Nobody drives me, to me!
Luca Sofri
Wittgenstein
Il Post
18 February 2013
Today there is a nice interview with Elio and the stretched Stories about Repubblica, beautiful because they say different intelligent things and not banal (while lately it has become banal and predictable almost everything that happens and is said around Elio and the tense Stories). Among the other answers, however, at a certain point Elio says something banal yes:
What makes this sentence original is that Elio says it, putting into crisis the cliché that would like such thoughts to be only in the head of soloni, snobs, and overbearing Stalinist intellectuals (the same, I see that it has generated irritation around). The "educational" role of everything we do, and of those who have tools to transmit to others their own culture and competence, is indeed indisputable: but it is systematically hindered by a childhood hypersensitivity that we all have towards the idea that someone guides us, educate us, address us, give us lessons (what am I doing, me here: if not try to guide, address?). How much one should be careful not to hurt sensibility had also noticed mounts, before me (here is Roman Vlad, instead; and here an American astrophysicist): but I wrote a long thing that I willingly attach here.
The comparison of ideas and reflections is the first mechanism of building knowledge and an informed opinion on things. That in turn is what a better society is built on: understanding things, understanding what is right, from time to time, and making wise and informed choices. There are the right things and the wrong things, and you have to do the right things. You only get it by studying, accepting lessons, taking every piece of information as a teaching and an extra piece of your treasure trove of knowledge (even when you discard or discard it). This gives us a double responsibility, corresponding to the double duty we have in life, the improvement of ourselves and of the world. I repeat it all the way back, sorry: the world is getting better by improving ourselves and others and making us willing to be improved by ourselves and others. The first thing is to spread and offer to others the things that we know and understand, especially about what is right and what is wrong and about the tools to understand it. Imparting lessons.8 The second thing you get symmetrically by accepting lessons. It is a virtuous circle, increasingly interrupted by the attitudes of which we have spoken. And that equally affects– even their relationship creates a virtuous or vicious circle– society and us other people on one side, and politics on the other.
It seems to me that there are two main obstacles to the reconstruction of this virtuous circle. One is the psychological one about which I have spoken and which lies behind the accusations of snobbery, presumption of moral superiority, presumption, distance from the «real country» that boil those who try to improve it, the real country, starting from itself: how dare you? Who does he think he is? Even more if it does not have a position of recognized power that saves it from the above questions (we are conformists: in competition with our peers, and discreet with our superiors). The other obstacle is linguistic intolerance. A social reprobation for some words, which blinds us to their real meaning and value.9 We cannot stand «lessons». We can’t stand someone «teaching us» things. Nobody is allowed to «educate us», despite the fact that educating literally means «lead out, so free, bring to light something that is hidden». If someone educates me it means I’m rude, we think. If someone teaches me, it means I’m ignorant. If someone explains me, it means I don’t understand. I’m an idiot. And my insecurity– which suggests to me that it really is– makes me even more unbearable. And so we reject pedagogy and education– for their infantilizing sound to our ignorant ears and for the «crest cagone» – and allow a general instigation, and a claim of ignorance. A thick layer of insecurity is glued around us and makes us react to everything with fear of the effect it will have on our image in the eyes of others. Every time someone fills our glass, we rush to find justifications for the fact that it was empty. We live every human shortcoming as a public failure. We are very concerned about the effect we have, and too insecure to make this anxiety a stimulus rather than an incentive to escape.
To conclude: all this is not solved by analyzing it. Analysing serves to understand, and discussing serves to understand. And understanding serves to confront. In this case, however, understanding and discussing are hampered by the very limit we were talking about: the unwillingness to understand and discuss. How do you learn to take lessons, how do you take lessons? Do we work on words, by hypocritically tiptoeing and using political-linguistic correctness that avoids very sensible but potentially offensive terms to our sensibilities? 10 (as you may have noticed, I’M done flooring myself at several points of this exhibition, which some will then find too cautious and others too wise). At a certain point inside the barbarians, Baricco speaks in a very acute way of how much the question of the sensibility of the receiver with respect to the content of the things that are said, having traced his analysis to the reading of a Goffredo Parise text (again! Of course he said of enlightening things, this Parise):
The word written at a certain point became communication where it used to be expression, says Baricco. And it follows that any subsequent attempt at expression must now come to terms with the fact that it will always be understood as communication: «What are you saying to me?» «What do you want me to think?» «where are you going?» «where does this book go?» «yes, yes, but then?».
And so, what do you do? Do you work on words so much that communication becomes hyperexpressive?
Do you make a great collective self-analysis? Do you give up?
******
8 Not only do we find it difficult to accept lessons, but when they can be good and fruitful we are even reluctant to give them. God forbid we make anyone’s life any better. The entrepreneur Alessandro mannarini, interviewed by «Corriere della Sera» on the parties of his friend gianpaolo tarantini with drugs and exploitation of prostitution, answered candidly: «I’ve seen others do but everyone on holiday does what he wants. I couldn’t stand up to moralizer».
9 Richard Thaler and Cass sunstein, in their popular nudge essay, have from the beginning felt the reader of such linguistic difficulty. They call their political attitude «libertarian paternalism», knowing well «that readers will not find this expression of their immediate liking», because both terms «have been taken hostage by dogmatists».
10 Fofi uses this formula, attentive to sensibilities and alternative to the use of misunderstood verbs such as «teaching» and «educating»: «(Man helps himself) helping him to bring out of himself the ability to understand the world and find his own place, active and supportive».
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2013/02/18/amme-non-mi-guida-nessuno-amme/
Luca Sofri
Wittgenstein
Il Post
18 February 2013
Today there is a nice interview with Elio and the stretched Stories about Repubblica, beautiful because they say different intelligent things and not banal (while lately it has become banal and predictable almost everything that happens and is said around Elio and the tense Stories). Among the other answers, however, at a certain point Elio says something banal yes:
«The public must be guided, addressed»
What makes this sentence original is that Elio says it, putting into crisis the cliché that would like such thoughts to be only in the head of soloni, snobs, and overbearing Stalinist intellectuals (the same, I see that it has generated irritation around). The "educational" role of everything we do, and of those who have tools to transmit to others their own culture and competence, is indeed indisputable: but it is systematically hindered by a childhood hypersensitivity that we all have towards the idea that someone guides us, educate us, address us, give us lessons (what am I doing, me here: if not try to guide, address?). How much one should be careful not to hurt sensibility had also noticed mounts, before me (here is Roman Vlad, instead; and here an American astrophysicist): but I wrote a long thing that I willingly attach here.
The comparison of ideas and reflections is the first mechanism of building knowledge and an informed opinion on things. That in turn is what a better society is built on: understanding things, understanding what is right, from time to time, and making wise and informed choices. There are the right things and the wrong things, and you have to do the right things. You only get it by studying, accepting lessons, taking every piece of information as a teaching and an extra piece of your treasure trove of knowledge (even when you discard or discard it). This gives us a double responsibility, corresponding to the double duty we have in life, the improvement of ourselves and of the world. I repeat it all the way back, sorry: the world is getting better by improving ourselves and others and making us willing to be improved by ourselves and others. The first thing is to spread and offer to others the things that we know and understand, especially about what is right and what is wrong and about the tools to understand it. Imparting lessons.8 The second thing you get symmetrically by accepting lessons. It is a virtuous circle, increasingly interrupted by the attitudes of which we have spoken. And that equally affects– even their relationship creates a virtuous or vicious circle– society and us other people on one side, and politics on the other.
It seems to me that there are two main obstacles to the reconstruction of this virtuous circle. One is the psychological one about which I have spoken and which lies behind the accusations of snobbery, presumption of moral superiority, presumption, distance from the «real country» that boil those who try to improve it, the real country, starting from itself: how dare you? Who does he think he is? Even more if it does not have a position of recognized power that saves it from the above questions (we are conformists: in competition with our peers, and discreet with our superiors). The other obstacle is linguistic intolerance. A social reprobation for some words, which blinds us to their real meaning and value.9 We cannot stand «lessons». We can’t stand someone «teaching us» things. Nobody is allowed to «educate us», despite the fact that educating literally means «lead out, so free, bring to light something that is hidden». If someone educates me it means I’m rude, we think. If someone teaches me, it means I’m ignorant. If someone explains me, it means I don’t understand. I’m an idiot. And my insecurity– which suggests to me that it really is– makes me even more unbearable. And so we reject pedagogy and education– for their infantilizing sound to our ignorant ears and for the «crest cagone» – and allow a general instigation, and a claim of ignorance. A thick layer of insecurity is glued around us and makes us react to everything with fear of the effect it will have on our image in the eyes of others. Every time someone fills our glass, we rush to find justifications for the fact that it was empty. We live every human shortcoming as a public failure. We are very concerned about the effect we have, and too insecure to make this anxiety a stimulus rather than an incentive to escape.
Our capacity to educate is experienced realistically in ourselves: by educating us, we will have educated others.Piero gobetti, The Liberal Revolution
To conclude: all this is not solved by analyzing it. Analysing serves to understand, and discussing serves to understand. And understanding serves to confront. In this case, however, understanding and discussing are hampered by the very limit we were talking about: the unwillingness to understand and discuss. How do you learn to take lessons, how do you take lessons? Do we work on words, by hypocritically tiptoeing and using political-linguistic correctness that avoids very sensible but potentially offensive terms to our sensibilities? 10 (as you may have noticed, I’M done flooring myself at several points of this exhibition, which some will then find too cautious and others too wise). At a certain point inside the barbarians, Baricco speaks in a very acute way of how much the question of the sensibility of the receiver with respect to the content of the things that are said, having traced his analysis to the reading of a Goffredo Parise text (again! Of course he said of enlightening things, this Parise):
Suddenly the written word shifted its center of gravity from the voice that spoke it to the ear that I was listening. As it were, he went up to the surface and sought the transit of the world: at the cost of losing all its value in the departure from its roots.
The word written at a certain point became communication where it used to be expression, says Baricco. And it follows that any subsequent attempt at expression must now come to terms with the fact that it will always be understood as communication: «What are you saying to me?» «What do you want me to think?» «where are you going?» «where does this book go?» «yes, yes, but then?».
And so, what do you do? Do you work on words so much that communication becomes hyperexpressive?
Do you make a great collective self-analysis? Do you give up?
******
8 Not only do we find it difficult to accept lessons, but when they can be good and fruitful we are even reluctant to give them. God forbid we make anyone’s life any better. The entrepreneur Alessandro mannarini, interviewed by «Corriere della Sera» on the parties of his friend gianpaolo tarantini with drugs and exploitation of prostitution, answered candidly: «I’ve seen others do but everyone on holiday does what he wants. I couldn’t stand up to moralizer».
9 Richard Thaler and Cass sunstein, in their popular nudge essay, have from the beginning felt the reader of such linguistic difficulty. They call their political attitude «libertarian paternalism», knowing well «that readers will not find this expression of their immediate liking», because both terms «have been taken hostage by dogmatists».
10 Fofi uses this formula, attentive to sensibilities and alternative to the use of misunderstood verbs such as «teaching» and «educating»: «(Man helps himself) helping him to bring out of himself the ability to understand the world and find his own place, active and supportive».
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2013/02/18/amme-non-mi-guida-nessuno-amme/
