italy is a French Peninsula. Only the peasant still speak Italian, all the elites speak French.

There follow some years of peace, but dark events are brewing. In 1922, Benito Mussolini leader of the Padanian Fascist Party, marches to the Milano, with his black shirts and seizes power proclaiming that the Northern Italian regions are now the "Republic of Padania". France is slow to react and Mussolini consolidates his power. In 1933, a young Austrian hothead, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Austrian Nazi party, is elected Chancellor of Austria. Later on, he will seize power exploiting the fire of the Reichstag of Vienna, whom he attributes to the Communists. The King of Austria is exiled and Hitler becomes the sole ruler of Austria.

In 1939; the Nazi Austrian regime allies with the fascist regime of Padania, forming a European "Axis." With the support of Prussia, still trying to dominate Europe, the Axis attacks the French-European empire. The attack is successful: Paris is occupied by the Prussian-Austrian troops, while Padania advances in France from the South. At the same time, the Padanian Armies invade Southern Italy,  occupying the whole Italy. They recall the  King of Sardinia, Vittorio Emanuele III, who was still claiming to be the King of Piedmont, who takes the crown of what's called now "Kingdom of Italy".

At this point, Hitler makes the wrong decision of attacking Russia and the Austro-Prussian-Italian troops are soundly defeated after a harsh Winter campaign. While the Austro-Prussian army retreats in disorder from the Russian front, the outremer French troops disembark in Normandy and force the Nazi armies back to Vienna in a pincer movement together with the Russian troops. French troops also disembark in Sicily and push Northward the Padanian troops that retreat in disarray. In 1945, the Russians enter in Vienna and Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker, while Benito Mussolini is hanged in Milano while trying to escape away from Padania. Britain had remained neutral during these events, but at this point, the British crown is forced to find an agreement with France. Britain becomes a French protectorate and the French empire is re-established in Paris with Napoleon VI crowned Emperor of Europe in 1948.

In the 1950s, the Euro-Mediterranean Union (EMU) is formed, under the auspices of the Emperor of France, blending together all the nations of North Africa and Europe in an alliance for peace and prosperity. Today, everyone in Western Europe and Northern Africa speaks French. In Europe, only some barbarous islanders in the North-West keep speaking a barbarous language that's referred to as "Ingliss"

So beautiful it almost hurts..... what is in a human face?

How beautiful can a human face be? So much that it almost hurts - like this painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (La Ghirlandaia, 1874). Really, I set it up as the wallpaper of my PC and everytime I turn it on it almost makes me fall from my chair.

And yet, what is in a human face? What is that can make it so beautiful, and so strange. Think of it as if you were seeing a human being for the first time, as if you had landed on this planet after a travel of a hundred thousand light years, from the other side of the galaxy.

What are you seeing? What creature is this? Those eyes.... so strange, look at the way the iris is circled by a black border; look at the white around. No other creature on this planet has that. Why? Why does this creature want everyone to know in which direction she is looking?

And those two protuberances on the face So prominent; one we call "nose", the other we call "chin". What other creature on this planet has them? Can you find one? No, and yet this creature, this "human" has them. Why? What is their purpose?

The mouth, look at the mouth: so strange with those prominent lips. Again, which creature on this planet has anything like that? And it is so small... such a small mouth; so out of proportion with the size of this creature? What does she eat? Maybe blood? Is she a vampire? Or what is she?

Yes: human beings. What are they?

A Cli-Fi Story: Winter Solstice in Antarctica

Antarctica deglaciated and uplifted, as it could appear ten thousand years after the Great Warming of the 21st century (from global warming art). 


The text below is part of my cli-fi novel "Queen of Antarctica" that one of these days I might be able to publish, somewhere. The novel takes place in a remote future and it is based on the idea that, after the runaway climate change of the 21st century, the survivors managed to colonize the extreme North and the extreme South of the planet, including Antarctica. And here is how their remote descendants living in Antarctica would tell the story. Note that the story assumes a relatively warm Antarctica, but it reflects the peculiar conditions of a civilization living near the South Pole that would experience six months of light followed by six months of darkness.In this world, people would spend the dark winter in a sort of hibernation. For them, seeing the stars in the dark sky would be something special, worth celebrating. 

Children, come. Come here, because this is a special night. It is the night when the Moon is highest in the sky, and the night when the Moon starts to go down and, slowly, to let the sun come back, and give us light again after the long winter night. And we call this night the night of the winter solstice.

So, children, you have been sleeping through the long winter night, but now you are awake, and it is good that you are awake because this is a very special night. It is the night when we all wear heavy clothing and we go out to look at the stars! Yes, children, the sky is dark during the solstice night, and this night is darker than all the other nights of the year. So, we go out and we look at the stars, and at the moon, and at the planets above us. It is beautiful, and many of you have already seen it, and some of the youngest among you see the dark sky for the first time because they were too young to go out the last solstice.

But before we go outside to see the stars, children, it is the time for me to tell you a story. I'll tell you the story of the land where we live, that we call Antarctica; and of the city where we live, that we call just the city. And it is for me to tell you this story, children, because I am the oldest woman of the city and some say that for this reason I am a wise woman; and some call me witch because I know many things. And this may be true, though all that I know I learned from other wise women who came before me, just like you, children, are learning this story from me. And maybe, one day, when you'll be old as I am now, you'll be telling this story to the children who will be here because this is what has happened in our city for a long, long, time, since it was founded long, long ago.

So, children, listen to me. You know that the world was created when the Goddess separated the waters from the land, and then She created the Sun and the Moon, and she made the Sun so that it would shine light on the land during half of the year, and She made the Moon so that it would stay in the sky for the other half of the year. And it is the light of the Sun that makes grain grow and makes us live. And then, it is the time for the Moon to be alone in the sky, then the land rests, and the people of the city rest, all the creatures of Antarctica rest, ready for the new cycle to start, when the sun comes back, the snow melts, and grain grows again for us.

But, children, you must know that Antarctica has not been the same forever. And this is a story that I have to tell you, children, because it is an ancient story that comes from the time of the founders and that the wise women of the city have kept by telling it to one another for a long, long time. And the story says that long, long ago, Antarctica was not the same as it is today; no, it was colder. Much colder than it is today. And the land was covered in ice, by mountains of ice! So big and so tall were those mountains that you can't even imagine how big and how tall. But they say that the tip of these mountains of ice was as tall as the mountains you see today. So tall that and so big that nothing of what you see today was visible. The land where now our city stands was covered in ice and the grain fields around the city were covered in ice. Everything was covered in ice.

Long, long ago, when Antarctica was covered in ice, no one lived here. People lived far, far away, on the other side of the sea. And the lands in which they lived were not so hot as they are today, and people lived there. And people had built cities there, great cities with tall buildings. But those cities don't exist anymore and the people living there have died. It was because of something terrible that happened in those ancient times and that was what the founders called the Great Warming. Some say that it was the will of the Goddess that caused the world heat up so much that so many people died and they say that it was because people had become too proud and they were not paying to the Goddess the respect she deserved.

But the founders say otherwise and they say that it was a fault of the ancient who had done something that had caused the Great Warming without knowing what they were doing. The founders said that the ancient had found something underground, a dark stuff that they could burn as if it were wood, but that was not wood. They dug it out and they burned it to warm themselves, to cook, and to smelt metals. And this dark stuff was easy to find and easy to burn, so they burned a lot of it. And they burned so much of it that it poisoned the air and made it warmer. It was like when you warm yourself in a sealskin and it may be too warm for you if you do that during the summer. And this blanket made the world much hotter than it used to be, and it covered the whole world. And it covered Antarctica, too.

The founders say that the wise among the ancient understood what was happening and warned the others, but that the less wise among the ancient did not believe what the wise people were telling them and so they didn't want to stop burning that dark stuff, and that was perhaps how they offended the Goddess, as some people say. So they kept burning that dark stuff and the world became hotter. And then, the founders they say that something came out of the depth of the earth, something that made the air even hotter and did it faster, so fast and that could not be stopped, no matter what the ancient tried to do. And that was the Great Warming that some say was a punishment sent by the Goddess.

When the great blanket of ice that covered Antarctica felt the heat of the Great Warming, it started melting. And all this ice that melted went into the oceans as water, and the oceans rose. And the cities that had been on the coasts of the continents in the North were submerged, and the people who lived in those cities had to move inland, and they didn't have enough food to eat because the Great Warming had dried up much of the land, and many places were too hot for people to live. So, many of them died, many, many of them. And those who survived migrated to the Northern Lands, where they say that their descendants still live today, although it is so far away from us that nobody has been there for a long, long time.

Here, in Antarctica, when the ice melted, much of it crashed into the sea very fast, because the great ice sheets slid over the water under them, and they moved very rapidly and, soon, there were great stretches of land in Antarctica that were free of ice. But there was nobody living in there because nobody had ever lived in Antarctica up to then. It was at that time that the founders came. They came from the North, they were some of those who had survived. They came by boat, and it was a difficult trip for them because the currents that circle around Antarctica were strong and dangerous at that time and they are still strong and dangerous today. But they crossed the Antarctic Ocean and they landed in the land that we call the Peninsula, even though it is an island, because at that time it was connected to the mainland of Antarctica.

The founders came, and they came to Antarctica to settle. They were wise and learned, they brought tools and machines that today we don't know anymore how to make, but so many years have passed and perhaps we don't need to make those tools and those machines anymore. And they brought animals with them that we don't have anymore because they died and so still today Antarctica has no other animals than the birds who flew here by themselves; and the creatures who swam here by themselves, seals and iguanas, and others. It was a difficult time for the founders because the land was bare, there were no plants and no animals, and the sea was growing in height as the ice kept melting. But the founders were resourceful and they had brought seeds with them, and they sowed grain, and they planted trees on the land left free by the ice.

In time, there was no more ice on the land of Antarctica and much of the land was submerged and under the sea. But they also say that, slowly, the land rose, little by little the waters receded. It took many centuries, millennia, and the land is still rising, but much more slowly by now, so that Antarctica is now the way we know it; without ice, and with its coasts that fall rapidly into the sea.

And while the ice was receding, the founders moved inland and they built cities. And they built the city in which we live today. We live in this city and we remember the old times, and we remember of the founders, and we remember the things that happened so long ago. And some say that, one day, the ice will return; and some say that in the mountains, something is now happening that never happened before; and it is that when summer is at its height, there still remains a little snow on top of the mountains. And some say that the snow will grow and it will become ice. And that, one day, Antarctica will be covered with ice again. But that will take a long, long time, longer that we can say, longer than we can ever imagine. If that happens, then the people of the cities of Antarctica will have to move to somewhere else, because things always change and as the founders came here, so long ago, we can go back to where they came from, if that will be necessary.

But now, children, it is time to go. It is the solstice night, and you'll come with me and we'll go outside; to see the stars. The stars that you never see during the summer, the stars that come out when we are all sleeping during the winter, the stars that we see together on the night of the solstice. And you'll see the moon shining bright, and bright stars that the ancient told us are not stars but are called planets. And you'll see how beautiful is the dark sky, how beautiful is the moon, and how beautiful are the planets! Then, children, you'll go back inside, and you'll be warm and comfortable in the city until the next cycle starts and the sun comes up again, and this is the cycle that keeps us alive, and it has been going on like that for a long, long time, and it will keep going like that for a long long time. And you'll grow in this city, children, you'll become adults, and then you'll become old, and then you'll go dreaming underground. And then you'll become grain, and then you'll become people again. And that's the great cycle that was created by the Goddess, as it has been, as it is, and as it will be for a long, long time to come. May the Goddess bless you, children! And now come with me, to see the stars!