History teaches
… but he has no students.
At the end of a technically very tiring day, the one in which we drafted the fateful list of "reported" to the budget law (we talked about it here ), between a thousand and one sclero in which I avoid going into, both for respect for institutional roles, that out of respect for your time (but it would also be fun to spend time describing the thousand tricks of the adversaries and the ten thousand of the allies), I would like to pick up the thread with you, because I sense that there is a need. You will say: what discourse? Here we talked about the most disparate things: El Greco 's painting , medieval military tactics , Rabelais , Proust , Tolstoy , Dostoevsky , and other minors, and of course since we talked about literature, we also talked about journalism , and since we talked about journalism we talked about conflicts of interest , but we also talked about politics, both in its more concrete dimension, that of parliamentary techniques , and in the more abstract one, political fiction (and if not entirely right, almost nothing was wrong); there was also talk of stochastic processes , sustainability of public debt , the Balassa-Samuelson theorem , balance of payments , sectoral balances , and therefore of France , but also of Spain , but also of Slovenia , and so on, and then there was talk of musical rhetoric (a little after all, but we talked about it …), of referendums , of the mountains : in short, of many things.
I therefore realize that it can be difficult to find a thread in this tumultuous and apparently disjointed discourse. Yet, there must have been a thread, in this flood of my and your words, otherwise we would all have been lost along the way (and instead only someone got lost).
The thread is soon found, and it is in post zero , the one that did not come out here, but on the Manifesto: it was the indignation towards the attitude of oligarchic contempt towards the people (in particular, the Italian one) of a certain left, it was the ascertaining what an astonishing lack of empathy, of compassion, supported a certain political vision, the one we have always criticized here and will always criticize, was, in essence, love for the penultimate, given that the last, as we know, are the prerogative de iBuoni, who never stop talking to them, otherwise they would learn something …
Now, there is one thing that should amaze me, but I don't think I can do it, about the path we have taken together, and I try to illustrate it starting from an observation: the debate that interests you so much today, and that I am careful not to mention, for the simple reason that we are in a regime and I do not want to pull this blog down (also regulate yourself in the comments), it is nothing more than a pale repetition of the Debate that took place here for almost a decade.
One might think that the current debate also exists because in the previous Debate we were defeated, as Nello Preterossi reminded us with fascinating vehemence at # goofy10, but that would not be entirely correct. It seems indubitable to me that we have not (yet) won, but, as I have tried to explain here , in so many years we should have learned to be wary of the irenic twin myths, that of the golden age and that of the apocalypse. There has never been a conflict-free period, and there will never be a disclosure of revealed truth (which one?) That recomposes current and future conflicts. Life is a struggle in the small, indeed, in the very small (haven't we all become experts in antibodies?) As in the great, indeed, in the very large. Let us therefore prepare ourselves serenely for a life of conflict, remembering that if there were definitive defeats (and therefore victories), history would have ended in the fourth chapter of Genesis: consurrexit Cain adversus Abel fratrem suum et interfecit eum.
The truth is that the dynamics we are witnessing today in our country, and more generally in the Union to which we belong, are, to varying degrees, common to most of the countries of the terraqueo world (with some happy, mythical exceptions such as Sweden . .. which we have dealt with here for other reasons, which perhaps are the same reason). And given that almost everywhere the terms of the current debate are the same, even if we had (already) won, and were therefore (already) endowed with greater self-determination, I doubt that we would be able to handle the situation more. rational or not irrational.
So I come back to the point: today's debate is nothing more than a pale resumption of the Debate, an eternal return of the same. These are all things we have already seen: we have already seen science, the real one, proposing and arguing unheard theses internally coherent and intimately consonant with common sense and with our direct experience; we have seen this science trampled on the media by its whore cousin, Lascienza, with totally inconclusive, fragile, labile, contradictory arguments; we have seen the media data vilifying (or in one case, mine, unsuccessfully attempting to vilify) intellectuals bearing scientifically based visions, and we have seen them, these media, tendentiously alter statistical data to conceal scientific truths for the benefit of propaganda messages ; we have seen the victims denigrated , just as, symmetrically, we have seen the executioners exalted.
Everything already seen.
The thing that should amaze me, but unfortunately fails to amaze me, is therefore: because you, who are here, who have had the opportunity to see all this already happen many and many times, who have had the privilege of taking before others consciousness of the order of magnitude of certain problems , now are you surprised at what is happening? And why are you unable to manage the debate, having participated in the Debate?
That some small provincial journalist may be surprised, arriving today at the unexpected conclusion that Balzac had reached a couple of centuries ago (that is, that the press directs the debate by pleasing the great economic interests) can also be there: everyone has their own times and not everyone has the same books without pictures around the house. But that you, just you, to whom I have dedicated hours and hours of my time, whose most intimate and painful confidences I have collected and returned, whom I have tried to support with example and with words in the many difficult moments we have gone through. since we met, that you just can't find your way, that's it: this should amaze me, but deep down it does not surprise me.
I have now understood that the strength of the message of this blog lies, as dialectic wants, in its weakness. To get to your 1300 grams of brain I often went through your 300 grams of heart , and in many cases the message got stuck there, between an atrium and a ventricle, unable to pierce your revered dura mater. It happens. You are probably satisfied with your instinctive perception, that of having in front of you a person who, in fact, had more to lose than to gain in exposing himself as he was exposing himself, who had a genuine and sincere interest in raising awareness and involvement, because he sincerely believed in democracy. It seems to me sufficiently obvious that those who arrive here now, starting from the assumption of having "er senatore d'a a Lega" in front of them, are not in the least able to realize these dynamics: but I don't have to take care of those who live on preconceptions, they are enough newspapers. I have to take care of you, of you who in most cases preferred to trust me rather than understand me, for the simple reason that trusting was the least tiring option. Paradoxically, you trusted me precisely because you saw that I wanted you to understand and I proved it to you by trying to guide you through the most difficult technical topics. After all, you are fond of this blog also because its technical posts offered you that precious asset for free, so precious that the best universities put it up for sale at a high price: the satisfying (all the more unfounded) feeling of having understood everything!
Now, however, you are ten years old, and I think you may be asking for some abstraction skills.
I would therefore like to draw on two lessons that you should have drawn from the Debate, since you alone cannot do it.
The first is that Truth, and in particular its declination cloaked in often false objectivity that goes by the name of "the Data", is of no help in a debate. What governs the fate of the debates, like it or not, is not "the Truth", but the balance of power. It follows, in particular, that the Truth you have in your pocket is of no use to you, since you are an unsuccessful minority.
Here we have all reported all the data of the Debate, those that are now rediscovered by "good" economists with the usual four or five years of delay. What good did it do us? Why don't you think about it for a moment? Certain truths are affirmed when the time comes, arriving earlier is more of a limit than an advantage, a lot of patience and a lot of determination are needed. This does not mean calling for methodological cialtronism or cultural relativism. Far from it! Deepening the analysis, in the light of Doubt, is always an appropriate operation of mental and spiritual hygiene that I have taught you to perform here and together we have done dozens and dozens of times. However, it means that we rejoice because the Chattanooga Journal of Clinical Fuffology has published the definitive study ("but how, Alberto? Don't you believe it? Here is the proof! This work is a bomb, it's de-fi-ni-ti-vo! "), that like the shield of Perseus will leave your opponents medusés , here, you could honestly spare this and you should spare me, just as I would ask you to avoid clogging my mobile phone (and the gonads) with the usual graphs of the usual curves they show. .. here, precisely: what do they prove?
Keep your fucking pdfs for yourselves: if it's good stuff, it has already come to me from others (from Ioannidis downwards), and if it's manure I can do without it: I have no roses to fertilize. How many times have I seen you, in my field of scientific investigation, exalt yourself for articles by non-existent "scientists"? Why should it be different now? Confirmation bias runs powerfully through you, dear friends, and I think it's time to shake it off.
I now come to the second lesson that the Debate should have learned from you: united we lose.
If I survived, while so many dear friends got lost (thank God) on the street, it's not just because I was born in Florence, I speak some languages including Italian (see under: Florence), I play a couple of instruments and I have a decent h- index for my role and my scientific-disciplinary sector. I think it's also because my musical ear has warned me of bad company. Do you remember, true, how many people who "thought like us", how many people who "Alberto, you must not be divisive because this is a transversal battle", how many people who "famo er committee de libberazzione national", urged me not to be divisive? Yet, in these beautiful arguments, which apparently coincide with what I said above (the balance of power, the strength of numbers) there was something that did not come back to me.
I remembered that there was a guy, a blogger from the first century after himself, CEO of a company that has been grinding consensus and profits for two millennia, who saw the subject of proselytism in a slightly different way: non veni pacem mittere sed gladium.
Now, for heaven's sake: I hope it's clear that I'm not venturing into a blasphemous confrontation! I'm just trying to reflect, and invite you to reflect, on the Word (the real one). Perhaps the "divisiveness" has its own value that the "inclusives" do not understand, and this reflection deserves to be developed. But let's not make it difficult and just stick to the story of the Debate. Do you remember when I distanced myself from Donald? It was here . Do you remember when I distanced myself from orthoptera? It was here . And do you remember how it turned out? Are you really sure that our common cause would have benefited from such a company ? And are you not a little ashamed for having urged me so much to remain on good terms with those who have proved decisive, and have boasted about it ?
I don't know if I was right to distance myself: surely you were wrong in reproaching me for being divisive. If I wasn't, I wouldn't be here. And since I intend to be there again in ten years, I have no intention of changing a method that has worked so far.
Because there is one thing that reconciles the apparent contradiction between my serene obedience to the balance of power and my total disregard for positions that break the "common" front, and it is this: which side you are on is less important than why you are there , or, if you like, as I try (in vain) to make you understand, the reason why you acquire (or believe you are acquiring) awareness is not irrelevant. Stated yet another way: the fact that one thinks "like us" is not as important as why one thinks like us. The ideological glue that binds a group of people, the clarity of their vision, counts as much and more as their critical mass. With all the good I can wish them, and with all the true and profound human solidarity, with the scientific understanding of their reasons, and with the firm determination to protect their rights in the way that will seem most effective to me and that will not necessarily be what the keyboard Solons will come to suggest to me, I would like to tell you here what I have been seeing for a few months and that you will see in a few years: with those who wake up because the small lake arrives on the arm, you will not go very far. Trivially, when this story ends (and despite all the good will to keep it standing, defeating it, the previous ones teach us that we are now running out), when the pond is lost in the haystack of history, all the proud opponents of the great global conspiracy, all the prophets of the Agendaaah, will return to mind their own business, all the painful and indignant protest against this incurable "rupture" of the system will evaporate, all these heartfelt appeals to the permanent garrison will fade, leaving only a bit of anti-political sludge that someone is will appropriate. And so, excuse me, but I keep thinking it as I always thought it and as I have already told you to think it: the existential threat is a very weak glue for the construction of a class consciousness, and even if it were not weak, we must remember that the management of emotions is in the hands of power, not us. If an intellectual evokes fears, he is a terrorist or a bad teacher. If a news program does it, it is information. In this game we will always be losers, on this battlefield we are at a disadvantage, and it is therefore in our interest to avoid it, to choose another one, and above all to choose allies well.
"Yes, oh well, but you can't be divisive!"
Here, in fact: goodnight!
(… the pile of letters from those who wrote to me after I was right before is as high as a dossier of budget law amendments. It doesn't mean you have to agree with me right away: I enjoy it more when you wrong me. But it doesn't. I will post any comment that contains sanitary words, simply because, as I have already told you, you act as you think, but I do not want to be pulled down. Re-goodnight! … )
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/2021/12/la-storia-insegna.html on Sun, 05 Dec 2021 22:48:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.