By Simone Bandini
Well. Where has thinking gone? “But I had it just a moment ago!” As a famous song has it.
And with thought, freedom, in its highest sense, which increasingly contemplates revolt and transgression. This great modern unknown. Both fell under the blows of the absolutely technological and technocratic, the new fetish of progressive politicians and bureaucrats, unionists to the bitter end, priests of the cult of an infinitely governable and perfectible humanity engaged in acquisition and consumption.
Are philosophers no longer questioning themselves? It seems that there is no longer any need. The bloggers, the influencers, the ‘mainstream media’, the haters, the transgendered or whoever you want, think about it. All with equal dignity and equal rights.
A completely extemporaneous and fragmented hyper-individualistic form of communication, launched in the vacuum of the web without any proven origin, not academic, no social or aesthetic history, just whatever you want.
Because major European and American thought, Western civilization (don’t call me a racist for this ‘improper’ terminology!), doesn’t see how necessary, urgent, no longer postponable is a reform of the capitalist system – which, via the role of the merchants of Renaissance Florence, came to the Fathers of the Protestant Mayflower who threw into the New World the seed of happiness on earth and worldly grace, inspired by a fervent and fundamental religiosity.
These folk could never have imagined how much of what will be called the free market would pervert the spirit in modern times, once metaphysical tension was lost and the party time of materialism began, this vulgar impelling desire to accumulate money and objects that, by their very nature, ‘count’ and do not generate lasting happiness, neither individual nor collective. A mechanism to which the impersonal root of virtual technology is perfectly linked.
Why not give back to philosophers their guiding role, so that it is knowledge, thought, structure that gives birth to reality and guides the choices of politics and not mere economics, the repetition of an outdated mantra that gives birth to nothing but sadness and cultural uniformity.
We begin to seriously question the logic of greater profit that has become a dangerous and unjust derivative and that an outright refinancing of parasitic economies is no longer tolerable any more than usury is – and that respect for nature as well as for the spirit, would be closer to religious meaning and reconcile us to the civilizing genius we sold off for a song.
Let’s start with the printed paper. And from its authority.
Recommended listening: Il mio pensiero, Luciano Ligabue