It seemed to me a corny and meaningless book that exploits self-centeredness, manipulating emotions and feelings such as melancholy and loneliness, playing with ambiguity to provoke reactions in the readers, which were disturbing to me when I saw them.
I remember it as an enhancer of insanity, self-centeredness, and lack of empathy. It’s a story that seems profound because it doesn’t make any sense, but is able to randomly activate brains, which I found terrifying. When I listened to the excited people interpreting it, I felt as if I was listening to religious fanatics speaking of the instructions that a god had given them in dreams.
Somehow it has the genius to connect with the existential emptiness and the terrible loneliness of being one separated from everything else. Yes, in that sense it is great. But instead of channeling this feeling into a positive and loving act, or at least helping to understand it, what it does is appease it like a damn artificial sweetener. It is not nutritious, it is a trick for the tongue that takes away hunger but does not feed. Intellectual and emotional junk food that entertains the spirit, throwing it off.
Is a frivolous book. It does not offer solutions or illuminate reality. It only connects with sadness and anguish, capturing attention without knowing what to do next, like a conjurer, like a false guru, like a Pied Piper of Hamelin leading the rats to the abyss.
It’s like a video game or a movie that entertains but leaves you empty afterwards, as if that time had not existed, as if it had been stolen. Leaving you with that feeling of having wasted the afternoon, of having wasted the weekend, of having wasted life. Yes, it took away your sadness for a while, but it made you addicted, leaving you with even deeper sadness, wanting the damn drug again, making you damned addicted to it.
It should be no more than a silly fairy tale with corny drawings, but it’s terrifying to see how people react to it. Terrifying all the suffering that reveals, suffering that is the fruit of the veil of the “I”. And terrifying that it is not able to remove the blindfold, not even to open a slit, but rather reinforces it and spins it more so that it never falls off.
Manu Herrán. June 7, 2018.
***
Despite my harsh criticism of the work, I recognize its genius, and I have nothing against the author, nor any negative intuition towards him. What happens to me is that I think it is a toxic work, which promotes self-centeredness and lack of empathy for others, creating and fostering illusions to sustain this self-centeredness and lack of empathy.
Human beings, and animals in general, are disgusting and immoral. I know wonderful people who enjoy bullfights, in which a being whose physical experiences are similar to ours are literally tortured to death. There are illusions and mental constructions that support this nonsense. And I think this book is capable of creating those kinds of toxic illusions where lack of empathy is encouraged. My feeling is that whoever reads the book finds in it justifications for being cruel and indifferent, justifications for being a selfish child all his life.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry seems to have been able to dive deep into human psychology, and of course what he has found is fear and vanity; selfishness and cruelty. For example, the book starts quite naturally describing animals eating each other. It is disgusting how the book successfully fosters this indifference.
Perhaps the most powerful force against empathy in general (and against Effective Altruism and the idea that suffering matters for itself, regardless of who the individual experiencing it is) is the exclusive love to a particular person or group, for instance terribly confusing sexual or affective exclusivity with other things. The cruelest acts can be carried out with the excuse of love for the couple (the murder of a sexual rival), or for the children (the murder of a emotional rival), or for the family (cheating and lying at work, to bring bread home, taking it away from another), or the community (the war against another country), or humanity (indifference to animal suffering). Fostering this is disgusting.
There is something that we call “Love” and that certain illusions can make us believe that it is love, that it is nothing but fear, vanity and selfishness. And that may be the excuse to ignore tons of suffering in others.
Other critics to “The litte prince”
- “I just…don’t like it. It scares me. This could come off as sheer contrarian perversity, but I can assure you it dates back to babyhood, when I cried, screamed and threw the book across the room when it was proferred as a bedtime story because I didn’t like the Prince’s hollow eyes.
…
When you think about it, The Little Prince tugs at some of childhood’s deepest fears: abandonment, loneliness, an arbitrary universe ruled by adult whims and mysterious convention. Snowsuits. What can be intended as redemptive can read instead as punishment and cruelty. And as a fable, the moral, to a child, can seem obscure at best.” Source - “Countless children have been forced to suffer though the brutally false profundity of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 book, and in the dark, inescapable future, countless more will silently beg for the sweet release of death while being subjected to its cruel smugness and hollow tweeness. Then these children too will grow old, and forget how truly horrific The Little Prince is, and inflict Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s never-ending ouroboros of pain upon the next generation. This endless, heinous crime is particularly prevalent in France, because of course it is.” Source
- He de decir que no soy objetivo en todo esto. El dichoso Principito que a muchos nos obligaron a leer en el colegio como si de una especie de santo grial de la literatura infanto-juvenil se tratara, me ha provocado siempre una profunda repugnancia. Es un libro cursi, de un moralismo tontorrón y pseudo-intelectual escrito por este tal Saint-Exupery que, huérfano de padre desde la infancia y procedente de una familia de boato venida a menos, después de hacerse piloto y andar en un montón de correrías aéreas, se casó con una millonaria salvadoreña que prácticamente le puso al mando de una empresa aeronáutica argentina a la que llevó a la ruina. Una pena, la verdad, porque entonces, como si hubiera visto la luz tras caerse del caballo, le dio por escribir a troche y moche a fin de ilustrarnos con pretendidos “paraísos interiores” y con los inefables resultados que todos conocemos. En realidad, y como se clarifica a la perfección en cada una de las relamidas páginas de su célebre opúsculo, de pretensión claramente auto-terapéutica, Saint-Exupery fue el perfecto prototipo del síndrome de Peter Pan: un tipo inmaduro que se pasó media vida en su Nunca Jamás particular, empantanado en el marasmo de su propia infantilidad, molesto porque la vida nunca le fue cómo a él le hubiera gustado, ahogado en sus muchos complejos, y absorto en sueños de una gloria heroica –hizo todos los esfuerzos posibles por lograrla como piloto militar durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial- que nunca obtuvo. No. No crean que es casual que al principito de marras se le pinte siempre con charreteras y espada. Y es que El Principito no es otra cosa que la obra de un niño sin padre que busca a todo trance una figura sustitutiva y, en el camino, torturado por una existencia demasiado real que no le permite huir a sus magníficas ensoñaciones, nos va colando con calzador un montón de idearios y moralinas tan viejos y manidos como nuestra propia cultura. No obstante, y al mismo tiempo, el escritor no reconoce la creación en sus creadores, y se la apropia sin complejos. En efecto. No lo soporté en mi adolescencia, y con menor razón lo soporto ahora. Entre otras cosas a causa de la historia que voy a relatar en este post. Tomen buena nota de todo cuanto he dicho. Fuente
- The Little Prince Is Absolutely Terrifying. Because we are friends on Facebook, I can tell you with authority that today is Antoine de Saint‐Exupéry‘s birthday. And at the risk of his unfriending me, I can also admit to how much I’ve always feared Le Petit Prince. As we know, Le Petit Prince is beloved: translated into more than 180 languages, the novella is one of the bestselling books of all time, prized both by those who’ve studied the author’s philosophy and others who just carry the lunchbox. The mysterious circumstances of the author’s death have only burnished the book’s legend. Scholars have compared the author’s philosophy to that of Plato and Aristotle, Heidegger’s phenomenology, Candide and Gulliver’s Travels, to say nothing of the Christian symbolism. It’s also something that, like, say, Harold and Maude, is really hard to admit you don’t like, because people can just look at you knowingly and say you can’t see its magic, and thereby represent the narrow-minded ignorance that the book is fighting. I know this because before I learned to keep my mouth shut, this is the sort of emotional argument in which I found myself embroiled several times in the hall of my college dorm. And it’s not like I have a strong argument against it; I just…don’t like it. It scares me. This could come off as sheer contrarian perversity, but I can assure you it dates back to babyhood, when I cried, screamed and threw the book across the room when it was proferred as a bedtime story because I didn’t like the Prince’s hollow eyes. (This would be the French version, although I disliked the translation even more.) It’s an arbitrary dislike, but visceral. His jumpsuit reminded me of my least-favorite snowsuit. The cartoon show creeped me. For several months, it was the subject of my nightmares. The Prince’s life on B612 was scary and lonely and sad; he had no parents; the boy-flower love story made me uncomfortable; and his Christ-like resurrection terrified and baffled me, just as did Aslan’s a few years later. Of course, it’s not a children’s book. But then, even during the tedious period where I self-described as a “humanist,” I read it in French class and disliked it just as much. And later, as an adult, the aversion was constant, even as I learned to love the author’s luminous other work, like Wind, Sand and Stars or Night Flight. When you think about it, The Little Prince tugs at some of childhood’s deepest fears: abandonment, loneliness, an arbitrary universe ruled by adult whims and mysterious convention. Snowsuits. What can be intended as redemptive can read instead as punishment and cruelty. And as a fable, the moral, to a child, can seem obscure at best. A well-intentioned friend (who had a shirt that read, “It is only with one’s heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye”) sent me a book a few years ago. It’s called A Guide for Grown-ups: Essential Wisdom from the Collected Works of Antoine de Saint-Exupery. “To get in touch with that inner child,” he wrote – half-jokingly. Inner child? I’m infantile – what did I have to do, drink from a bottle? Besides, my inner child had thrown the wisdom of Saint-Ex across the room. I did not read it. Recently, I ran across this book, and did read it. Then I had a nightmare from which I apparently woke up screaming about baobobs. It doesn’t get much more childish than that. Which is, presumably, a testament to the author’s skill. Fuente
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