Sometimes you have to answer such a simple question like “where are you from?”. You can work around difficult problems, but you cannot do the same with simple ones.
Even on my own blog, I would like to skip the question. Because, if you are an Italian, you live in a state of constant embarrassment.
That is, of course, linked to articles that flood the international press (everybody knows some of them here at DLD, Munich): Surreal…, New York Times, The Mussolini…, GQ, The Caligulan court…, Telegraph, La fiesta…, El Pais, Les filles invidées…, Le Monde, Woman tells…, Sydney Morning Herald, Italy sees macho self…, The Times of India, Rubygate…, RomandieNews. There are so many pieces all over the world about the Italian prime minister’s allegedly damned behaviour that it really seems the international public enjoys them. But there is an unseriously tragic lesson in the Italian comedy. What the hell are Italians doing about all this? Not much. Why? You can have many answers to this last question, but none are likely able to solve the embarrassment due to the previous one.
Italians seem to react differently to this story. Of course, there are those that don’t accept it at all. Confindustria’s president, Emma Marcegaglia, said that there is a very different Italy, “one that goes to sleep in the evening and goes to work early in the morning”. She is the head of the Italian entrepreneurial association: she is not politically far from – nor near to – any party. She is talking about ethics, work, and civic values. She speaks to the élite more than she influences the majority of Italians, though. And there are entrepreneurs that like the way this government is doing, and pragmatically tend to forget about ethics: probably because if business ethics was always to be implemented by this government they would have less reasons to like it.
But what does the majority of Italians really think? What do women think in Italy about their government?
The public opinion, in Italy, doesn’t exist in the same sense as elsewhere. In his new book, “La Cultura degli italiani”, Professor Tullio De Mauro has some interesting figures. Only 30% of Italians are able to understand what they read, if they read at all. Functional illiteracy is a forgotten plague in Italy. But everybody watch television. That has consequences. Ilvo Diamanti, a sociologist, shows a strange phenomenon in the set of priorities shared by the majority of Italians: for example, changes in their worries about crime are not at all related to the number of crimes that are actually perpetrated in Italy, but they are very much related to the number of stories about criminal acts that are run by the news on television. The New York Times has written that Italians sort of live in a soap opera and have a hard time when it comes to separate fiction and reality: that seems to be laterally true. There are things that no country should allow: one is letting a single person own three national TV channels out of seven.
But that is not a sufficient explanation. Italians may be dependent on TV stories. But they are even more dependent on the State (while looking at the State as a resource to use, more than a set of institutions to serve, because their major institution is still the family).
If we accept the more optimistic figures about functional illiteracy we can think that a 30% of Italians don’t really know what happens in their country. We can also think that there is a 20-30% of Italians that are really connected to the world and are able to judge what’s going on: they work with the international markets all the time, their exports make the most of Italian wealth, or at least they are able to read and they are informed. But there is also almost half of the population that – whatever they know and think – they need the State to make a living: and, in my opinion, they tend to accept any government while silently hating politicians. They will wait for any powerful man to fall, while serving him when he is in charge. And they will develop a sort of cynical view of the world in the meantime.
I like Italy. I’m sure that most Italians are good people. But to earn a real respect, they should find some ingenuity.
Hi Luca,
got to say that, as one of one of the many Italian people out of the country, but still interested on what is going on, there is a fix point to set.
It is not true that Italian people are not doing enough.
It’s not True that we accept all this. It’s not even true that most of the Italian people don’t care about politics.
I think that actually boils down to the problem of being too small. They think that they have not power to change the big picture. So either they try to change it on a small scale, or they try to live though it waiting for the time when there is going to be the moment to change the condition.
They have the power to change it on the small scale. They work on this scale and their doing a good job. I’m not the best equipped, but there are a lot of situations where we actually doing a pretty good job, or trying to achieve it.
Of course a tree that falls make more noise of the forest growing, however this forest exist.
To quote another German proverb, sometimes you can’t see the forests because of the tree.
Everybody is working, on a small scale, in same way. Hopefully we are going to overcome this dark time. Maybe we are not.
But the silent fight that everybody is enduring on a small scale shall not be under-looked.
We do exist. And we’re doing our own bit. We may scale up at some point. Somebody will find how to unite those people.
Until that point will arrive, we shall keep doing what we are able to do it best. Do our job and try to not skip any opportunities to change it.
Just keep going, we shall overcome.
You are right Michele. You are so right! Thanks for writing it
Sorry, Luca, but I cannot help but to consider this kind of topics BORING. I’m bored of embarassment vis-a-vis foreigners (uh, ya, the poor virgins…), I’m bored of Confindustria giving lessons with an admonitory finger raised, I’m bored of civic qualities equated to alleged literacy, I’m bored of the presumed exceptionalism of Italian opinion forming (really Frenchmen aren’t influenced by television AND media coverage of events ?). Above all, I’m bored of bashing State dependence of 50 per cent of the Italian economy when EVERYONE (starting for Confindustria) see the State as THE saviour in difficulties: more subsidies for ailing industries, more funds for education (which in Italy translates in “more salaries for more low quality teachers”), more funds for “research” (which in Italy translates in “more salaries for more low productivity workers IN research institutes” ), more money for public housing, more subsidies for unemployed workers (please explain to a foreigner what Cassa Integrazione means…and THEN feel embarassed), more subsidies for big newspapers with big, fat, private shareholders (someone is an “arzillo vecchietto”, but we have always shoemakers ready to defend democracy), more money for public healthcare where the average cost of services is calculated on the past cost, not on market surveyed cost… Must I continue ?
Then I stop boring myself and go on to work; maybe I’ll be able, with a little help from my friends, to change something, but I’ll be already satisfied in being able to live a decent life and help the youth not be forced to forget their dreams.
No forgetting dreams, here, as you very well know! thanks for that line, Marco. My point about the State was about the Italian idea of a sort of private State in which people think at the State as something to use for family reasons. My point was about family being the only institution and the State being not a set of institutions. My point was not about the State being important for the economy: even America saves its companies with State money.. My point is that cynical Italians will not grow their dreams, they will only wait for the next powerful man to come. And my last point was a question: shouldn’t Italians find a new ingenuity to let their dreams become more serious? What do you think about that?
Luca, you’re touching the “national character” issue here, that for Italy is a vexata quaestio, since at least the times of Guicciardini. Our foreign reader might refer to “The Italians” by Luigi Barzini, that I understand is still the standard work on this subject in English language. Personally, I feel that even the family is ceasing to be the fundamental institution. What now really reigns supreme is the individual (and in this the ’68 was fundamental), at the centre of a network of relations that includes other individuals, be they relatives, friends, accomplices, etc. The relationships with these people are of the same order of the former “familismo amorale” (amoral familism) that was used to describe the way Italians see their interaction with the rest of society. But the relationship is now much more fluid (liquid…), since the bonds are now totally voluntaristic (in my little circle, I’m famous for this motto: “all relatives are acquired relatives”, tutti i parenti sono parenti acquisiti). As for the relationships with the state (I’d stick to the lower capital), I don’t see any change since at least the XVI century (Guicciardini and Barzini again): it is longue durèe, Braudel be blessed.
As for ingenuity and dreams, we probably would need to be more candid, more ignorant (è la mancanza di ignoranza che ci frega, diceva Beppe Viola), even more naive, like the youth are (or should be, or ought be, I recently told to the 22 years old (old !?) girl who since a few weeks works with me as Junior Consultant: “Don’t change, it’s an order !”). Instead, Italian people are too clever, too intelligent, too smart, and too damn OLD. They (we) have learned everything and forget everything, adhored everyone and hanged everyone, dearly loved everyone and raped everyone. I don’t know, maybe dreams are dreams, who am I to discriminate on the basis of seriousness ? Probably there aren’t collective dreams at the Nation level. Only dreams of someone who persuded others to share his dreams: I’ll stick to help people to fulfill their personal dreams. I’ll choose the people and the dreams, but what else could I do ?