a Protestant man

I like this comment by Mário about myself which he wrote in a box below:

"Há muita gente que [como você] fala também para audiências de 5%, nisso não há qualquer mérito ou demérito. O que é relevante em si são os outros 95% que não o suportam. É esta a evidência de que se está a aproximar de algo essencial" (bold mine).

I would like to concentrate on the part in bold. Obviously, I am quite aware that most people in the Portuguese blogosphere do not like me. It is not a new phenomenon, though. I have gone through many similar experiences since 1986 when I returned to Portugal after living for eight years in Canada, from age 24 through 32, where I did my graduate studies in Economics and became a Professor at The University of Ottawa. I still consider this the most decisive period of my life. It left marks on me that remained for good. Never I experienced in Canada that love-hate relationship from people that later I would have to get used to in my own country.

For example, if you go back to my posts of the last three weeks you will notice a commentator by the name of Rui Silva. Once my posts hit the blogosphere, shortly after he is there writing a comment, usually an insulting and depreciating one. I know by experience that I tend to attract these kind of people and to exert over them some kind of hypnosis. They hate me and yet they cannot live without me. Another case - I would say, a much more serious case -, is a commentator by the nick of Modernista.

How to explain all this?

The answer is that, by education, I am some sort of a Protestant man in an utterly Catholic country. The distinguishing intellectual feature of the Protestant man is his ability to undermine orthodoxy. Now, the distinguishing feature of Catholic culture is orthodoxy itself which, under democracy, tends to degenerate into multiple, adversarial, equally radical orthodoxies. I am an expert at shaking them. My orthodoxy is search for truth which is ultimately a lonely affair; theirs is some political or ideological orthodoxy. I am a free man, they are slaves of their own orthodoxies and group loyalties. They resent me for that.