few months ago I would pick me up with relish in one of those chains post, probably because the roll Cultureta so hackneyed lately, of being a meme about books. Unforgivable, no doubt. The point is that in those lines I pointed out the need for a print book: From Columbus to Bolivar of Salvador de Madariaga . Result of several accidents, the volume fell into my hands, in an edition of 1955-written in 1941 - the Ballantine Books. It has been four years since a friend who does not know if I continue to read these thoughts of mine recommended it to me. Tanta
wait is worth it. Although it is only by this phrase: "Spain is the only state in the world then as now and as always enabled and allows the luxury of idle their best men." Madariaga Refers to the pathetic existence lived Hernán Cortés once returned to his beloved New Spain (Mexico), a member of the court of Charles V and while seated, without more activity than he sought to and without the monarch get him for nothing.
History, that "human tragedy" in the words of the Madariaga, has not done justice to the great conqueror. Few of my countrymen know that Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire, which had at that time more than one million inhabitants, with about six hundred men. Itself a monumental feat of a great man, whose talent was frustrated by his contemporaries.
Madariaga, perhaps feeling that his own talents as a English reference to his time was being wasted, goes beyond Cortes and notes that our condition consisting ostracize our finest countrymen, as in effect at mid-twentieth century. Already popular proverb says the wise: "Nobody is prophet in his own country . Ortega y Gasset , contemporary de Madariaga, says this same signal as envy . Ortega comes to say that the English are unable to listen to wise people and what we do, as we have time, is raising his voice above them.
In any case, this feature homeland we discover two great intellectuals of the last century, seems not to have lapsed in our polluted society. Perhaps more than ever. Look around and see how the public is full of mediocre beings, while our "best men" to pass among us unnoticed, when they have had to emigrate to be recognized, as did the cancer researcher Mariano Barbacid .
Hence, the role models for our society than people who have succeeded with their effort and talent to reach the top of their professions. Probably because they are not the best those who reach the highest peaks. Rather than referring to us as are those who have managed to make better use of springs in this society to pack courtrooms official mitineros pulpits and television studios. No doubt this new paradigm that has been know as a democracy.
This breeding ground for mediocrity, we waste, as we did already in the sixteenth century, our most valuable fellow. Whereas what is being lost not talent is simply not a few brilliant men and women, but our ability to succeed and stand out as a nation. Let enlarging the mediocre and none that stand out for their ability and effort. We will be planting our own failure as a society and people.
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