A cura di @GiMa

Partendo da una delle piu classiche raccomandazioni che ogni genitore fà ai propri figli, il sito theoutline.com ripercorre i tentativi da parte di antiche culture, scrittori di gialli e finanche scienziati come Newton di comprendere  un gesto tanto affascinante quanto dannoso: guardare direttamente il sole.

Lovecraftian monsters really do exist. There are vast burning demons, things from far beyond our tiny world, things that you can’t even look at without going incurably mad. A being that is absolutely here but whose immenseness extends out into the cosmic distance of a fevered incomprehension. The ancients knew about it, all the way back to the grubby screaming infancy of the species. They killed in its name. Many of them even worshipped it. And then they all died, one after another, flashing into life and withering away again for tens of thousands of years — but it lived on. There are billions of these things. There’s one right there, up in the sky; it passes over our heads every day. The only way to stay sane under its light is to not look at it, to almost pretend that it doesn’t exist. All the old rites and superstitions that once warded off mystical evils have been condensed into one single command, so vast and monolithic we’ve forgotten that it’s even possible to disobey: Don’t look directly at the sun.

 

Immagine da Wikimedia Commons