mercoledì 31 marzo 2010

This is a country for old men

During these last days many comments have been made about the recent regional elections in Italy. I don't want to discuss about losers and winners because in Italy, with the current political class, common goods, common welfare and public interests are unavoidably the sole losers (as ususal).

The only thoughts I have in this moment are related to the fact that the elctoral dynamics have clearly evidenced the widespread oldness of Italian society as a whole. Of course I'm talking about an oldness in a very broad sense.

There's an oldness in the political class (notwithstanding some very rare exceptions) confirmed by a general lack of ideas and programmes: in addition there's in Italy a demographic oldness naturally oriented towards conservatorism. A society composed mainly by old people tends to reject changes and innovation preferring the stability deriving from the "average level", to spend long time wathing TV shows than using Internet, to be afraid of immigrations and be highly influenced by the church and so on.

Modernity in Italy fails by definition: it is impossible to talk about innovation (completely ignored in Italy), creativity, sustainability, green energies to a white-hair society. This is also confirmed by those attending the bigger parties' conventions: only old people.

There is also an oldness in terms of culture and mentality: when public education, research, university and culture are continuously under attack, the only source of ideas is TV in a country where very few people read newpapers and about nodody reads even a book per year. This is a society refusing science and knowledge preferring fortune-tellers, preachers and boasters.

Old and ignorant people.

With a so rooted ignorance it is impossible to imagine and foster the idea of "change" and the consensus' manipulation is a very easy game: this is the reason why in Italy absolute contradictions and the total values' turnover are incredibly plausible.

Young people in Italy are few, marginalized, frustrated or prematurely old. Nobody invests on young people because among them change may happen. For this reason, for example, TV in Italy focuses great attention in political terms while the government in any occasion is trying to hamper internet diffusion in Italy: the former is an old people domain, the latter is mainly directed to young.

Once there was in Italy the diffused opinion about the existence of a large gap between politics and society or the fact that italian society was well forward respect to politics. In my opinion the recent regional elections have evidenced that this gap has been widely filled mainly thanks to the slowness of an old and tired society (with no force, energy, willingness) rather than to political ability.

I believe that in Italy a real demographic revolution has become an urgent need as precondition for a democratic recovery: the alternative is the mental, cultural, economic, social and political extinction.

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