The slow decline of the West
There is no civilization without roots: they must all be respected but this widespread abdication of our cultural and identity references can only lead to an amorphous and defective society. The speech by Francesco Provinciali, former MIUR and Ministry of Education inspection director
The passage of time hides changes and transformations that we perceive in their global dimension but also through the signs we read in small things. There are – in this troubled era always threatened by the incipient danger of the abyss – devastating wars and genocides involving states and peoples, ethnic groups, cultures, religions: there is no limit to the worst and no space for civil repentance .
These are facts that tell us about human restlessness, the lust for power, the absence of memory, the dangers of fundamentalism, the banishment of every limit: it is a continuous threat that expands like wildfire and demonstrates how the human race is both cruel and stupid. Good news can no longer be found even in the flea market, Maurizio Belpietro told me, and if somewhere they narrate a human dimension that sows gestures of goodness and a desire for peace, they remain hidden in the swirling and mystifying narrative of social media.
There are also – I was saying – signs that we intercept in everyday life and they last the blink of an eye but – by sedimenting and repeating themselves – they end up leaving a trace. Both phenomena – large and uncontainable ones such as wars, conflicts, environmental sustainability and those inside or just beyond the door of the house – tell us that the world is changing: tempora mutamur et nos mutamur in illis. The history of humanity has always been characterized by a sometimes slow, sometimes accelerated process of transformation.
Reading and reviewing in recent days an essay by Giuseppe De Rita on the concept of development linked to social self-propulsion, I have rooted the belief that the changes around us are not always substantiated in the idea of progress. There have been eras so characterized by cultural identity roots that they were named after them: think of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Romanticism. The advent of technological domination has imprinted a strong evolutionary dynamic that we have not been able to characterize beyond the concept of complexity: reread Heidegger, Habermas, Benjamin and Bauman.
I find that for some decades the theme of generational sustainability has become more acute, in the cultural field, in the working context, in communication and in human relations. Democracy remains an unusable chimera, ethical and cultural relativism subvert it and continually call it into question. We are surrounded by fetishes that become frills and clichés: privacy and transparency, rather than emancipating, facilitating and simplifying, put handcuffs on the wrists of human relationships. We talk a lot but we don't understand each other, the subjectivism rooted in human behavior – cloaked in noble ideals such as freedom of expression and the dignity of the individual creates situations of incomprehension and wandering and incommunicable monads.
We then rely on clichés, on the opinions of influencers, on mixed drifts between minimalism and nihilism, paroxysmal delirium, special effects and regurgitations of will to power. The rampant social conflict is tangible proof of this. Paradoxically, traditional cultures are preserved in the institutional and social contexts of tyrannies and dictatorships. Even more striking is the fact that this happens where religious fundamentalism mixes with the secularization of its rules: the heads of women who do not wear the veil are cut off, those who lower their headgear and reveal their eyes are stoned. It's incredible that the West, which stands as a banner for female emancipation, is willing to be so benevolent and indulgent towards those who find acceptance and claim human rights without accepting the rules that the cultural tradition of the country that hosts them imposes.
We must rally around our democracies, as Vittorio E. Parsi told me "the defense of domestic democracy passes through the leadership of the democracies in the world". A minimalist drift of cancel culture has been underway for years in the West, which does not happen where traditions and identity roots are immovable and reinforce the sedimentation of power. In Russia Patriarch Kirill speaks of holy war in the name of the nation, here Pope Francis addresses the entire world and calls for universal peace: they are not the same thing. The same goes for what Islamism preaches: shari'a, fundamentalism, subjugation of women, destruction of everything that the West represents.
In the social caravanserai in which we live there is everything and more: safeguarding national identities, preserving and safeguarding handed down culture have become sins of treason. I don't believe that choosing democracy as a model of social coexistence requires us to adopt a sort of 'weak and headless, egalitarian thought', renouncing inherited values. Yet for some time we have been giving up our identity and denying history, the founding values of being Italian or European, in the name of an interculture that does not exist because the roots that characterize us are now too deep.
God, country and family have built a perfectible social model with declinations that may perhaps not be shared and perhaps now obsolete but their removal in all the corners and meanders of social life has not been replaced by more convincing references. They were not and are not blasphemy. Weak thinking is rampant and we must not confuse the sense of belonging to the idea of an identity 'continuism' (as De Rita would call it) with the negative tendencies of nationalism and populism.
In an open society there is space for inclusion, peaceful coexistence, dialogue: but always respecting the rules. In recent days Sunak has established that foreigners must have an income of 45 thousand euros to live in the United Kingdom, we have not gone that far but for example the French banlieues are a significant headache for Macron: an ethnic mix now rooted and potentially explosive.
Now, hearing on TV that the statue of Vera Amodeo dedicated to motherhood (a woman breastfeeding a newborn) finds neither peace of criticism nor logistical accommodation in a street or square in Milan because it is judged anachronistic and not an expression of universally shared values leaves one to stucco. It is one of the many denials that are dismantling our history and our culture piece by piece while they still have the right to citizenship across the planet.
There are model countries of democracy where these things do not happen: the whole world looks at us and laughs at our stupid melancholy, at our worries, at our hesitations, at our – if I may – salon paraculism. As well as the story of the nativity scenes that "offend" the sensitivities of others, the schools closed during Ramadan, the removal of Crucifixes from classrooms. Valditara was right to set limits that belong to a minister. Anyone who visits a North African country does not receive equal treatment: because then the weak thought, that atavistic sense of guilt of being the heirs of a civilization that has expressed positive values insinuates itself into shared thinking to the point of having to apologize and be ashamed of what we are and have been?
There is no civilization without roots: they must all be respected but this widespread abdication of our cultural and identity references can only lead to an amorphous and defective society. We now wait for artificial intelligence to remove the rest that remains.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/il-lento-declino-delloccidente/ on Thu, 25 Apr 2024 05:31:14 +0000.