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How can one measure the state of health of a country,
of a people, other than through the parameters of Institutes of Statistics
or by taking refuge in the apparently so hyper-real and on the other
hand also so virtual (or at least misleading) world of the GDP, the
Gross Domestic Product?
In
what way can be say “we are well” or “we are ill”? While the reader
is working out a personal answer, I shall tell you of a tiny episode
that perhaps relates in some way to this initial draft of a discourse.
Since
I concern myself daily by radio (colour radio) with the problems of
Italians, from time to time some journalist colleague gives me a brief
ritual mini-interview. It is brief because, as we all know, the real
problems of Italians matter to no one, unless to those Italians who
should be the consignees of information/merchandise but who are almost
never taken into account by those of the mass media, much more media
than mass, who speak and write only for themselves. And a “mini-interview”
because for too many years now I have been labelled as “unusable”, not
forming part of concordats, lobbies, sub-movements or the like.
And
so if they conducted a serious interview, with all the sacraments, with
me, it would be like denying the logic that for a long time now has
shaped information; that is that information is never an end in itself,
but always serves some other purpose, is pure exploitation - and what
really is the use of interviewing me if not to know how I see things?
And I am well known, but relatively so, and perhaps more “known for
my notoriety”, as Engels said of Karl Marx before he became famous with
the Communist Manifesto.
And
finally “ritual” because they always ask me the same little things,
such as what the audience complains about most - justice, health, schools
(for all that see the site www.olivierobeha.it in its subdivision “civis”)
or “don’t you have some particular case you have solved?” or such like.
But the last time, a colleague, after the ritual procedure, asked me
if I liked Italy, if I liked the Italians. I replied that I liked the
Italy of the nineteen sixties, that I would like the Italy of the Third
Millennium if ....” “Oh no,” she interrupted me, “You surely wouldn’t
prefer that Italy to the Italy of today, would you?”. “Well”, I replied,
“it depends on the point of view, the criteria, the parameters that
we choose to compare them ....”. “But, excuse me,” she interrupted with
more verve and a hint of not too well concealed contempt, “that was
an Italy....”. “It was”, “I try to help her, perfidious “an Italy....”.
And she continued “Yes, petit bourgeois ....”. “Ah”, I object, “and
today’s Italy on the other hand is what?” “But”, she came back, “it
was a pope-dominated Italy...” “Well, perhaps you don’t read the papers”
I tell her “and so you don’t know that all political party leaders have
gone to the Vatican as a prelude to the elections..”. “But I did not
mean that” she said in a weaker tone, “I said the base...” “Listen,”
I said, “to cut it short, how old are you?” She was pleased “30”. “Fine,
you have friends, don’t you?”. “Certainly”, she replied. “And what are
these friends like?”. She doesn’t understand. “In what way, what are
they like”? “Are they cheerful, do you enjoy yourselves?” I ask. “Not
one little bit” she replied. “There you are”, I concluded, “Let’s think
about it, perhaps cheerfulness is itself a tiny (tiny?) signal by which
we can orient ourselves. I was mulling over that conversation, that
is in practise the little interview I had had, about the thirty-year-old
who knew all about and redesigned the time before she was born, when
I had a flash of inspiration. I literally put two and two together.
In
the last week of February - it seems an age ago - but in the world of
image the event lasts not one week but a whole year - there was the
San Remo Festival. In the early days of April there was the transfer
of a soccer match (Fiorentina-Roma) from Sunday to Monday, for reasons
of public order, in short because of a high risk of hooliganism. Soccer
used to be a festival, San Remo the symbol of the carefree melodious
Italy of the Reconstruction in the post-war years. And yet the huge
TV audiences have always told us that these two institutions, San Remo
and the Championship, have been those that gave us the greatest pleasure.
Well, apart from the fact that the ratings have now declined, and give
us less pleasure, tired as we are of this Festival enslaved and watered
down by the TV and frightened by the turn that a trip to the soccer
ground has taken, to the point where the match is played on Monday “so
that fewer Roma fans will go to the stadium and so there will be less
fighting”, perhaps these two items translate into cheerfulness for this
country? Is the Italy we have around us cheerful?
Is
it a country that sings, as it has always done in the past? Is it cheerful
with soccer, does it really enjoy itself?
Rhetorical
questions, with very negative replies, like my pertinent colleague’s
“not one little bit”. If only we could manage to infect our children
with the feeling of this lack, this “cheerfulness omitted” that is condemning
more or less all of us. (traduzione Interpres sas- Giussano)
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