READ THE FIRST PART OF THE ARTICLE HERE.
by Gerardo Giovagnoli
How much is all this changing our perception of reality?
We often see videos filmed by witnesses of violent or dramatic events who, rather than intervening, worry instead about recording the scene. It is almost as if we were inside a video game, or in a virtual reality. Unlike those, however, we remain physically limited — flesh and blood, mortal, conscious and not self-sufficient beings, for whom it is essential, not merely desirable, to have a fulfilling social life as well as physical wellbeing.
I was deeply struck by the massacre of young people in the New Year’s Eve fire in Switzerland: clearly because of the scale of the disaster and the responsibilities of the operators and the missing safety checks, but also because of the apparent failure of so many to grasp the danger, who, instead of fleeing, kept filming the scene, as described above, giving the impression that they themselves were in a haunted-house amusement park, one they would leave unscathed.
How much does the seamless passage from the real world to the virtual world, or to digital social networks, contribute to this?
How much does all this affect our relationships with others and our ability to manage what is real rather than what is virtual?
How much must the approach of family and school change in their relationship with children and, later, adolescents?
In essence, how can we avoid the drift Muratori discusses in his piece regarding new technologies?
I do not believe I have the ability to answer all of this; I will limit myself to saying that setting age limits on their use is not enough, and, as the leader of Libera’s parliamentary group says, a genuine social pact between family, school and institutions will be needed.
Such a pact should aspire to give meaning to the word freedom and to life itself, whose “seed” remains that of “virtue and knowledge,” even 700 years after Dante. It is therefore necessary to nurture curiosity, critical thinking, empathy and inquisitiveness. If the mind remains empty, the only freedom left is the freedom not to know what to do with freedom itself — meaning subjection to the control of others, or merely acting out primal impulses.
Allow me to add that this cannot happen unless we bring into focus two sets of needs that only appear to be in conflict: those of the individual and those of society. I believe the time has come to reconsider the relationship between the two, which is now too heavily skewed toward the former. It is by now clear, at least to me, that while it is true that in the last century various ideologies crushed individual freedom to the point of suffocation in favour of collective conceptions of life that diminished the importance of the individual (Soviet-style communism, fascism and various forms of nationalism), it is equally true that the opposite kind of compression — now fashionable — namely that of the self-sufficiency and universal centrality of the individual, has already shown tremendous vulnerabilities: loneliness, the impossible pretence of self-fulfilment, an inability to understand one’s own and others’ emotions — which leads to seemingly inexplicable violence — and another impossible pretence, that of self-determining one’s own identity independently of context, or as an abstract act of will detached from material reality.
If the purpose of life is happiness, it is necessary to find a synthesis between the two approaches, which I do not believe are at all contradictory, given that, as Donne says, “No man is an island.”
There are many examples of the tension that arises between individualism and collectivism, even in pop culture, capable of effectively illustrating the flaws of applying either concept in its extreme form: among these, Star Trek dwells at length on that duality, embodied respectively by the Human Captain Kirk and the Vulcan Spock: “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one” and “the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.”
“We are free, free — but free from what? Who knows what that is, who knows what that is?” sings a modern poet.
The question is crucial.
I will conclude with a further concern about freedom in the political sense.
Plato’s thought, expressed in Book VIII of the Republic, seems to be strikingly topical: it describes a cycle among different forms of public power, and after democracy it invariably brings on tyranny. This is because democracy fosters the cult of freedom: freedom that turns into excess. No one wants to respect laws or the authority of parents and teachers any longer; a state of anarchy takes hold, breeding fear and insecurity. These, in turn, provoke among the people a demand for a protector — a leader who protects them, transforming himself into a single, strong ruler. He then turns into a tyrant: once he has obtained absolute power, the leader exiles his rivals, unleashes wars and oppresses the people through fear, becoming a full-fledged dictator.
Far be it from me to suggest that history repeats itself, or that it is predestined.
And yet, and yet, it happens that many signs of this cycle are present and are leading to the same conclusion. Indeed, in many European countries forces are emerging that make no secret of wanting to wield power decisively and brutally, above all against the enemies of the people, who — invariably — turn out to be minorities, whether ethnic, aesthetic, disabled, or defined by sexual orientation, deemed responsible for individual suffering and for the country’s lack of development: immigrants are the most emblematic case, the supposed origin of all evil. The Pharmakos, or scapegoat. A ritual of catharsis that never delivers the hoped-for results. Since it does not work, rather than giving it up, new scapegoats are sought, and in the end the leader’s own supporters become targets too, because, as Hemingway says — echoing the already-cited Donne — “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Just ask the many Trump voters who thought that persecution always happened to someone else, until ICE came for them too.
I don’t think there is any need to name political leaders with similar ideas in Germany, Italy, France and Spain — allies today, who in all likelihood will become enemies tomorrow, given their self-serving goals and their aggressive, hegemonic behaviour. Elections will be held next year in the last three countries mentioned, and we know what can happen. In the first, an important test is already underway today, with the elections in Saxony.
I cannot see it any other way — and it already happened a century ago in Italy and Germany: democracy, if left untended, and freedom, if left undefined, lead respectively to the end of the former and the corruption of the latter. Will the new tools of communication and information processing — digital social networks and artificial intelligence — serve as a bulwark against this, or as the fateful last drop?
