SOCIETY/ Where is the zest for life?

Snippets of news. In Naples, piles of garbage are still in the streets. The search for a realistic solution to the problem, as usual, has given way to denial of responsibility.  Meanwhile, Greece launches the austerity plan, while Spain is now a concern. And the risk of Italy succumbing to the disease continues to be a nightmare. From the coast of North Africa, refugees continue to arrive. While in Libya a war goes on without a clear vision for the future, in our country we are divided over the number of people we will allow in. Reports and bulletins in the papers are mixed with pages of wiretaps published in defiance of the confidentiality of investigations and of respect for basic human rights. The conversations are almost always legally irrelevant, but are used as weapons in the fight for power. Reports and news on TV, especially publicly funded channels, are given to chatter that cuts off any attempt to bring forward the authentic characteristics of reality.

The result is a picture of a country caught in a confused climate of emotion often skillfully augmented, as evidenced in the case of the recent referendum on the nuclear power and the handling of water distribution, whatever the judgment  on the merit of the issues at hand. An era that claims to proudly exalt rationality has entrusted referendum issues to singers, comedians and dancers, obscuring any technical discussion about the issues at stake. And Europe is not doing better. We have an EU that looks more and more like an unfinished structure quite distant from the brave design of its founding fathers, with an evident democratic deficit and an uncertain operative capacity. It is enough to consider the total absence of  a compelling idea in front of an epochal phenomenon such as immigration. It feels like a society resigned to an irreversible destiny,  even if our past history has faced much harsher and more complex conditions than those of today.