Many of us, when confronted with the violence that took place in Palermo, responded intuitively. Anger demands a culprit, fear deceives us that someone will pay and order will be restored. We are inhabited by hatred, horror and horror: impulses, emotional discharges that precede cognitive development. But understanding takes time. To formulate reflection, it is necessary to postpone, differ; then wait and then process. We may find, for example, that there are fourteen thousand registered users in the shame chat. Fourteen thousand is a much larger number than seven. Forty thousand it comes to us as a painful, inevitable truth. These seven teenagers are not a problem, but a symptom. This abomination that we wanted to remove from our sight – in order to thus be able to eliminate the problem – is the tip of the iceberg that we must look at.
The publication of their faces on all social channels, the mention of their names, calls for the death penalty is a great attempt at collective exorcism, a product of the same violence that we want to condemn. It is violence that takes place in immediacy, in the absence of reflection and therefore in the absence of delay. And this is always accompanied by dehumanization. In immediate impulses, I listen only to myself. Immediate attraction is born in the ego, it does not take into account the social discourse, which includes the “other” and his difference from me. And it is the presence of the other that tells us that I cannot have everything at once: there are times in the law that do not coincide with those dictated by my stomach.
The school is called. It returns cyclically, as if it were the solution to all evils. The idea is that emotional nurturing is necessary. But what does it mean affective education? And, above all, why is this abused school, those teachers who are called lazy, incapable, inattentive, now becoming the ones we trust to be able to free ourselves from this violence, which the pages of newspapers testify every day? Can a school really do that much?
The school is the core of the democratic system. To believe in the school means to believe in this system, and therefore also to accept the delegation mechanism that it provides. Professors and teachers are the delegates who should take responsibility for the education of our children.
Can we have such confidence in democracy and therefore in society? Are we able to think democratically so as not to offend those who think differently from us? In every discussion, confrontation is replaced by belonging, which becomes alignment: “with me or against me.” The logic of competition, in which envy devours any opportunity for dialogue. The other is a competitor: I criticize who has a better place than me, more recognition; and at the same time I invalidate the other’s condemnation of my reasoning: he is simply envious. The discussion is no longer about content, but about the delegitimization of those who express a different content. Envy is both a social engine and a great alibi that keeps us from where we are. In this sense, envy testifies to the logic of competition associated with the power that governs social discourse.
The first function of the school is the transition from the familiar to the social, the transition from “I” to “we”. A child in a family is less and less likely to encounter restrictions and laws: parents adapt to the needs of their children and invest in their implementation, presenting them as an ideal continuation of themselves – psychoanalysts and educators have been reporting this with growing concern for some time now. . School is where some of this domestic omnipotence has to crack: I can’t point to a water bottle and wait for my mom to pass it to me. I have to use linguistic codes that allow me to communicate with others: “Could you pass me some water?” This new wording requires that differ: to be understood, we need to overcome the bottleneck of the language. School is a place where the family lexicon doesn’t apply, where my teenage word won’t be law, where I fail, where I find out that my partner Adele is better than me. She is the most beloved. The school will force me to come to terms – for days, months, years – with anger towards Adele, will force me to work with her, to learn more about her. There is no one in the class who can protect me from the frustration, weariness, and translation effort imposed on me by the presence of others. Freud’s Discomfort of civilization he says it very clearly: civilization demands the renunciation of part of our impulses. The program of civilization is not homogeneous with the program of drive, there is no harmony in it. In translation, this means that in order to be with others, I must admit that it is not my stomach that dictates the laws. That you can’t have everything. That professor did not understand that I would have done differently, but I believe that this experience will help my son become a citizen, able to communicate with others, develop antidotes and solutions that fit into social discourse.
The transition from the familiar to the social is an important transition for building a citizen: I learn that collective life is governed by laws and that my freedom must be reconciled with the presence and freedom of others.
School is us: I believe that this is the emotional education that we need. The school tells every child and every teenager about a world that will not put them at the center, in which they cannot buy everything, in which they cannot have everything, in which the other is not a video image that can be got rid of and that can be turned off by desire, but has a body. The school will show that these bodies are unmanageable differences. That there will be laws and ethics governing relationships.
But why is the school no longer able to cope with this task? Why does the family intervene, why do teachers lack legitimacy, why does the logic of competition and selfishness infiltrate the classroom?
There is nothing outside the school to support this “we”. Outside of school, every discourse is dominated by the same logic as in the family: no delays, no restrictions, no rejections. The logic of capitalism is reduced to the most essential degree: everything can be bought, money and success can do everything, cunning is the most convenient and guaranteed way.
It is difficult to teach a discourse that does not find confirmation either in the familiar or in the social. It’s hard to tell Dario that he can cry when social discourse offers – again – images of victorious, courageous men who can do anything: travel alone in a polluting superjet like soccer player Neymar, or kiss a world football champion. on the lips, like the president of the Football Federation, Luis Rubiales.
How to educate others emotionally? How to show that the other and his difference is a resource that saves us, and not an enemy that needs to be defeated?
It was 1929, and Freud wrote: “The commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” is the strongest defense against human aggression (…). The commandment is unfulfillable; such a grandiose inflation of love can only diminish its value, but it does not erase the difficulties. Civilization neglects all this; it only exhorts us that the more difficult it is to keep a commandment, the more worthy it is. And yet, the one who adheres to this commandment in the current civilization, only puts himself at a disadvantage in comparison with those who remain outside of it. (…) In my opinion, as long as virtue is no longer on the ground, ethics will preach in vain.”
Cover art by Lorenzo Mattotti.