Alberto Manguel: “We are all responsible for violence … – 7dias.com.do

MADRID (Spain) .- The Argentine writer Alberto Manguel just do not understand why the West is horrified at State Islamic violence committed by groups “have been shelved” who lack financial resources and “whose religion is not taken into account.”

“We are all responsible for the violence of the Islamic State and is in other parts of the world,” says Manguel (Buenos Aires, 1948), which attempts to answer endless questions about human behavior in his new book, “A Natural History of curiosity,” just published by Publishing Alliance.

Manguel, large expert in the history of reading and books, go again to the classics, and especially Dante and his “Divine Comedy” to reflect on his new book how curiosity has been the engine of evolution.

The Inferno of Dante’s masterpiece gives foot the author to discuss latest “other hells” as the violence of the Islamic State, which, in his opinion, “not exceptional”.

Nevertheless, “we must be confident that humanity can survive,” he stresses.

Just, for example, look History of Spain to see that “similar horrors committed in the conquest of America, the Inquisition or the Franco regime.”

“What is the difference between extremists who behead their captives or destroy works of art two thousand years old and the iconoclasts of Byzantium or the violence of the French Revolution? “the writer asked.

Capitalism adds Manguel, imposes standards of consumption that” requires that there wars, ignorance, disease, because all this feeds the industry, “so” is not surprising that, at times, a group of poor people without adequate education, decides to end it all. “

“They destroy society who consider their enemy,” says this writer who has Canadian citizenship and, for some years, living in the south of France, although, as he says, is likely to shortly go live the United States.

What she is “surprising” is that in our society, “no more such violence. Why those people who are homeless and jobless are not thrown into the street and not kill us all? What’s in it? “The writer asks, who, of course, makes it clear that you do not want that kind of situation.

For this essayist, novelist, translator, writer and editor, the recent crisis has demonstrated that the capitalist economic model “does not work and still suffer the consequences of that collapse.” But instead of changing it, “we just patching and continue with the same system.”

“In our society have occurred worse than starring the Islamic State things. Banks and finance companies have stabbed us to death and we are now asking us to be the ones to pay that model that we know does not work, “says the author of works such as” A History of Reading “or” The library at night ” .

Curiosity begs the question “why is all this happening. No response, “says Manguel, who has” a model of society to offer. “His next book perhaps devoted to analyzing” how come along so many centuries

have built companies that do not work “.

In the “Divine Comedy,” Dante speaks from his position of exile and victim of injustice of a government that forbade go home. “It’s just like being told Syrian refugee or elsewhere. They are Dante, though not write the ‘Divine Comedy’, “says Manguel.

At the risk of appearing” dated “, the Argentine writer believes that part of the solution to current problems is to improve education, but it will be difficult to change society as “educational systems continue to give priority to efficiency and economic gains against the promotion of thought and imagination.”

Nevertheless, “there to be confident that humanity can survive. “stresses

” The proof is in the literature: if we were able to produce a book like the ‘Divine Comedy’, we should be able to imagine a world best we sacrifice to survive without each other, “he adds.

Throughout his life, Manguel has built up a library of nearly 50,000 volumes, which comes every time you have “doubt, a fear, a concern”.

In your library has found answers and comfort. So she tells her new work, when Manguel die, I wish someone would tell her books that no longer see again.