giovedì 29 aprile 2010

A society adrift, even in the language

The misery of a collectivity can be measured in several ways leaving aside private economic richness (sometimes just shown but not effectively held) in its few individual components.

The prevailing of individualism, cinicism, greed and arrogance are surely important indicators: the inability to "work together" when competitive forces always prevail over the cooperative ones is one of the factors which often erode the possibility of a community even to effectively deal with its own basic needs. In this case everyone tries to rely on "someone else from above": the State Government, the regional or the local administration. These public institutions thus concentrate not only a political power but also a social and psychological ones exploiting these incapabilities and weakness of local communities to become more independent, to operate by themselves and to become active political subjects.

This passiveness is maybe one of the major weakness of italian society as a whole. I often see in my community too many discouraging experiences whose final message could be: it's better to forget it, there's nothing to do! Think for yourself. Nonetheless, maybe due to my innate ingenuity, I hope always to see, one of these days, a sort of miracle... In the meantime, meeting together a community in the name of conviviality has become harder and harder... This is maybe the price of the mere material wealth... We are too concentrated on what we have but we have forgotten what we have lost...

This social squalor is scaling up at any level including the language one as evidenced in this book by Antonio Pascale whose presentation (in italian) is described in this link.

1 commento:

Carmelo Cannarella ha detto...

Thank you for your kind words. I'll try to do my best (with the scarce time I have to devote to blogs and computers...)