Letter grandson of Umberto Eco

«Learn by heart." So he called his New Year address to the grandson of an Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. And I call no coincidence because it has devoted most important that was and is a man - a memory.
We are in the Website letter was very impressed, so today we share them with our readers.

- My dear grandson,

I would not want to make this Christmas letter sounded too didactic, in the spirit of De Amicis, and preached to love our neighbor, country, humanity, and similar things. You would not have to listen to this (you are already an adult, and I'm too old), because the value system has changed so much that my advice may be inappropriate.

So I want to give only one piece of advice that might be useful to you in practice now, when you use your tablet. I'm not going to give advice to you not to do it out of fear of appearing foolish old man. I did and he uses it. Believe me, because I have more experience.

But I do not want it to talk to you, but the disease that has struck your previous generation, which is already studying in universities. I'm talking about memory loss.

It is true that if you want to find out who or where Charlemagne is located in Kuala Lumpur, you can push a button and instantly learn everything from the Internet. Do it when you have to, but get help, try to remember the content, not to seek a second time when this knowledge you will need in school, for example. The bad news is that the understanding of what a computer can at any time to answer your question, beats you wish to memorize information. This phenomenon can result in the following comparison: to learn that from one street to the other can be reached by bus or metro, which is very convenient when you hurry up, man decides that he no longer needed to walk. But if you stop walking, then you turn to the person who has to move around in a wheelchair. Oh, I know what you're doing sports and know how to control his body, but go back to your brain.

Memory is like the muscles of your feet. If you cease to exercise it, it will be loose and you will become the idiot. In addition, we all run the risk of old age Alzheimer's disease, and one way to avoid this trouble is to constantly exercise our memory.

That's what my recipe. Every morning, learns some short poem as we were forced to do as a child. You can arrange a competition with your friends for the best memory. If you do not like poetry, you can memorize the part of the football teams, but you must know the players not only command the Club of Rome, yet and the players other teams, as well as their previous compositions (imagine that I remember the names of the players of the Turin club, who were on board plane that crashed on the hill of Superga: Bacigalupi, Ballarin, marozi and so on). Compete to see who is better to remember the content of the books they read: Do you remember the names of your friends and servants of the Three Musketeers D'Artagnan (Grimaud, Bazin, Mousqueton and Planchet) ... And if you do not want to read "The Three Musketeers" (although you do not know what is lost), it has done a similar game with the book that you read.

It seems the game, but this is a game, but you will see how your head is filled with the characters, the stories and the most different memories. You may ask why once the computer called an electronic brain. This is because it was designed on the model of your (our) brain, but the human brain more connections than the computer. Brain - this is a computer that is always with you, its ability to expand as a result of exercise, as your desktop after prolonged use loses speed and after a few years, needs to be replaced. And your brain can last you up to 90 years and 90 years, if you exercise it, you'll remember more than remember now. It is also free.

Then there is the historical memory, which is not connected with the facts of your life or what you read. It stores the events that happened before you were born.

Today, if you go to the cinema, you have come to the beginning of the film. When the film begins, then you have all the time as a lead hand, explaining what is happening. In my time it was possible to enter the web at any time, even in the middle of the film. Many events happened before you came, and I had to conjecture what happened earlier. When the film begins, first, you could see it right to your reconstruction. If you liked the movie, it was possible to stay and watch it again. Life resembles watching a movie in my time. We are born at a time when already, hundreds of thousands of years, there has been a lot of events, and it is important to understand what happened before we were born. It is necessary to better understand why today there are so many new developments.

Today, the school (in addition to your own reading circle) would teach you to remember what happened before you were born, but she does not succeed. Various surveys show that today's youth, even the university, born in 1990, does not know, and maybe does not want to know about what happened in 1980, not to mention the fact that it was 50 years ago. Statistics show that when young people are asked who is Aldo Moro, they respond that he led the "Red Brigades", and he was killed by members of the underground leftist organizations.

The activity of "Red Brigades" is a mystery to many, and in fact they were present on the political scene only 30 years ago. I was born in 1932, 10 years after the Nazis came to power, but I knew who was prime minister during the march on Rome. Maybe, in a fascist school I was told about it, to explain how stupid and bad was this minister ("cowardly Fact"), offset by the Nazis. Even so, I knew about it. But leave aside the school. Today's young people do not know actresses movie twenty years ago, and I knew who this Francesca Bertini, who starred in silent films in the 20 years before I was born. Maybe it was because I was flipping through old magazines piled in the closet of our house. I invite you to leaf through old magazines, because it helps to understand what happened before you were born.

But why is it so important to know about the events of the distant past? Because often such knowledge helps to understand the course of today's events and in any case, as the knowledge of the composition of football teams, help enrich our memory.

Bear in mind that you can train your memory, not only through books and magazines, but also through the Internet. It is suitable not only to chat with your friends, but also for the study of world history. Who are the Hittites and Camisard? What were the three ships of Columbus? When the dinosaurs became extinct? Was Noah's Ark at the helm? As an ancestor called the bull? One hundred years ago, the Tigers vodilos longer than it is now? What do you know about the Empire of Mali? Who told her? Who was the second pope in history? When was the Mickey Mouse?

I could go on asking questions endlessly, and they would be excellent subjects for study. All this should be remembered. The day will come, and you grow old, but you will feel that I have lived a thousand lives, as if you took part in the Battle of Waterloo, was present at the murder of Julius Caesar, visited the place where Berthold Schwarz, mixing in a mortar and various substances in an attempt to gold, accidentally invented gunpowder and blown up (and it serves him right!). And your other friends, are not seeking to enrich their memory will live only one's own life, monotonous and lacking big emotions.

So enrich their memory and the memory of tomorrow learn to «La Vispa Teresa».



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