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Five Moral Pieces: Umberto Eco

I bought this on a bag sale (books sold by the bag) at our local library. This book contains essays on War, Religion, Press, Fascism, and Intolerance. The essays are mildly interesting to say the least. I found the essay on Religion least interesting because the discussion was purely centered on Christianity and the conflict between Christianity and Atheism. Needless to say, Umberto is fairly sympathetic to the Christian cause and presents a few interesting arguments.

I also found the essay on War to be a bit simplistic. Umberto is of the opinion that "intellectuals" should always be against war. Since this speech was given in 1991 post cold-war time, and given the end of history narrative that was in the air at that point of time, such a perspective is understandable. I am interested to know if Umberto changed his views given the developments in the past ~30 years. Having grown up in a Hindu school of thought, I think that, there are circumstances where a war can be justified. However, the definition of a just war is far from the conventional warfare that is currently practiced.

The essay on Press gives an interesting historical account of the game changing developments in the news industry and how the print media had adapted to survive. Umberto laments the deterioration of the press from a medium of news to medium of opinion and finally a puppet in the hands of politicians and attention seekers. Umberto did not predict the social media revolution (in his defense, no one did), but the principles behind the deterioration of news media are clearly laid out in this piece. If you want to understand print media, this essay is very informative.

The essay on Fascism and Intolerance are somewhat related, but are discussed differently. I have mixed feelings about the essay on Fascism because, while it talks about the underlying confusion and the heightened threat perception of common people in the early states of Fascism, it doesn't go deeper into the reason for this underlying confusion. The same reasons, i.e., confusion and fear are also provided as reasons for the growth of "intolerance" among common people. I wish Umberto dug a bit deeper and explained the conditions that preceded this supposed intolerance. His symptoms of Ur-Fascism definitely suffer from Doctors Fallacy and read like a horoscope prediction. Any person reading the essay in the context of any country can find two or more commonalities with Ur-Fascism.

Overall, this was a light read and moderately interesting. I am a bit surprised at the timelessness of some of the essays.

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