14 38. While ancient cultures were very respectful of the elderly, "modern" societies try rather to put them aside47. Ancient cultures ascribe great importance to the relationships between the living and the dead, and to death itself as part of life. Modern societies try in vain to minimize or ignore death, rather pathetically. Nowadays there is stimulus simply to forget, as pertinently denounced by some lucid writers, like Jorge Luis Borges: "Ya a nadie le importan los hechos. Son meros puntos de partida para la invención y el razonamiento. En las escuelas nos enseñan la duda y el arte del olvido. Ante todo el olvido de lo personal y local. Vivimos en el tiempo, que es sucesivo, pero tratamos de vivir sub specie aeternitatis. Del pasado nos quedan algunos nombres, que el lengaje tiende a olvidar. Eludimos las inútiles precisiones. No hay cronología ni historia"48. 39. Already in the early XXth century, the philosopher Max Scheler, in his monograph Death and Survival, warned that the "fanaticism" of "progress" had led "modern man" to deny the essence of death and not to care much about survival. However, "modern man" cannot attempt entirely to ignore death, pressed as he is by his own aging and infirmities; death appears then not simply an "empirical part" of one's own experience, but rather, according to Scheler, part of the essence of the experience of living and moving towards death49. Universal history discloses the important role played by the dead and their legacy in the decisions taken by the living50. 40. There is a diffident attitude of the "post-modern", due apparently more to ignorance than anything else, about cultures of what is wrongly labelled "primitive societies", which discloses, however, a much better understanding of the relationship between human beings and the outside world and a much more respectful posture as to the relationships between the living and the dead. Those who are proud of regarding themselves as "post-modern", are, in my view, to be pitied; they are used to thinking fast, nourished by fast food, walking fast on their fast road back to primitivism, - if they are fortunate enough. VI. Mortality and Its Inescapable Relevance to the Living. 41. It goes without saying, - whether the self-sufficient "post-modern" like it or not, - that mortality is endowed with an inescapable relevance to the living. An essay originally published in 1937 sustained that the consciousness of death arises out of living with others: - "Nous . Cf. [Various authors,] Dialogue among Civilizations - The Round Table on the Eve of the United Nations Millennium Summit, Paris, UNESCO, 2001, p. 84 (intervention by E. Morin). 47 . J.L. Borges, El Libro de Arena, Madrid, Alianza Edit., 1999 [reprint], p. 99; and cf. also J.L. Borges, Historia de la Eternidad, Madrid, Alianza Edit., 2002 [reprint], pp. 40-44. 48 . M. Scheler, Muerte y Supervivencia, Madrid, Ed. Encuentro, 2001, pp. 11, 16-17, 27 and 47. 49 . Ibid., p. 15. 50