With one of those intelligent observations that touch the bottom of the soul, Simone Weil said that history would have been quite different if Eve, when she looked at the apple, had admired it but not plucked it from the branch to devour it.
What does it mean to be able to look and admire without reaching out to possess? It means accepting that there is a world beyond us, a world with its own existence that surpasses us, a truth that does not belong to us by right. We must fight our crazed illusion of indifference, in which everything is 'I'. Our 'I' is just a small part of reality. There is a distance between me and the other, an ethical frontier that I must respect. There is a goodness that does not depend on me or a utility which is not in my service. I can see a beautiful flower that will continue to be beautiful if I do not pluck it. I have to ask myself if in taking possession of something I am not making the world poorer. Without realising it, we live believing that everything exists at our service. Too often we are total predators, towards the real we adopt a register of rapacity. Everything only serves our own satisfaction, in an increasingly empty and obsessive consumerism that leaves us drifting in despair.
See, Il Fiore non colto
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