...tells his novel Blindness of how blindness induces further and greater blindness: an unknown virus spreads in the city, the affected suddenly suffer blindness, "seeing" only thick whiteness. People in contact with the affected quickly contract the virus, and doctor, thief, policeman, family ... one after another get sent into the isolation camp. There, the "equality" and "empathy" brought by the onslaught of the disease can only be transient. Robberies, bullies, lies and cruelties rule and oppress this space with greater force. After a while, no one watches over or cares for the camp anymore, because everyone in the city has gone blind. Knowing that no one is watching, almost everyone loses discipline; robberies, bullies, lies and cruelties intolerable to the eye before now rule the hearts. Only, one single person does not go blind--the good wife of the doctor--and she sees how the violence of blind obsessions breeds more blind obsessions and violence, accumulating into a torrent flushing all sentiments of kindness, forgiveness and generosity down the drain.

Violence is a messenger from the kingdom of death. Driven by an obsession dominated by unknown fear and fathomless greed, violence gnaws at the freedom of the heart, at the wisdom and courage that make possible kindness, forgiving and giving. In a world dominated by violence, "peace" becomes an axis for the system constructed by violence, enabling the game of destruction to be played until its underlying logic of ultimate self-destruction is caught in the showdown of self-confrontation. To break the curse of violence, "peace" must be freed from the violence-constructed system so that the perspectives and experiences repressed can come into play and bring hope to humanity.

The twentieth century ended in violence and blindness.

The First World War used air-bombers invented only a decade before. The mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War proclaimed the victory of military science and technology. Wolfgang Sachs, ecologist, talks about the United Nations Charter adopted on 4 May 1945: "The project to banish violence and war from the face of the earth was clearly linked to the vision of mankind marching forward and upward along the road of progress ... The utopian intention aimed at a world of individuals who follow only the voice of reason ... The utopia of mankind ... was united ... under the rule of science, market and...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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