Understanding Italy: La Bella Figura

This is a short post on a giant topic: Italy’s culture
For our spiritual-minded readers, it’s the culture & its complexity that becomes like cement to the Seed. Hardened through centuries of empty tradition and ceaseless opining, the average Italian has become a strange synthetic of secularist-religious swirl. Everything is about appearances; refined appearances. In other words, it matters more how your dress your baby, what kind of watch you wear, or how clean your house is than how much you’re cheating on your taxes, cheating on your spouse, or cursing God with the vilest of language. This syndrome of “externalism” is called, La Bella Figura (The Beautiful Figure) and Italians are both artisan and artist in its performance.

I was sent a great article the other day. Actually, it’s a book review (on the New York Times site — can’t stand the NYT just to let you know). However, if any of you are at all interested in the nation of Italy - please read this article. Here’s a great quote from the article to help you catch the idea of the beautiful figure. “Italians, in other words, would just as soon look good as be good. The country suffers from an ethics deficit…Lying outrageously…is considered normal.” Ethics are the practices of an anchored moral system. Therefore, the best ethics are biblical ethics and Italy is so void of care for the Bible that whoa-la — disappearing ethics.

Take a few minutes and read the article. I’d love to hear your thoughts or answer your questions (that’s diplomatic code for “leave a comment on this post”).

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>