Oreste the Trendy Prophet and the Extended Mind

I remember Oreste from the '90s when, together with Teo Trandafir and Mircea Badea, he did the morning show on Antena 1. He resonated very well with the humour of the protagonists, had brilliant retorts, knew how to undertake a “scapegoat” role but, at the same time, had build a very thorough “character”, with a clear purpose in the dynamic of the show. He was practising a sort of teenage gambolling which we, college students in a small Bucovina town, who gathered first thing in the morning for a cup of coffee close to school, identified with at the time. In between brackets, Oreste was also to blame for the inevitable skipping the first class, as well as a certain type of fine humour that we were get used to in those years of our education. For a while, I haven't heard of him, until one spring (2006 or 2007) I met him in Cluj, where he was joining his mother at the “Lucian Blaga” National Festival. Something had happened to Oreste, he seemed more introvert, and nothing seemed to be left of his past exuberance.

Still, not little was my surprise when Oreste went back to television, to make a strange show which had nothing to do with his old ways which, I felt, suited him perfectly. “Oreste's Code” rose in the beginning a wave of amazement. Where did hid guy get the metaphysics?, some wondered along with the former friend of the “coded”, Mircea Badea. How was it possible to reconvert healthy laughter into the seriousness of philosophical interrogations? And, especially, what happened to the ironical style, the inclination for satire and parody now replaced with quotes from the Old and New Testament, or rich evocations of the theoretical apparatus of great world religions?

I have to admit, after a faculty and a master degree in Philosophy, I kind of had enough of hearing the same arguments, of seeing again and again the same metaphysical scenarios and stepping on the same paths of thinking that, sooner or later, lamentably fail. For this reason, I avoided as much as I could Oreste's show, for I didn't see in it more than a formula to popularize some more or less esoteric ideas. This Sunday, however, I told myself that I should be patient and see what the title “The Extended Mind” wants to say. And here's what I saw!

In a setting chromatically dominated by blurry violet, confident like an “up-to-date” archangel, Oreste spoke of the end of this world. Let's admit it, it is quite discomforting to learn on a Sunday afternoon that this world is going down the drain. Every now and then, Oreste displayed a sinister grim, just like those people who know something and warn, turning into messengers of a higher instances, veiled, of course, in mystery. On his right hand he wore three huge rings and two bracelets, and on the left, other two rings. There were no amulets on sight, but the character seemed to be loaded with inner amulets. He looked, in his elegant jacket and with his black framed eye glasses, like a post-modern shaman whose vision thundered through the TV screen.

After predicting the end of this world, Oreste presented his guest: Horia Ţurcanu, editor and journalist with “Formula As”, of whom, later in the show, we learn that had a heart attack, survived and became somebody else. At the host's question - “Have you been ever since populated by an entity?” - Ţurcanu was embarrassed to answer with yes, so they only had to reaffirm the new vision on the world. They both talked then in a low, secretive voice about the “new planetary order: and then returned to the theme of the mind, where Oreste found appropriate to provide a revealing comparison: “as for our mind, we act la eunuchs and not like performing lovers.” That is to say, if I got it right, we want a lot, but we manage very little. In the same note, talking about God's omniscience, Oreste claimed that “God knows how many strands of hair are on our head”, whereas we cannot know something like that, after which he claimed, with more arguments this time that “the Commission for the Audio-Visual doesn't understand what they're watching.”

As the show continued, the atmosphere was more and more airy. The two or chaotically navigating through philosophy, religion, physics, metaphysics, psychology. From the “heaven hierarchy” to string theory, to “divine plan” and “Titu Maiorescu's mistaken theory”, of course that of the forms of no substance, and the “new paradigm” and the new mantras and breathing techniques, and the “offices isolating us from nature” to the alarming statement that “our era is like the end of the Atlantis”.

I couldn't make it to the end, I have to admit. My mind refused to extend so much as to comprehend the final truths spoken by Oreste and his guests, on a Sunday afternoon on B1Tv. “Oreste's Code” is beyond me and throws me into terrifying dilemmas such as the medieval ones related to the genre of the angels or what the omnipotent divinity is able of. Therefore... I will be purportedly ignorant!