Costs and benefits of telohadectism
I return slowly and reluctantly to carry out the thankless role of ecclesiarch: it's a dirty job, but… are we really sure that someone should do it?
One thing is certain: I don't really like it anymore, and for the same reason that I dedicated myself to it completely when I felt like it, I don't see why I should force myself now that I don't feel like it. Life is too short to live it unwillingly, and at my age walking through the woods is undoubtedly a healthier activity than glued to a monitor to wash donkeys' heads.
This alone would be enough to explain why the frequency of my interventions has become less frequent, but a few further questions on the reasons for my disaffection with this project, which has had an importance not only in the political life of the country:
but also in my personal life, I have asked myself this, and I have found some reasons, of an objective and subjective nature.
The objective reason is obvious, the time constraint, determined by two elements: the opportunity to think about health (I have put back some physical activity and I am putting some musical activity back into my life), and the need to carry out my institutional duties. The political commitment, which in this legislature I am experiencing also and above all in my constituency, for reasons which I will return to below, takes up time. I therefore have no time left to conduct the Debate, just as I have no time left to feed it with my research, of which the Debate, this blog, was essentially a spin-off . What I wanted to say about the Eurozone, however, I said in particular here , here , and here , there is more than enough to substantiate the thesis of the unsustainability of the Eurozone from a scientific point of view and to focus on the aporias policies of the European Union. I take this into account in my political activity, I try to help others to do so, without being petulant, obviously there would be many detailed points to explore, but I feel I have given my contribution and I don't particularly lack scientific research.
So if I don't stay here more often it's objectively because I can't stay here: I have to be somewhere else.
On the other hand, nihil difficile volenti : if I really wanted to stay here, I would find a way, just as I have found a way to fill my life with many things besides this (concerts, papers, children, the mountains, etc. ). I therefore owe you some reflections on why, in fact, I am no longer so eager to be in your company, in this place that I created and that created you as a community , providing you with cultural baggage, giving you an arena for comparison, a lexicon , a sense of belonging…
Let's see some of them, in no particular order .
Meanwhile, in April you decided to break the pact, deserting an important event. I acknowledged it with dignity , as you may have noticed, but I couldn't avoid a question, the fundamental question: but who makes me worry so much about people who obviously don't appreciate it? You can imagine the answer.
Then there is the fact, in some way complementary, that territorial political activity gives me access to a new audience compared to the one I created for myself with scientific dissemination, an audience that shows me appreciation, and that in any case urges me on new themes, on things that I enjoy more than repeating the obvious, things that in their own way enrich me culturally, and which in any case are part of my institutional duties. A cultural enrichment, I grant you, made mostly of acronyms (BIM, CIG, PNIISSI, PNIEC, CER, FSE, SNAI… need I continue?); fun, I admit, also made up of endless pain in the ass, contacts with people that I would never have met or wanted to meet if I had remained in the enchanted world of my narration, the one that fascinated you so much and to which they would be absolutely impervious ; an institutional duty which many colleagues cheerfully do without (and in fact in the ministries they are surprised to meet a parliamentarian who deals with the territory at a similar level of conscious granularity) and which continually exposes me to the risk of being incriminated by those who they aspire to be, and in fact are, the jealous sole holders of political direction. The fact is that real life is also made up of something else: I who know and have described the first principles to you, feel a subtle and amused pleasure in discovering how many infinite and inexhaustible streams the first of the first principles is expressed in: Europe = PD = things which are not mentioned at the table. It amuses me much more to discover the one hundred thousandth obvious and useful thing that cannot be done because the EU is in the way, and try to go around it, than to repeat in vain for the hundred thousandth time that as long as the EU is in the way, no nothing can be done (also because repeating it does not lead to great results: see the previous paragraph). It is more useful to have a kilometer of road that is collapsing downstream repaired, it is more useful to pursue and release funds for the seismic adaptation of a school from a ministry, it is more useful to get two administrations to talk who have both decided to do something but do they continue to stumble over each other, or give yet another uterine and narcissistic puppy the illusion of having understood what the balance of payments is and why it dominates our earthly existence? And even in this case you can imagine the answer.
Incidentally, and it occurs to me at this moment, listening to the sound of silence that surrounds me in the place where I shelter during my stays in Abruzzo, a place that until a few days ago was a holiday resort for particularly extroverted populations (now only the rumbling of the sky in the distance and the cowbells of the Marche women grazing among the houses abandoned by their noisy tenants), incidentally another reason for falling out of love is that not only does political life take away your time, but it prevents you, in the shreds of time it leaves you, from finding that interior silence from which only prose or music can emerge. In this sense, among the reasons that distanced me from writing there is also the one that distanced me from music: the impossibility, in the daily grind, of finding some moment of stasis, of emptiness, of silence, precisely, from which bring out some logos. I realize this as I go back to reread and make certain sentences more (or less!) fluent.
But there is a further, and perhaps more decisive and unsolvable, subjective element of my discouragement. The topic was posed by a refined left-wing intellectual, who not surprisingly was particularly dear to our Marco Basilisco (prince of the fractionist zerovirgolists):
Of course, teloadhodectism has noble origins, but it is equally indisputable that it is dull and unfortunate (just think of poor Cassandra)!
This places me in front of a dilemma that is not easy to resolve, neither in pedagogical nor in literary terms. I could easily argue (and some of you, four or five, can do it better than me and do it every day on Twitter) that everything we are witnessing these days (Sharon Verzeni included) is a direct, explicit and announced consequence of what was stated and prefigured in the long years in which I felt like writing (but in reality of what was clarified in the article of 24 August 2011 on the manifesto and in my first television appearance of 20 June 2012 : the rest were 2448 – with this 2449 – variations on the theme). The dilemma that arises, in substantial and narrative terms, is therefore this: to insist on the fact that what happens is the announced consequence of phenomena already analyzed (the "telohadedettism"), or to propose a self-contained explanation of these phenomena every time from scratch ? Cassandra, or Groundhog Day? Emphasize that, in fact, there is nothing to add here other than an endless series of QED, or rediscover hot water every day, as I think Claudio hopes, explaining the obvious to new customers, in a certain sense understandable, but for others senseless, to broaden the basis of consensus from zero point to zero point?
A dilemma between two alternatives, both unattractive.
"Telo-Harodectism" is, undoubtedly, an expressive register that this blog has consciously made its own, as the sociologists who have dealt with it have also noted. This is attested by the 104 QEDs: posts written to attest that a specific event (example: Hollande's bankruptcy) was foreseen here because it was foreseeable on the basis of stylized facts or economic theories (example: the analysis of sector balances). The advantage of this narrative choice is clear: although predictivism is legitimately the subject of dispute in epistemology, the ability of a theory to anticipate events remains a reasonable and understandable element of evaluation of its intrinsic reliability, and in some way contributes to the reputation of those who, by applying that theory, drew conclusions in time which, despite being contrary to the communis opinio at the time, later proved to be correct when tested by facts. But "teloaddictism" can also arouse a paradoxical effect: to appreciate the predictive capacity of a theory one must be able to understand it, that is, to reason in abstract terms, a faculty precluded by the piddogrillina slime that continues to dirty the social debate. To these children of an orthography, a sociology, and a minor anthropology, the fact that one claims the correctness of certain predictions appears like the extemporaneous utterance of a deranged guru. Of course, we can also not deal with these scum: if my aim was not to convince you, let alone convince them, also considering that they are a minority! The point remains that "telohadedettism" is petulant and literarily poses the unpleasant alternative between boring those who have already understood (or think they have understood), and pissing off those who have not understood, with the aggravating circumstance that this, perhaps, does not it's not even an alternative: the simultaneous achievement of these two objectives is in fact within reach, so much so that the first one to bust my balls was me!
It goes without saying that there are remedies.
Meanwhile, the compass that has led us this far, that is, to the point where Germany has sawed off the branch on which it is sitting (as prefigured in the 2011 poster), can be used to look beyond the horizon. But do we really want to do it? What we know is that monetary unions that are not an optimal currency area are not sustainable, and that their demise is generally brought about by conflict. We also know (QED!) that the EU, which did not want to spend on schools and hospitals, wants to spend on arming itself. This leads us to an uncomfortable conclusion, which I have never hidden from you, which certainly does not surprise you, but which I wonder if we really want to practice. And here too I leave the answer to you: between watching a news program and ending up in it, the difference is a moment. We know that soon we will be inside the screen: that is where obtuse denialism will lead us, the obstinate desire to deny the evident failure of a project that should (and will) only be liquidated. But what does explaining this inevitable consequence give us in return, if not the ridicule of the deniers, who, let's not forget, despite being a minority, have military control of all the tools for destroying the reputation of others (editorial offices, social networks and prosecutors). Better that this remains a limited awareness, and if there is one thing that repays me for the effort dedicated to this project it is the certainty of having induced people who deserved it to establish an escape route from the horror that awaits us.
Of course, in the meantime the practical consequences of the theoretical principles may present a concrete interest: the many of you who thank me for not having taken out variable rate mortgages in 2020 ( when I explained to you that inflation was around the corner , while everyone they worried about deflation!) are a good example of what I mean. But this blog was born with other purposes, substantially frustrated by the impossibility of giving rise to an awareness of the real problems in an anti-fascist left in the absence of fascism, and of coexisting with the symmetrical Pavlovian reflections of an anti-communist right in the absence of communism.
On the other hand, with all due respect to Claudio and with the utmost respect for his tactical and strategic wisdom, I don't think it is much more effective and it is certainly even less fun to start the conversation again every time, discovering in 2024 the aporias of the Union As European as any Caracciolo! The strength of this blog, the strength of the Debate, was that it was anticipatory. Singing in chorus with the system's conformists, with those who to the point of exhaustion have denied not only the existence of significant economic critical issues (monetary union), but the very idea that the economy could offer valid and fruitful interpretations , I would honestly avoid it, not so much because I really don't feel like assimilating into this company of latecomer opportunists, but because they have with them all the regime media, which reserve for them the space of "noble" antagonists, of rank and quality, when in their work there is neither quality, nor rank (academic credentials in some cases on the Gianninian andante), nor nobility, which presupposes courage, a quality incompatible with conformism.
It would therefore make no particular sense, from any point of view, either that of entertainment or that of effectiveness, to totally abjure "telavodectism": we would find ourselves in the company of weak minds assisted by a strong media apparatus, with the further tactical disadvantage of be declassified in a voice that is not credible because it is partisan. The fact that the genetic article was published in the "manifesto", however, puts those who notice it in difficulty.
As always, therefore, with all due respect to the ending in "etta", the solution lies, or rather would lie, in a compromise, but this compromise is tiring and time-consuming, and so the desire, inevitably, inexorably, passes. Better to try to prevent a provincial one from falling downstream (the friendly mayors and local administrators don't know, alas!, that what I say inevitably happens – here's an example – but they will learn to listen to me).
I conclude with some useful information (I wanted to talk to you about something else, but that's it): the annual conference will take place in any case, on the weekend of 26-27 October (and already here there would be a lot to say, or rather nothing, because the fact that some of you are bullying the staff for having information that has been published for some time where it needs to be published says it all).
It will be a national edition, not an international one, for two reasons: first of all, because however prestigious their presence may be, perhaps there is no need to waste money on travel and simultaneous translation of international guests who at best say a little worse and a little after what we said better and before. For goodness sake: their presence in the eyes of fools increases the prestige of our initiatives. But for us, the awareness of what we are and what we understood in time is enough. The other reason is simple: after the breaking of the pact, there could be 400 of you at the conference, like last year and like ten years ago, like 100, like 600. I have no idea. My scenario is 100, the one from the last meeting, and on a 100 scenario you won't break even for a decent simultaneous translation, so you stick to it.
It will be at the Serena Majestic, as it has been in every year, except the last one. It will also be the last edition, in all probability, because honestly I have plenty of pockets to take on all this trouble on my own. Next year, if you want, you can do it yourself: we will thus put to the test the magnificent and progressive fate of the "movement from below", the intestinal movement on which many fine political scientists have practiced in the comments on this blog.
This year we will have with us Carlo Galli, Savino Balzano, Vladimiro Giacché, Carlo Magnani, Gianandrea Gaiani, and others, for a reflection on Europe: can Europe do it?
And here too, what a beard, what a bore…
The answer is within us and it is right: leaving aside a noisy minority of imbeciles vulnerable to the regime's tacky propaganda, the silent majority of sentient people is now clear that in Hell nulla est raedemptio . The problem shifts to another level: that of influencing colleagues who are convinced that 50% of abstentions graze in the endless prairies of the center. We know that that type of animal lives on the hills, not in the Swamp, on the Mountain. But it is difficult for a politician who believes he must submit to the judgment of information operators (that is, essentially, for everyone), to escape the lure of the Weltanschauung that information operators impose. Leaving the frame , alas, as we know, also means leaving the eye of the camera. And this is a great sacrifice for many (not for those who didn't need a role to attract attention to themselves).
We'll see next year. I have an idea, and I think about ten of you can imagine it: yes, we'll go there…
And that's all for today: now Zapping awaits me (another thing I do reluctantly, but, alas, I'm sure someone has to do that job…).
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2024/09/costi-e-benefici-del-teloavevodettismo.html on Tue, 03 Sep 2024 17:00:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.