Palermo, Caivano and then Tor Bella Monaca and Naples. Terrible events that this summer’s news have dramatically forced us to deal with. Arousing dismay and disapproval which were expressed in a unanimous attitude of condemnation. So disruptive, sometimes, that not even the victims of acts of violence are spared, ungenerously accused of not having prevented it. Demonstrating how complex and full of pitfalls the problem can be.
Some suburbs are, as we well know, not pleasant places. The state of degradation in which they find themselves and the difficult life that takes place in some neighborhoods, abandoned to themselves due to a sort of resignation to tolerance on the part of the institutions, has been known for some time. Thanks to politics, which prefers not to see a certain type of minute discomfort and prefers to dedicate itself to major issues, which give more visibility and find greater echo in the public debate.
It is quite obvious, in the face of events of this kind, that the problem cannot be solved by surrounding the suburbs with armed militias, as suggested by someone riding the wave of blame. Nor emptying them of respectable residents – to meet their requests for help – leaving the field free for criminals. Who will always find other victims ready to succumb to their violence, replacing those taken away. Nor with occasional, completely symbolic interventions, such as the reorganization of the sports facility which was the scene of the violence. As perhaps, unfortunately, the new will be in tens of years if no one takes proper care of it and abandons it to itself. Nor by imposing more severe penalties on violators of punitive regulations issued. Rules added specifically, but almost impracticable in the reality of the facts if not in the imagination of those who do not know them nor, much less, know the daily lives of the people who have to deal with such facts. Or by relying on the propaganda effect of a blitz by the police, as the government wanted to do, with absolutely poor concrete results, as was to be expected, and with almost no impact on the social fabric in terms of definitive restoration of legality.
Because – as has been underlined by many – the problem is cultural and must be addressed as such. But we must be careful about what this statement means and, therefore, how the purpose must be implemented if we want it to give the desired results.
Culture, in all its meanings, is exclusively the secondary product of the relationship between man and the environment, whatever its nature and type. It is able to independently influence this relationship only reflexively, once it has been acquired and assimilated. Culture does not reside, already perfected, in an empyrean from which its light benignly descends to illuminate minds with its infinite wisdom, except in the metaphysical allegories that fascinated medieval poets. It is the environment, natural and human, that sets it and configures its character – which is commensurate with every environment – and decides its outcomes. And, consequently, the environment, in its broadest sense, must be the primary place of choice for any intervention that wants to restore civil living conditions where they have been lost, lost in the decay of places that has impoverished their soul. .
Resignation is fatal when no plausible alternatives are seen. Condemning it does not serve to remove its causes. It only serves to increase the loneliness of those who suffer the consequences, helplessly.
Of course, it doesn’t matter to bother Vico – according to whom “the order of ideas must proceed according to the order of things” – to realize that we need to change the things we experience to change the way we conceive them. The Caivano Green Park does not need to impose the authority of the State by decree any more than it does the services of the State which justify – in terms of quality of life – the trust placed in this authority by those who live there, rather than in others already prevalent in the territory because they are an expression of what it is today. The order of things, precisely, which alone can change the course of the ideas of those who experience them.
This is the only serious cultural operation to be carried out. In Caivano, as elsewhere, in the many places of discomfort that arises from indifference. And from the guilty abandonment of those who should have taken care of them and did not, despite the fact that these subjects did not at all lack the political culture necessary to realize the inevitable social consequences of their lack of interest.
From this point of view, the outskirts of malaise are everywhere. Destined to expand when politics is unable to make culture the real key to reviving its fortunes. That is, it does not know how to create the right conditions of life so that the social mentality – which is the cause and effect of culture but follows the imprints of experience – finds comfort in life ambitions inspired by the best level of civilization at which the century has been lived. allows, in different situations, to aspire.