Jostein Gaarder published
Sofia's World
30 years ago and what he achieved was to fascinate the entire world.
That book multiplied sales and translations into dozens of languages with a tremendously simple thread: explain life, philosophy and existence to a girl in a didactic, close and familiar way from simple questions, the ones we can all ask ourselves from the cradle.
The
best seller
is reproduced today in the form of a graphic novel and he has also just published another book,
We are the ones who are here now
(Siruela, like the previous ones), a kind of memory of his own questions and answers that he now directs to his six grandchildren to answer them in a few decades, when they reach their age.
What is proposed is so simple that, as it was thirty years ago, the dimension that its answers acquire is surprising.
When as a child he debated between observing an ant or the entire anthill (who hasn't experienced something like this?), the following question arose: are we humans like ants that seem independent in our movement, but that we are united by threads? invisible?
When he saw
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
the itch that came to him was: what if the alien is me?
When attending the magic that his grandfather practiced when he took a coin out of nowhere, there was always the concern: has he done magic?
And why only on Sundays and not every day?
When he saw the image of the Earth that the astronauts were able to take from the Moon, he began the echo of what today is his reflection: wasn't the icon of the environmental movement born there? The concern for the planet?
Because if there is something that marks the new book, it is sustainability.
Environment.
Exactly what he lacked in
El mundo de Sofía.
― 30 years later, do you think there are new philosophical questions that you would have introduced in your book today?
- Yes absolutely.
Today she would have written it completely differently.
The first thing is that I was very sad to discover that I had not put anything on the climate and the environment.
And the most important philosophical question today is how we can save life on Earth.
And that wasn't even mentioned in my book!
Sofia today would be an environmental activist.
Gaarder is an admirer of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who put environmental discourse on the agenda with her simple and resounding militancy.
"A person like her has had a real impact on the world, she has addressed the States, the UN, she is awakening many people to the understanding of the serious climate situation."
Jostein Gaarder, born 70 years ago in Oslo, never imagined the success that a book he wrote as a philosophy teacher with his students in mind and attributes to the human need to understand would achieve.
“Philosophy interests a lot of people, but not in an academic way.
And those people suddenly saw the possibility of reading it within the framework of a different narrative, ”he says by videoconference from Oslo.
“I believe that the human brain is made for stories, rather than for digital information.
If you tell me things about Madrid, I will listen to you, but I will forget about the information.
But if you tell me a story, I'll remember it for the rest of my life.
I believe in stories."
Norwegian philosopher and novelist Jostein Gaarder.MOEH ATITAR
Ask.
His book has more questions than answers.
Which ones do we learn more about?
Response.
You can often learn more from the questions than from the answers, because the questions take you forward to the extent that you are seeking the answer for yourself.
I ask my grandchildren what the world will be like at the end of the 21st century, something I don't know, and neither do they.
They will only know in the future.
But while we ask ourselves, we are somehow shaping it.
P.
Do you think that society asks itself enough questions or does it have too many certainties?
R.
Humans are too safe.
We should be a little more humble and ask questions before answering them.
I think of the climate, the loss of habitats, the war in the Ukraine… we don't know as much about our future as we didn't know about the war in the Ukraine two years ago.
But by asking the questions, we come closer to understanding.
History is full of examples of how certainties fail and how behind political changes and science there are questions.
Einstein asked himself many questions until he found the answers, so definitely, yes, the most important thing is the questions.
Q.
If some beings finally responded to the signals sent by radio to space.
What would you ask them?
R.
I would ask you the same thing that I ask myself: What is the universe?
Do you know more than us?
What was the Big Bang?
Maybe we can also tell them what we know.
I would love to make contact with another civilization in space because we are alone, this is too precious and we are too vulnerable on this tiny planet and a civilization that could disappear.
It would be great to have a help in the universe.
I would also ask them, says Gaarder, "what their families are like and how many sexes they have."
“Here on Earth we only need two to reproduce.
Maybe in other places in the universe they need three or four sexes to have offspring.
And maybe that would be better."
What is clear to him is that, wherever they come from, the principles of evolution will be valid throughout the universe.
"And that having eyes to see and ears to hear would be an advantage on any planet."
Q.
Imagine that your grandchildren can respond to you in 50 or 70 years and contact you in some way.
What would you be surprised to know?
A.
I would be surprised if they said, "Oh, Grandpa was too pessimistic."
Because I think Earth's problems are too serious.
But I think they're more likely to write to me saying, "Thank you for alerting us to action."
You never know, maybe they will say that nature is intact, that there are lions left in Africa and that the grandfather was an exaggeration.
Would be great.
An image from the film 'El mundo de Sofía' (1999), by Erik Gustavson.
Gaarder places the image of the Earth from the Moon as the most iconic moment of environmental awareness.
“For Apollo I, the image of our planet from space was more important than what they discovered on the Moon.
And when the astronauts were asked what impressed them most, they didn't say craters, for example, but seeing their own home."
Voyager I's image of Earth, a little pale blue spot, was an awakening."
"It's our house!
And here we are, destroying it as we are seeing in the Ukraine.
If Putin went to the moon and saw the planet from there, he might think twice before continuing to destroy Ukraine."
Pessimism is prohibited because it is considered a form of laziness.
And optimism can be ridiculous.
Between the two paths appears “hope, which is a form of struggle.
Imagine that you are in love.
Hope is a category you depend on when you're fighting for something.
The same with war and peace.”
Q.
Sofia would have social networks today.
How have networks changed us?
R.
They have changed us, although I do not know if in a positive or negative way.
It depresses me to go on the tram in Oslo and see that people are only looking at their profiles on the networks.
They have definitely narrowed our mind, but they have also opened it up.
Maybe there is less loneliness, people can come into contact with others.
It is like an alcoholic who finds that he used to drink from the bottle and now the bottle drinks from him.
It is what you can say about television and networks.
They can open your mind, but they also drink from you.
Gaarder began the interview by mentioning two shortcomings in
El mundo de Sofía
30 years ago.
The first was environmental.
And what is the second one?
“Having limited myself to Western philosophy.
Today I would have incorporated traditions from China, India, Japan.”
The pending subject will remain for the next generation.