I was invited by an executive in a high school in Power to keep my speech for the day of memory. Since I had been asked to do more of a historical illustration of the events concerning the Holocaust, I declined the invitation. It was my intention, however, update the speech. Failed this opportunity I thought about writing a post anyway to give the students an opportunity to know my ideas.
cast write this post before me imagine having students and students of the school, I apologize if sometimes, some things are set in mo 'notes, in the form oral and not always in a systematic way.
Abstract
I would like to analyze some current phenomena understand if what is happening today has a relationship with the past, not only in the sense of historical continuity, but in the way of thinking and behaving people.
What I propose is "linguistic analysis" (certainly not the school) and see where this takes us.
Understanding the language means to enter the world of thought and representation, understand what is our weltenshaung, our worldview. It is also interesting to understand how we arrive at this worldview, because they say certain things, because they use certain words.
The language and thought are more united than some would have us believe.
In today's society, defined as the knowledge society, it seems sometimes that the relationship between language and the world has definitely lost - it is clear that we should explain what the world (the philosophers are more inclined to complicate things).
argument
was my intention to speak on the day of remembrance, on the tragic story of the Holocaust, when I was hit by riots Rosarno and hunt for "negro" that is being waged, with the forced removal of blacks employed.
This led me to reflect and try to understand whether what happened in the past is past. I mean if he can come back or appear in different forms.
I do not mean any racist and xenophobic groups of various walks of political interests me understand some of the speeches and attitudes of ordinary people, that is, forms of reasoning and behavior that in my opinion seems to be spreading more and more.
worried I wonder, thinking about the horrible events of the past, if indeed there are limits within us to make us think that these "evil" has now reached a given threshold unbearable. It is so true that these things are so horrible for us because they represent the unbearable absolute evil?
But it is possible to mark a threshold of affordability, there is a level above the tolerability of moral evil? What are the barriers that we, society, the civilized world put in place? As we evolve our behavior and our beliefs? What are the messages that we give our society? and as we are given?
How many questions, perhaps too many. I will try to respond only to some, I shall refer especially to the problems. Maybe I will not give any response. I ask only questions (that worry me and distressing at this time). I just try to make speeches and to "understand" what I can.
In a radio program "Home" aired in the early morning on Radio three I heard this phrase spoken by a citizen of Rosarno comment as to the facts:
In fact, it was necessary kill them all, because we have allowed the civilians to leave
The tone of his voice was sure and arrogant, with an inflection at mo 'challenge (meaning: those who dare to disagree). My first reaction was dismay. Then I decided to capture and reflect on what I'd heard a starting point for understanding what was happening and why I was so disappointed. I said I want to parse this sentence trying to figure out what's behind.
note mine is an "philosophical" and more general. I consider this opportunity to say that not because that person Calabria. What really strikes me is the fact that we can publicly say something so HEAVY. What is the point of all this?
Unfortunately not a single review is a widespread opinion. Reveals a more spacious feel and perceive things. I am reminded of some episodes: the abuse and killing of the homeless, the dismantling of Roma camps ... now I have the impression that these things happen in a context of generalized normality ed'indifferenza.
We come to questions of language. In my post than the political-cultural debate I noticed how some words and have turned instead to express important concepts have become caricatures opponent to give a picture ugly. The caricature emphasizes a defect and omits the rest. It aims to make the enemy ridiculous. So no chance to understanding. fact, once built a scheme of definition, it triggers a mechanism of conditioned reflex that automatically speeches are simply repeating what is produced by the scheme. This happens in most of the television talk show, which is also based on the current policy. Who participates in a talk media enter into an arena and repeats its patterns. Fighting in the arena not to understand or make themselves understood, broadening the horizons of their knowledge or understanding . Wanted only the support and applause from the audience playing mostly on emotion. Ultimately do not connect things together, not looking at the complexity of contexts. It is fair to say everything from the most mundane to the most terrible things.
Caution I'm not saying that we must censor. I'm saying that there is no reflection (or lack there). If you look in general it seems that reality has become artificial, simulated, a reality of files, fading and changing, with more and more difficult to draw the boundaries of truth of things?
For years we have repeated the slogan Italians good people: the Italians are warm and anti-racist. Even in historical context we have tried to quibble about the Fascist racial laws, trying to make distinctions than Hitler, because the Italians had a different spirit Nazi ideology, but without considering that the effects were the same.
The major problems of social transformations in the political debate have been abandoned in the cultural reality spurious logic, especially those of immigration. Accentuating the look of fear is hinged almost exclusively on public discourse.
exploitation, as was revealed in Rosario, but covers many other areas of Italy, has been masked. Immersed in a mist to make it invisible (I am reminded of the Nacht und Nebel memory of Hitler) [1] . Thus, masking the new slavery, as is now the news reports that sociological studies attest.
Be careful, though, because the two are held. In fact, if I create fear, confinement and concealment can paradoxically make more freely.
this logic is a very practical, which is convenient for those with mining is making money and imposes its territorial power. If it is true this is also true, however, that this logic comes in handy in other ways also to ordinary citizens who indirectly receives the benefit. In no longer has to deal with cultural issues that undermines its own status and self-representation. Nor should pursue moral problems or religious, or social, such as redistribution of wealth. Nor the rights, which are designed as a kind of privilege and do not belong to all humanity, because to paraphrase Kant the world is round and all as human beings inhabit the same land, and sooner or later we meet walking around [2] .
In short, more or less overt or covert, there are ongoing processes of containment, and reproduction of exclusion mechanisms that link processes of dehumanization that took place in the past.
Let us pause a bit 'rights issues because I believe that the uncertainties of human rights are great aporia (contradiction) of modern citizenship that dramatically reveals the current face of stateless persons and migrants of today.
Hannah Arendt, a great thinker of the twentieth century, as a Jew had to flee from Nazi Germany the living condition of statelessness, which drew significant reflections reported in some of his works. At that time the phenomenon dell'apolidicità concerned, in particular, the exiled Jews, the victims of political persecution and ethnic minorities. Already an hour, with a tone of tragic irony, observed how the attitude of European governments towards stateless swing widely between idealism and removal that is "sincere in the efforts of idealists who stubbornly insist on considering 'inalienable' human rights actually enjoyed only by citizens of the most prosperous and civilians, and the situation of persons deprived of rights, which is constantly worsening, to make up the internment camp ... the current solution to the problem of the residence of ' displaced persons' [3] . Exacerbating the situation was the loss of the right of asylum, which always considered the symbol of human rights in the sphere of international relations was reduced to just a pure anachronism. According to Arendt was born a new breed of men who had no right to be called men simply because they were considered "unnecessary," "remains, or waste of humanity." They were men with no history and no world. And Arendet says something really strong, "the only country that the world had to offer stateless" [4] was paradoxically the internment camp as remedies for the repatriation and naturalization failed both and for the tumultuous growth of the refugees to East and West European governments are reluctant to the mall, not up to the problem is inadequate and misleading to the law of the nation state. The ultimate consequence was that those governments are totalitarian than democratic delegate the whole matter to the police "who was authorized to act on their own, to rre available directly from the people ... as an independent government." [5]
now return to our linguistic analysis, that we take what was said by one of our citizens about the facts of the Calabrian Rosarno:
Take the first part: In fact, it was necessary to kill them all
The expression is given in an impersonal way. Missing persons in the flesh. There is, first and foremost , taking individual responsibility. You play in a is impersonal and at the same time so a fact already taken for granted.
But the most extraordinary thing is that there are others. Others, ie workers blacks, are canceled in their singularity. Evidently the process nientificazione is fulfilled: the blacks are just the workforce, at the time that no longer respond to the logic of exploitation (such as objects or instruments) may be simply destroyed.
There is a confirmation of this in the second part of the statement: because we have allowed the civilians to leave
back as can be seen a necklace old that the superiority of civilization, even here gives a precise boundary between civil and uncivil, and it gives for granted.
reflect a bit '. Now to be considered superior must confront someone. If the comparison is placed on the level of human quality, then it is determined that the superior quality has a different and better dall'inferiore. That is, in other words you draw boundaries between what is human that is less human. We try to understand the logic of this aberration and what consequences can result. You can go as far as to consider some human beings, not as people but as things (a real process of nullification). That is, it can be said that the other is not a man, that is nothing, not a significant ... How big is the step to the annihilation ? How far is the moment for which we pass from words to deeds even if not directly, but by accepting what is happening in impersonal?
H. Arendt tried to explain why the Nazi phenomenon, why what happened has been possible in Western culture that was able to move forward and gain many rights and proclaim itself as the beacon of humanity. He tried to understand in investigating too deep to understand the limits. Certainly the results of its analysis can be discussed, but investigating the Nazi phenomenon, we've learned one important thing: the fragility of our condition and the limits of our way of being.
when conformity reigns, that is when it is uncritically immersed in the world around us, our existence in the decreasing part of something that completely surrounds us, within which we are only a small cog in the smooth operation, you can run the great risk that the evil "absolute" can become rather trivial as it comes in the banality of everyday life, with the justification that the world goes on as follows.
Arendt's account of the Eichmann trial did for the New Yorker magazine, which use the term "banality of evil" caused many controversies on the fear that would produce an effect of trivializing the genocide. Arendt Eichmann in humans has only scrutinized: the image that comes out is that the lieutenant colonel of the SS (administrator of the machinery of extermination) appeared to be a "terrifying normality", a mere bureaucrat incapable of responses that were not of formal. No doubt the moral tragedy, all part of the routine of obedience in hierarchical order. Any job to which you simply pay attention. Eichmann, Arendt stresses the, is a human being totally devoid of autonomy of thought: he felt no remorse because during the Nazi evil was the law and the law could not be violated. The "final solution" that Eichmann was not "a job with his routine, its ups and its downs." Where did the moral boundaries? In conformity to the moral threshold can easily be crossed, even disappears, aside from subtle shifts in a becoming more and more passively in which either the adjustment processes and market lead us to act without response, redefining our normality
"What we now think is really that evil is never 'radical', but only extreme, and have neither depth nor demonic dimension. It can invade and destroy the whole world, because it expands on the surface like a mushroom. It 'challenge' as I said, thought, because thought tries to reach the depths, to go to the roots, and when they look bad, is frustrated because they do not find anything. This is its 'banality'. Only the well is deep and can be radical "(H. Arendt)
For H. Arendt you have to do is not stop thinking, thinking qualifies the man and makes him human. The size of the qualification is not thought the world of things. The man has his own inner life and thought it opens up the possibility of meeting with each other.
Workers Rosarno blacks have reacted to their exploitation because they are men and as such they think and have inalienable human dignity. If men are to all intents and purposes they are carriers of human rights.
Here are the new frontiers that await us in the future, such as drawing up new horizons. They relate to the ability to build new relations to human society, knowing how to combine the differences, how to think in terms of human rights such that they can really relate to everyone.
The right to have rights "- observed the Arendt - or the right or any individual to belong to humanity should be guaranteed by humanity itself. Which is the prerequisite for each individual, with the power to think and speak, the right to human relationships, the right to opinion and political action.
Here, perhaps, the "riots" of blacks and Castelvolturno Rosarno, carried out by desperate men and harassed, they mean a rupture in a comfortable silence. I am with them ... and you?
Ulrich
