THE TIME OF "MISS HAPPY" 
Summary: The new social phenomenon is analyzed here is this: European history seems, for the first time given to the decision of the common man as such. Or the active voice: the ordinary man, before directed, has decided to rule the world. Forward this resolution to the forefront of society has been produced there, automatically, just came to mature the new type of man he represents. If looking at the effects of public life studying the psychological structure of this new type of mass-man, is found as follows: l. No, a native print radical that life is easy, without limitation tragic, therefore, every average guy in it a sense of mastery and triumph, 2. º, invites you to assert himself as he is, take it for good and having completed his moral and intellectual. This contentment it takes to close for any external body, not to listen, not to question their views and others have not. Your domain intimate feeling constantly urging him to exert dominance. Therefore act as though only he and his ilk exist in the world, therefore, 3. º, will speak at all to impose their views without regard vulgar, contemplations, procedures or reservations, ie, as a system of "direct action."
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This made us think in some ways be poor men, as the "darling" and the original rebel, that is, the barbarian. (The normal primitive, however, is the man more amenable to a higher level that has ever existed: religion, taboos, social tradition, custom.) It is not surprising that I need to build on this figure insults human. This essay is only a first attempt to attack the man triumphant, and the announcement that a few Europeans are going to stir vigorously against his claim of tyranny. For now This is a test only attack: the attack to come back later, perhaps very soon, much different from this trial takes. The attack has to come back so that the mass man can not guard against it, see it before it and does not suspect that, precisely that, attack is the background.
This character, who now walks everywhere and anywhere imposes its intimate barbarism is in fact the spoiled child of human history. The golden boy is the heir who behaves exclusively as heir. Now the estate is civilization - the comfort, safety in short, the advantages of civilization. As we have seen, only in the slack vital that it has made the world a man can come up for that repertoire of features inspired by this character. Is one of many strains as the luxury place in the human subject. Illusion would tend to believe that a life born in a world overrun would be better, longer life and superior quality that is precisely to combat the shortage. But there is none. For reasons archifundamentales very stringent and is not now time to state. Now, instead of those reasons, just remember the fact that is always repeated the tragedy of all hereditary aristocracy. The aristocrat inherits, that is, is attributed to the person living conditions he has created, therefore, not produced organically linked to their personal lives and their own. It is, at birth, installed, suddenly and without knowing how, through their wealth and their privileges. He is not intimately, nothing to do with them, because they come from him. They are the giant shell of another person, another living being his ancestor. And you should live as heir, that is, you have to use the shell of another life. Which is it? What life is to live the "aristocrat" of inheritance: his, or the initial hero? Neither one nor the other. He was sentenced to represent the other, therefore, to be neither the other nor himself. Lost their lives, inexorably, authenticity, and becomes in pure representation of another life or fiction. The surplus means is required to manage not let him live his own personal fate, wasting his life. All life is struggle, the effort to be itself. The difficulties encountered to make my life are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my abilities. If my body is not weighed me, I could not walk. If the atmosphere does not oppress me, feel my body as something vague, flabby, fantasy. Thus, the "aristocrat" heir whole person envagueciendo will, for lack of use and vital effort. The result is that specific silliness of the old nobility, that does not look like anything and, strictly speaking, no one has yet described and tragic in its internal mechanism, the internal mechanism that leads to tragedy all hereditary aristocracy irremediable degeneration. Go
this just to offset our naive tendency to believe that the media favors spare life. Quite the contrary. A world of possibilities left automatically produce serious distortions and vicious types of human existence - which can meet the general class "male heir" of the "aristocrat" is but a particular case, and a spoiled child, and another much more extensive and radical, mass-man of our time -. (On the other hand, would benefit more detail the previous reference to "aristocrat" showing how many of the features of this, all peoples and times, are given in a germ in the mass-man. For example: the propensity to make employment central to life and sports games, the cultivation of your body - toilet system and attention to the beauty of the suit - a lack of romance in their relationship with women, fun with the intellectual, but at bottom, not be allowed and the lackeys or send thugs to scourge, prefer to live under the absolute authority to a system of discussion, etc., etc.)
insist, then, with sincere regret, to make do this man full of trends uncivil, that this newest Barbarian is an automatic product of modern civilization, notably from the way that civilization adopted in the nineteenth century. Has not come from outside the civilized world as the "great white barbarians" V century, was not born into it not by spontaneous generation and mysterious as, according to Aristotle, the tadpoles in the pool, but is its natural fruit. This law can be made that paleontology and biogeography confirmed: human life has emerged and progressed only when they had the means were balanced by the problems he felt. This is true, both in the spiritual than the physical. Thus, to refer to a dimension very specific bodily life, remember that the human species has broken out in parts of the world where the hot season was offset by a season of intense cold. In the tropics the male animal degenerates, and vice versa, the inferior races - for example, pygmies - have been pushed to the tropics for races after they are born and above in the scale of evolution.
Well nineteenth century civilization is such as to allow the middle man to settle in a world over which perceives only the glut of media, but not anguish. It is surrounded by prodigious instruments, medicines charitable, provident States, Comfortable rights. It ignores, however, how difficult it is to invent these medicines and instruments and to ensure future production, does not see how unstable is the state organization, and only if he finds in his duties. This imbalance will fake, empty it at the root of living, making him lose contact with the substance of life, which is quite dangerous, radical problematic. The most contradictory to human life that may appear in human life is the "gentleman satisfied." So when is the dominant figure, it is necessary to sound the alarm and announce that the life is in danger of degeneration, ie, death of relative. Accordingly, level is vital that Europe today is above all the human past, but if you look at the future, fears that or keep your height, or produce another higher level, but on the contrary, and falls back on lower altitudes.
This, I think, points out clearly enough the superlative abnormality that represents the "gentleman satisfied." Because he is a man who has come to life to do what he wants. In fact, this illusion is "the son of family." We know why: in the family, everything, even the greatest crimes, may be ultimately unpunished. The family environment is somewhat artificial and tolerates within it many acts in society, in the air of the street automatically would bring disastrous consequences for its author and unavoidable. But the "gentleman" is one who believes to behave outside the home and at home, which believes that nothing is fatal, inevitable and irrevocable. So think you can do whatever he wants. Big mistake! Vossa market will go to onde or Levemir, as they say the parrot in the story of Portuguese. Not that you should not do whatever he pleases one, is that you can do but what everyone has to do, it should be. The only thing it is to refuse to do that you need to do, but that does not leave us in franchise to do anything we want. At this point we have only a negative freedom of will - the will. We may well drop out of our real destination, but it is to fall on the lower floors prisoners of our own destiny. I can not make this evident to every reader on what your destination has individualísimo such, I know not every reader, but you can let them see those portions or facets of your destination that are identical to those of others. For example, all current European knows with certainty much more vigorous than that of all his "ideas" and "opinions" expressed that the current European man has to be liberal. Let's not argue whether this or other form of freedom that has to be. I mean, the most reactionary European know, in the depths of his conscience, that has tried to Europe in the last century with the name of liberalism is, ultimately, something inevitable, inexorable, that Western man today is, like it or not.
Although it is established with full and undeniable truth, that they are false and deadly all the specific ways in which it has tried so far make this imperative unforgivable to be politically free, registered in the European destination, still standing just the latest evidence in the last century was substantially right. This evidence latter acts the same in the European communist fascist by many gestures to do to convince or be convinced otherwise and acts - like it or not, believe it or not - in the Catholic, which provides more loyal adherence to the Syllabus. Everyone "knows" that beyond the fair criticisms that are fighting the manifestations of liberalism, is the irrevocable truth of it, a truth that is not theoretical, scientific, intellectual, but an order radically different and more decisive than all that - namely, a true destination. Theoretical truths are not only questionable, but its full meaning and force are to be discussed, born of the discussion, live as discussed and made exclusively for the discussion. But fate - which is to be vitally or may not have to be - is not discussed, but accept it or not. If we accept, we are authentic, if not accept, we are denying, falsifying ourselves. The destination is not what we wanted to do, but rather is recognized and shows its clear, rigorous profile in the consciousness of having to do what we do not want.
Well, the "gentleman satisfied" is about "knowing" that certain things can not be and yet, and therefore, pretend with their actions and words the opposite conclusion. Mobilized against the fascist political freedom, precisely because he knows it will never be lacking in the end and seriously but it's there, inevitably, in the very substance of European life, and therein lie the truth if needed, at the time of seriousness. Because this is the keynote of existence in the mass-man, the insincerity, the "joke." What do they do it without irrevocable, as does his antics the "son of the family." All this rush to adopt attitudes at all levels apparently tragic past, blunt, it is only appearance. Play to the tragedy because they believe that the tragedy is not likely effective in the civilized world. Well
out that we were forced to accept as genuine a person be what she intended to show as such. If someone persists in saying he believes two plus two equals five and there is no reason to assume insane, we must ensure that they do not, however much they scream and kill but to leave hold. A whirlwind of all-embracing general farce blows over the European homeland. Almost all positions are taken and are internally false boast. The only efforts made are intended to flee one's own destiny, to turn a blind eye to your evidence and your call deep, to avoid everyone the confrontation with that which has to be. We live humorously, and the more the more tragicota mask is adopted. There is humor wherever revocable living in attitudes that the person is not full and unreserved piling. The mass-man says not standing on the unshakable firmness of his fate, but rather, vegetables suspended in space fictitiously. Hence, these lives now as never before, without weight or root - déracinées of his destiny - to be carried away by the slightest current. Is the time of the "pattern" and "being dragged." Almost no one is resistant to surface eddies that form in art or ideas, or politics, or social customs. Therefore, more than ever, wins the rhetoric. The surrealist believed to have exceeded all literary history when he wrote (here a word that is not necessary to write) where others wrote "jasmine, swans and faunesas." But clear is that this has only lead to a different rhetoric so far lay in the latrines.
note clarifies the current situation, despite the singularity of its appearance, the portion that is common with others in the past. So it happens that only reaches its maximum altitude Mediterranean civilization - to the third century BC -, appears cynical. Diogenes with his sandals kick mud fed Aristippus carpets. The cynical character became a swarming, which was around every corner and at all heights. Now the cynical, did nothing to sabotage that civilization. Hellenism was nihilistic. Nor did anything ever created. His role was to undo, or rather, trying to undo, I had not achieved his goal. The cynic, a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, therefore he is convinced that will not fail. What would a savage people cynical about where all naturally and seriously, do what he, in farce, considers his personal role? What is a fascist if you do not speak ill of freedom, and if not perjured surrealist art?
could not behave otherwise this type of man born into a world very well organized, which sees only advantages and no hazards. The edge that spoils him, because it is "civilization" - That is, a house - and the "son of the family" did not feel anything that makes you leave your mettle capricious, inciting to listen to external instances superior to him, let alone that requires you to make contact with the bottom inexorable their own destiny.
"THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES"
XI) - THE TIME OF "MISS HAPPY"
JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET
Photo: Table of Botero
Ermanno Olmi 
