figure it out for themselves
Luca Sofri
Wittgenstein
Ilpost.it
11 Mars 2020
A few years ago, during an American holiday with my family, my son Ludovico was very intrigued by the discovery of the honor system, which was illustrated by a friend who lives in Seattle. We had come across a discount in a museum for those who prove to have come by bike, showing the bike helmet. And Ludovico had prudently asked: "how do they know that one did not wear the helmet only for the discount, and came in the car?". So our friend Diego explained the honor system to him.
Unfortunately, we would have liked to have done without it, but the government decrees on the coronavirus and their formulations on behavioural and travel restrictions are an interesting laboratory of reflection on the balance between education and repression, but also more extensively on the State’s interference in people’s autonomous choices, on citizens' ability to "look after themselves" and on many other concepts that have always been discussed with many contradictions (think of those right-wing people who want at the same time more freedom from the state and more control of the state). And finally, they generate reflections on the education of citizens, on the information, on the cultural work to be done to improve the functioning of a community and a country.
A confident and constructive reading of the decrees we are talking about can in fact consider them as such: they are a measured attempt to suggest to people a gravity of the situation and a need for sacrifices that had hitherto been underestimated, without recourse to explicit prohibitions, restrictions on freedom, authoritarian and repressive approaches. Despite the widespread use of the term these days, those rules are not "prohibitions" and the Count himself at the press conference was careful not to call them so, with balanced but revealing formulations of this attempt.
And being excluded also in practice that the observance of the demands of the decree can be managed in a police and systematic way, I think that the idea, sensible, was: we raise the voice and ask for help at the same time, we scare and responsibility at the same time. Let us rely on– once the dangers are cleared–to the understanding and conscience of people, but this cannot be enough without the deterrent of sanctions for those who have not understood even now. A right balance– in my opinion– of education and repression, in which the first always prevails and allows there to be no overpowering of an authoritarian state with respect to the autonomy of judgment and freedom of persons.
After this encouraging reading, however, three problems arose. I count three, at least.
The first is a formal and substantial contradiction: on the one hand there is the communication that there are no absolute prohibitions, the relying on a part of common sense and interpretation ("of course you can go shopping"), the hint that the various cases of "necessity" – obviously very ambiguous and elastic term– they are delegated to the judgement of the individuals; on the other hand there is the explicit call to sanctions and defined criminal consequences. And you understand that it is difficult for people to feel serene about their autonomy of judgment and common sense if at the same time something says to them "if you fail in judgment, we will put you in jail". It’s the honor system of one of its founding halves.
Tell me exactly what I can do and what I can’t.
And here is the second problem: that in such an unprecedented state intervention situation to overturn common and customary behaviors, to regulate exactly what can and cannot be done is practically impossible. The most diverse eventualities are manifesting themselves right after the announcement of the rules, many unforeseen events. I am not a lawyer, but it could be the decree with the highest relationship between its brevity and the field of occasions to which it applies: field summarized in "lives". Of 60 million people. These days even the Post– and I imagine even more the major newspapers– receives frequent requests for explanation on very singular (and often poignant) cases of people with the most diverse and delicate needs and problems. "Can I do this?" we all ask ourselves several times every day. And we have all already imagined great and small "normative voids", sometimes insignificant but other times very significant and dramatic. A greater example of all concerns families that for one reason or another (the separated, for example) do not live continuously and permanently together: simply wanting to see oneself, is in those cases a "necessity"? (Of course it is, I say: but I decide, it is not written or said anywhere). Not to mention the simple romantic relationships of non-cohabitants.
It is true, as some complain, that the instructions are vague and sometimes frightening. It is also true that they are instructions that are trying to do something that has never been done, and perhaps you can not do so much better than this– adding gradually more clarity, and "to understand" – remaining a democratic country, libertarian and with a Constitution.
The third problem is related to this, but it has a whole history, and it is the biggest and most enlightening problem of the functioning of the country, in my opinion: that precedes and will follow this emergency. The honor system, or any even more moderate and controlled investment in citizens' responsibility and awareness, needs citizens' awareness. Many, in recent days, have rather called for severe, authoritarian and repressive interventions, after observing the lightness with which a part of the population was reacting to requests for prudence. And the feeling is that often we ourselves need "orders", not instructions: many of us struggle to appropriate the responsibility to decide for the best, feel disoriented, fear to do the wrong thing. They want "orders" and someone to give them to them.
It is partly human and understandable, but it has also increased extraordinarily from the low level of information and culture that we receive. Being responsible, conscious, autonomous in reasonable and conscientious judgment is the result of knowing things, understanding them, being informed of them, as well as being educated in the sense and functioning of a community (and perhaps also to the understanding and methods of science). "to understand it alone" is the result of a political and cultural work that is now more weakened than ever. The rituals and secular comments about Italians who need to be commanded are once again the overflow towards the repression of something that should be left to education: Italians– we– need to be educated, or educate themselves if you prefer (on the meaning of educating and the sensibilities that collide here); it is not by chance that the honor system is widespread in countries where the investment in civic education, education and correct information has always been greater.
Maybe we’ll remember that when it’s over. maybe it’ll help.
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/03/11/capirlo-da-soli/
in this new there are several other link
I translated this one:
https://free-libbberamente.blogspot.com/2020/03/nobody-drives-me-to-me-luca-sofri.html
here is the remaining in italian, the first link are the italian goverment infos for Corona virus:
https://www.ilpost.it/2020/03/10/governo-coronavirus-domande-risposte-faq/
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2012/02/04/educare-le-masse/
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2019/03/06/sorvegliare-e-punire-2/
english
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_system
Luca Sofri
Wittgenstein
Ilpost.it
11 Mars 2020
A few years ago, during an American holiday with my family, my son Ludovico was very intrigued by the discovery of the honor system, which was illustrated by a friend who lives in Seattle. We had come across a discount in a museum for those who prove to have come by bike, showing the bike helmet. And Ludovico had prudently asked: "how do they know that one did not wear the helmet only for the discount, and came in the car?". So our friend Diego explained the honor system to him.
"An honor system or honesty system is a philosophical way of running a Variety of Endeavors based on trust, honor, and honesty. Something that operates under the rule of the "honor system" is usually something that does not have strictly enforced rules governing its principles.
The honor system is also a system granting freedom from customary surveillance (as to students or prisoners) with the understanding that those who are so freed will be bound by their honor to observe Regulations (e.g. prison farms are operated under the honor system), and will therefore not abuse the trust placed in them.
A person engaged in an honor system has a strong negative concept of breaking or going against it. The negatives may include community shame, loss of status, loss of a personal sense of integrity and pride or in extreme situations, banishment from one’s community."
Unfortunately, we would have liked to have done without it, but the government decrees on the coronavirus and their formulations on behavioural and travel restrictions are an interesting laboratory of reflection on the balance between education and repression, but also more extensively on the State’s interference in people’s autonomous choices, on citizens' ability to "look after themselves" and on many other concepts that have always been discussed with many contradictions (think of those right-wing people who want at the same time more freedom from the state and more control of the state). And finally, they generate reflections on the education of citizens, on the information, on the cultural work to be done to improve the functioning of a community and a country.
A confident and constructive reading of the decrees we are talking about can in fact consider them as such: they are a measured attempt to suggest to people a gravity of the situation and a need for sacrifices that had hitherto been underestimated, without recourse to explicit prohibitions, restrictions on freedom, authoritarian and repressive approaches. Despite the widespread use of the term these days, those rules are not "prohibitions" and the Count himself at the press conference was careful not to call them so, with balanced but revealing formulations of this attempt.
"there will be the constraint to avoid any displacementThe same decree distinguishes between the formulas of "absolute prohibition of mobility" intended for the infected and that "avoiding any movement" for all the others.
we do not have a total ban on transfer, but there is a need to motivate it, and therefore certainly there is a reduced mobilitywe must all be more responsible"
And being excluded also in practice that the observance of the demands of the decree can be managed in a police and systematic way, I think that the idea, sensible, was: we raise the voice and ask for help at the same time, we scare and responsibility at the same time. Let us rely on– once the dangers are cleared–to the understanding and conscience of people, but this cannot be enough without the deterrent of sanctions for those who have not understood even now. A right balance– in my opinion– of education and repression, in which the first always prevails and allows there to be no overpowering of an authoritarian state with respect to the autonomy of judgment and freedom of persons.
After this encouraging reading, however, three problems arose. I count three, at least.
The first is a formal and substantial contradiction: on the one hand there is the communication that there are no absolute prohibitions, the relying on a part of common sense and interpretation ("of course you can go shopping"), the hint that the various cases of "necessity" – obviously very ambiguous and elastic term– they are delegated to the judgement of the individuals; on the other hand there is the explicit call to sanctions and defined criminal consequences. And you understand that it is difficult for people to feel serene about their autonomy of judgment and common sense if at the same time something says to them "if you fail in judgment, we will put you in jail". It’s the honor system of one of its founding halves.
Tell me exactly what I can do and what I can’t.
And here is the second problem: that in such an unprecedented state intervention situation to overturn common and customary behaviors, to regulate exactly what can and cannot be done is practically impossible. The most diverse eventualities are manifesting themselves right after the announcement of the rules, many unforeseen events. I am not a lawyer, but it could be the decree with the highest relationship between its brevity and the field of occasions to which it applies: field summarized in "lives". Of 60 million people. These days even the Post– and I imagine even more the major newspapers– receives frequent requests for explanation on very singular (and often poignant) cases of people with the most diverse and delicate needs and problems. "Can I do this?" we all ask ourselves several times every day. And we have all already imagined great and small "normative voids", sometimes insignificant but other times very significant and dramatic. A greater example of all concerns families that for one reason or another (the separated, for example) do not live continuously and permanently together: simply wanting to see oneself, is in those cases a "necessity"? (Of course it is, I say: but I decide, it is not written or said anywhere). Not to mention the simple romantic relationships of non-cohabitants.
It is true, as some complain, that the instructions are vague and sometimes frightening. It is also true that they are instructions that are trying to do something that has never been done, and perhaps you can not do so much better than this– adding gradually more clarity, and "to understand" – remaining a democratic country, libertarian and with a Constitution.
The third problem is related to this, but it has a whole history, and it is the biggest and most enlightening problem of the functioning of the country, in my opinion: that precedes and will follow this emergency. The honor system, or any even more moderate and controlled investment in citizens' responsibility and awareness, needs citizens' awareness. Many, in recent days, have rather called for severe, authoritarian and repressive interventions, after observing the lightness with which a part of the population was reacting to requests for prudence. And the feeling is that often we ourselves need "orders", not instructions: many of us struggle to appropriate the responsibility to decide for the best, feel disoriented, fear to do the wrong thing. They want "orders" and someone to give them to them.
It is partly human and understandable, but it has also increased extraordinarily from the low level of information and culture that we receive. Being responsible, conscious, autonomous in reasonable and conscientious judgment is the result of knowing things, understanding them, being informed of them, as well as being educated in the sense and functioning of a community (and perhaps also to the understanding and methods of science). "to understand it alone" is the result of a political and cultural work that is now more weakened than ever. The rituals and secular comments about Italians who need to be commanded are once again the overflow towards the repression of something that should be left to education: Italians– we– need to be educated, or educate themselves if you prefer (on the meaning of educating and the sensibilities that collide here); it is not by chance that the honor system is widespread in countries where the investment in civic education, education and correct information has always been greater.
Maybe we’ll remember that when it’s over. maybe it’ll help.
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/03/11/capirlo-da-soli/
in this new there are several other link
I translated this one:
https://free-libbberamente.blogspot.com/2020/03/nobody-drives-me-to-me-luca-sofri.html
here is the remaining in italian, the first link are the italian goverment infos for Corona virus:
https://www.ilpost.it/2020/03/10/governo-coronavirus-domande-risposte-faq/
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2012/02/04/educare-le-masse/
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2019/03/06/sorvegliare-e-punire-2/
english
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_system
