00:00If you still believe in humans, I advise you not to read this book,
00:03because you could lose even the shred of hope you have left.
00:06Saramago's Sicità dismantles the greatest performance ever, that is, human ethics,
00:10suggesting that much of what we call civility or morality is actually a performance kept alive
00:15just from feeling observed.
00:18I would like to immediately dismantle the idea that Saramago's writing is torture, because for me it is not
00:22it was like that.
00:23His writing was one of the reasons I continued reading,
00:26because it is incredibly smooth despite being absolutely not banal,
00:31it is philosophical but never academic and above all it is allegorical,
00:35which is what I think makes it so special and powerful,
00:38because everything that happens goes beyond the plot.
00:40In fact, blindness is not simply a physical condition, but a metaphor for the human condition.
00:44When humans begin to lose their sight and must build a civilization from scratch,
00:49Saramago begins to remove one by one all the layers of civilization to see what remains of being
00:54human.
00:54I assure you, you won't like what you see.
00:56The story exposes the most animalistic side of human beings,
00:59sometimes even going as far as to enter into highly disturbing situations.
01:02And the thing that disturbed me the most was not, let's say, reading those scenes that for goodness sake
01:06they are really very strong,
01:08but it is realizing that it is difficult to exclude that human beings are capable of carrying out certain atrocious acts,
01:13if only the conditions allowed it.
01:15One of the most important things about this book is that it talks about us humans and above all about our reality.
01:20There is a character in the story, a woman, who remains sighted but very often wishes she were blind like the
01:26others.
01:27This desire is a reaction to the unbearable burden of awareness and the moral loneliness that then follows.
01:33In our reality, seeing means being aware of all the problems that surround us.
01:38This awareness can lead to compassion fatigue,
01:41where the burden of those who cannot ignore all the injustices and sufferings of the world becomes so great
01:47making you wish for apathy or ignorance.
01:49This means that when humanity had sight it didn't really use it to see the other,
01:54but only to maintain a facade of decorum.
01:56The epidemic has done nothing but remove the mask,
01:59revealing that our moral behavior was often just a consequence of the fear of being judged by others.
02:05This story therefore tells us that reason and lucidity are very expensive privileges.
02:09and that sometimes our reality is so harsh that ignorance and therefore blindness
02:14It seems like a much sweeter refuge than the pain of looking at things as they really are.
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