The fear of being guilty: how Covid and terrorism transform the consciousness of the West
Those who, after a few decades' sleep, suddenly woke up in today's Europe, would at first think they have landed in a film that stages one of those negative utopias (or “dystopias”) that were very popular in the past. Those who proudly claimed to be part of an advanced and free world and who were proud of their values and their way of life now seem almost to be crushed on one side by an epidemic that is turning that fear into a source of fear. way of life and on the other by an Islamic terrorism that is transforming those values into a motive for shame and guilt. Most of the holders of public power, of the operators of the mass and social media, of the opinion-makers, of the religious leaders seem to preach only one solution: to hide, to give up their freedom of movement and relationships with others and their freedom to work in front of to the virus because not doing so would lead to the inevitable contagion, and therefore to the danger of life, and to renounce one's freedom of thought and that of upholding the values in which one believes because not doing so would lead to the inevitable violent reaction on the part of the terrorists Islamic and therefore equally life-threatening.
Our societies seem to be dominated in an increasing and increasingly widespread way by a single feeling: fear, and by a particular type of fear, that of being guilty of one's own dangerous situation, that of being in some way the cause of one's own evil, that is, either to contribute to spreading the contagion or to instigate religious extremists to pass (overcoming an often indefinite limit) to murder and massacre in order to impose their aberrant ideas.
Moreover, our hypothetical asleep – awakened could easily compare the events and dangers that our societies are facing with the equally dramatic ones experienced in not distant times, of which today, often overwhelmed by the news served up "24 hours a day ", Or we have forgotten or that we simply do not take into consideration because they are now" out of fashion ". For example, the 2002 Sars-1 epidemic was slightly lower (according to the first "calm" and therefore more reliable studies) for the number of victims in the world compared to the current Covid epidemic, also called Sars- 2 ; in the 70s and 80s Europe (Italy in particular) was bloodied by the terrorism of Marxist ideology; at the beginning of the 90s a series of waves of illegal immigration heavily hit our country. These dramatic events were dealt with in one way or another and, even without wanting to apologize for those years or the praise of bygone times in general, we can say that they were overcome without changing our ways of life and without substantially renouncing our values. Today, however, something fundamental has changed, something that although fortunately does not involve everyone, is equally widespread in Western societies and which risks upsetting them.
For many Westerners, religious, moral, political values, etc. on which our civilization is based are today acceptable only when they lead to "success" or at least to a quiet life, that is to save oneself from the physical contagion of the epidemic or from the explicit condemnation (and often from attacks) by Islamic extremists. This is why I spoke earlier about the fear of being guilty of any negative consequence (real or even possible) that may arise from having followed certain principles in our behavior, that is, the fear of being subject to reproach: "You are looking for it" , because you haven't locked yourself up at home, perhaps with a mask always worn, because you have dared to say that Western ways of life are preferable to those of other civilizations etc. Certainly Western societies, even if inspired by the values of individual, social and economic freedom, secularism (or rather the non-ideological nature) of public power, responsible solidarity, scientific progress, etc. they have many defects and have often given rise to difficult and dramatic situations for the people who belong to them. However, this conviction must be joined by an equally true one, that the ideas so much heralded by those who oppose traditional Western values in a totally critical way in the name of global equality and / or politically correct are equally (and I personally believe that are to a greater extent) full of defects and bearers of negative moral and civil consequences, which applies both to the prescriptions of those who impose to contain the infections at any cost, as to the affirmations of those who support tolerance and acceptance "Merciful" to anyone. The alternative cannot therefore be between values and world views that claim to be "infallible", for example the one that contrasts Western "supremacist" ideology with "globalist" and politically correct ideology.
Western civilization is fundamentally based on a different principle, often forgotten, sometimes openly betrayed, but which has existed since it arose, following the fusion mediated by Christianity between Roman and barbarian civilizations: the principle of the positive value of their own inevitable mistakes and their own inevitable faults, if recognized as such and intended as guiding criteria for future improvements. A principle that has accompanied it in all its achievements and that has made it preferable (I use this term, leaving to those who do not think like me the task of proving the opposite) over all the others. At this point someone will smile, finding what I wrote at least bizarre: who in the present age wants to be wrong? In a world where influencers compete to be right by boasting the number of their followers and in which some posts or tweets full of often crude criticisms seem able to dismantle even the most meditated and balanced opinion?
To do this I have to start, allow me the analogy, from an African influencer who has had more followers in history than all the others put together, even if lately his thought is not too fashionable, and precisely among those who should be the first to pass it down: I'm talking about St. Augustine (354 – 430). Tormented throughout his life, first as a Manichean and then as a Christian, by the problem of evil, Augustine basing himself on the biblical account of Adam and Eve and the serpent, and taking up a conception of another African Christian thinker, Tertullian (155-230) , elaborated a theory of human action according to which no man, not even the most perfect (and not even the most do-gooder, I add) is ever right in himself: we are all always and in any case wrong, and defined this situation with a term entered into depth in the Western spiritual and intellectual tradition, that of "original sin".
Naturally the discourse did not end there either for the bishop of Hippo or for the Western tradition that was inspired by him, since original sin is overcome with the intervention of divine grace which makes men capable, by virtue of it, to value one's imperfections and also to be wrong. Beyond the strictly theological aspect, the moral awareness of the fact that one's own imperfection is always confronted with the imperfection of others, and one's own wrong always with the wrong of others, has led in the spiritual and moral development of the West to the rise of empirical mentality of those who face the problems that individual life and society present to us always ready to be denied and to recognize their mistakes, but equally determined to defend them at the cost of being judged wrong when recognizing them as preferable to the mistakes of others. Individual freedom and democracy (but also the experimental scientific method) actually have their origin in this empirical mentality which, referring to Augustinian thought, first emerged fully in medieval Franciscanism and then became secularized in modern liberalism, for which there is a direct continuity , through the centuries, for example between the Franciscan thinker William of Ockham (1285 – 1347) and the liberal philosopher David Hume (1711 – 1776).
For the liberal heirs of this Christian tradition (whether they are believers or not) the only way to deal with health and terrorist emergencies (and further upstream the cultural and spiritual emergency) without hiding for fear of being guilty, can only be that, in my opinion, to carry on one's own imperfections, always comparing them with those of others in order to find, also and above all thanks to the experience of one's previous mistakes, the best (or less worst) solution in concrete cases, for example aim to reasonably establish (and reasonableness is the guiding criterion of liberal empiricism) the limit beyond which health restrictions create more harm than good; the limit beyond which indiscriminate reception of immigrants worsens or even endangers the individual and social security of residents and migrants themselves; the limit beyond which religious tolerance becomes an acceptance of the arrogance and violence of radical groups, etc. If you forget this liberal empiricism, fruit of the Christian tradition, and fall into dogmatism that does not recognize the legitimacy of the opinion of those who think differently, you can commit heinous injustices to the detriment of your fellow men, often in the name of the noblest principles.
Not only the Inquisition and the 17th century wars of religion, but also the dictatorships of the contemporary era (from the Jacobin, to the Nazi, to the Soviet Communist) have amply demonstrated this. The fate of doom and the inevitable decadence that many almost with pleasure (and often with hasty recklessness) preach for Western civilization will have to go through the complete destruction of this liberal empirical mentality which fortunately still exists (even if it is stronger in the Anglo-Saxons than in continental European ones): its strengthening is vice versa a task for all those who, while respecting other civilizations and the very good present in each of them, proudly feel they are the heirs of the conquests in terms of freedom and progress which are the fruit, despite all their errors (because as Augustine would say, the perfection of the "city of God" is not of this world, where only the imperfect "cities of men" exist) of the millenary Christian tradition and liberalism that gives it is derived.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/la-paura-di-essere-colpevoli-come-covid-e-terrorismo-trasformano-la-coscienza-delloccidente/ on Thu, 05 Nov 2020 03:43:00 +0000.