We are experiencing a period full of changes, but it is not easy to understand the true meaning of what is happening or imagined, albeit in part, to what we are moving. The only thing that seems certain is that the existing power structures do not seem to be more stable or removed from office. At the same time shows the dark in the background that you are envisaging at the horizon. This is why I feel the feeling of a great emptiness, the lack of a perspective that can give light and direction to a change in place and, especially, seems to me the natural order of things.
What I mean by perspective? The propensity to plan outreach for the realization of individual and collective needs in a social and cultural breadth. That is, try to have this, to be able to define, what and how will the world in which we live. I do not think there is this tendency. More than anything I have the impression that you leave with the flow of becoming, being subject, even giving it, no matter who we meet or not. O adheres to the squalor of what happens, accepting, recognize parts, regardless of ways to be more human and more just, therefore helping to strengthen cultural, or refuses, however, feel helpless, so easily we tend to react with anger purely oppositional terms. In both cases, completely outside of each perspective, the accession to the present state of things and changes to how they present themselves is either intentional or inevitable.
Unpleasant situations
On second thought that might not be so, since to move in a radical change must want it. In turn, you must want to be able to get an idea at least aware of what you want, that is able to envisage an imaginary, at least briefly, what kind of society and social relations as an alternative and would like to propose and fight to achieve them. At this stage the spread of such a tendency seems rather difficult, especially because the meaning of alternatives so far lived historical experience has unfortunately shown that it may be undesirable. Which leads with great ease to assume that any radical alternative because this can only be the bearer of unpleasant situations, or otherwise unacceptable and undesirable.
Such a situation of widespread propensity of mind brings something to the effect that, for people like us is rather inclined to seek alternative and to act on it, we are not accustomed. The society continually shows us our dissatisfaction with the state of affairs which has to live at the same time is also unavailable to join the order of ideas in a change to the roots, able to engage directly with each individual, to reset the social relations and the method of political management of the company, as redefine the quality of economic relations. The idea does not attract the new, even scary, first because there is a just a habit to exercise collective ability to imagine, second, not least because historically every time that events have overwhelmed that c 'was able to create totally new situation, have almost always lived obscurantism in most cases terrifying.
Western societies are increasingly too old or older to cultivate the necessary impetus to express tensions desiring, can engage in authentic social processes to innovate. We are moving towards a situation progressively more gerontocratic, not so much because the old systematic increase in number up to not go beyond the old, but because young people rely less and less, and are increasingly marginalized and rendered precarious, both in work than on the existential. The cultural quality of the impression that invests the most common way of thinking and more able to influence that emanates from old tensions, think and act in the old way, with all of the consequences that this instinctual drive may include: adjustment and trend Adagio, both physical and psychological fatigue, disillusionment and disenchantment that flow easily into cynicism. And so on.
I believe it is not a coincidence that today we are witnessing riots and real needs of real change in society in the Maghreb of North Africa as those of the Middle East, where typically more than 50% of the population consists of young people under 25 years of age . Certainly, the push comes to revolt or not depends on the age of the rioters. Much is due to the fact that poverty is steadily increasing while the ruling classes, very old and immovable for decades, shamelessly enrich themselves to the skin of their subjects. But the fact that for too long in power structures ruthless dictatorial, that with great ease always systematically flout the most elementary human rights. But it seems clear that the new bodies, real needs of freedom, were able to emerge with the irresistible force with which they are emerging and they continue to surface because it is behind a push of a young company with a great desire to get game, which is not tired, and propaganda that cultivates the desire to build their future, beyond and against those who still overwhelmed and wanting to submit.
The entire Arab-Muslim band from northern Africa to Iran to Afghanistan, is largely an uproar. At the time, first in Tunisia and Egypt now in Libya, three rais gerontocrat true that for decades people subject their overwhelming power with a ruthless, have literally been overthrown by popular acclaim. When there was violence, particularly very brutal in Libya, where the "friend Berlusconi" Gaddafi has ordered his fighters to bomb the crowd of those who opposed him simply showing, has been broadly used by the powers of the reactionary dictatorships steel in an attempt of bloody repression. Instead of facing the crowds are not submitted in the name of aggressive violence, but with the strength and conviction to protest in a decisive and determined. When the insurgents have used violence was to defend against attacks squad of mercenaries in the pay of dictators.
The revolt is not likely to stop and most likely to assist its further expansion into other states and other countries with unpredictable outcomes at the time. After all, it was not even planned the uprising itself, which broke out almost overnight. A revolt in the deep motivations are the collective refusal to continue to suffer brutal dictatorships and absolutist unscrupulous, accompanied by a constant state of misery of the majority of the population. At one point, the measure was filled with people so far and voluntarily submitted en masse they said no, pushed by the force of desperation and a desire to live any other way.
Cultural and political Colonization
They probably acted as a detonator of the various items of evidence that many migration for decades have come in contact with Western countries, where living standards and democratic form showed a way of life that to these people seemed more acceptable and Decent. But also information technology, internet and mobile phones in the first place, that allowed to see in real time is another quality of life, stimulating imagination and desire. Within a few years all these factors have become a deadly mix, able to engage imaginative processes and applications for their needs before unthinkable.
Because among other things, this rebellion broke out substantially beyond the feared Islamic fundamentalism, which in that part of the real world was considered likely possible detonator, Western observers, always looking for finalists who meet their capacity for explanation, have attributed the purpose of the choir will fight for democracy. Failed miserably theory of exporting democracy, which at the time Bush had to justify his much-vaunted warlike delusions, we can now say with great peace of mind that democracy should not be exported, but you have to induce people to pretend to fight. Colonization becomes purely cultural and political war.
Unfortunately when we talk about democracy in the West you have these models that we ourselves live directly, assuming that we are the only true form of democracy possible: the West as a beacon of light. It should be a bit 'more cautious in trying to understand what is happening. I personally believe that if there is no doubt that behind the riots there is a clear demand for freedom, it is not evident that the imagination and cultural propensity of that area of the world identifies itself with the idea of freedom of the forms Western democracy. Behind this view, which considers its only true benchmarks, it masks a great intellectual arrogance. One of the consequences is not able to understand the movements of things.
From the point of view of freedom and representation, for example, the current state of democracy in the West in water on many parts and would be a grave mistake to imitate groped in a revolutionary situation that has a serious desire to innovate. The level of democratic representation was reduced to a fiction with the proxy voting decision-making power to an oligarchy controlled by the party leaderships, and the voters, once voted, they have no power to intervene in the power games of the building. The control from below in the ordinary exercise of the various powers that be, who was one of the foundations of liberal democracy, is actually non-existent, and were put in place a series of laws and regulations to ensure that leaders of the different hierarchies of command structures is not the permeability of the people. Indeed, as Schumpeter predicted, we have a democracy leaders in constant competition with each other, not a representative democracy as the founders had thought the Liberal Democrats. The West, who invented the representative democracy, in little more than two centuries has been deprived of meaning by reducing it to an oligarchic regime supported by the electoral support.
A revolution that subverts
At the moment I think it's impossible to understand how the situation will evolve in the Middle East and North African countries of the uprising, both politically and from institutional and social. Driven as they are, or believe they may be, by a genuine desire to experience a condition in which they are free, if you really think that we will enjoy the freedom to imagine who could effectively play situations and institutional policies that would be a bad copy of our democratic fiction . Or, driven by enthusiasm, they could invent structures of genuine direct democracy, as were the first people's committees and councils of the origins, and were the libertarian collectivization during the Spanish Revolution of 1936. Or they might simply require new leaders, as expected throughout the nomenclature of the fake Western democracy, which to trust and delegate the task of returning the coveted their freedom, once again falling into a death trap.
Proceed beyond the event, which will be given only to the facts to know how to play, I am personally convinced that the world as a whole would really need a new revolution, whose quality and characteristics should be different from all those that preceded it. I'm talking about a revolution that subverts the political paradigm of command and hierarchical order from above, establishing forms of self-management and political decision to redefine the economic relationship marked by a substantial solidarity that would eliminate the privilege of wealth and scandal in hand of a few to the detriment of all others reduced to poverty and slavery.
anno
41 n. 361
Andrea Papi