In an increasingly globalized and interdependant world, networks based on new technologies only process those who uniform themselves with the system; whatever remains on the outer side tends to be left in the dark.
Darkness's marginality becomes indifference towards difference, which still remains, made up of local peculiarities. Often these minorities (or majorities?)are not able to take benefit from wealth produced by globalization (the problem of access to welfare and encouragement towards international migration), or find it extremely hard to live a life based on different cultural premises (the problem of native population's collective rights, who don't manage to maintain their own identity after centuries of colonization).
This duality, majority and minority, light and darkness, historical traditions and global systems, is an ideal that cannot be interpreted using the obsolete analysis standards based on separate oppositions, but must force us to aknowledge relevance to the ideal of complexity (subjunctive). The field for the game of antagonisms connected to promotion of diversity can only be a common ideal of a community where,contrarily to totalitarian regimes, each man's civil and political rights will increasingly characterize his relationship with democracy.
The democratic societies we live in, where the Declarations of the rights of man and of the citizen (1789;1948) were originated, have succesfully gone beyond the simple ideal of tolerance (as acceptance of diversity) to affirm the principle of pluralism (promotion of diversity). But this principle continuously finds opponents, who often are anaware or unable to admit that the ideal of clearness, previously celebrated by modernity, is losing more and more of its strength; or, at the most, is handled - as Z. Bauman affirms - as a personal matter, along with the problems and illusions that neo-tribalism and the new fundamentalisms involve.
During 17th and 18th centuries the appreciation of rationality's value is accompanied by two ideals that placed an historical landmark: the definition of national states created to resolve the everlasting conflicts among local communities and the affirmation of a concept of knowledge as a neat,even and distinct procedure, in order to reduce ambivalence, misunderstandings and uncertainty. According to Montaigne,doubt leads to madness, by Leibniz it is at impulse's and passion's mercy. In Bacone, it narrowed to a vision of poetry (fantasy) set against science (rational thought). During the Enlightment period, Condorcet traced a society whose future acts could be predicted, just as geometric precision in astronomy allows to predict a solar eclipse. The mistery...was restricted to poet's use.
But shortly after the National State's affirmation,parallel to the world wars,that new modernity project (linear,rational, positive) starts to crumble. Regionalist ideals are set in the new political scene amidst supranational communities (ONU;UE); in art during early twentieth century so-called vanguards (fauves,cubism,expressionism,etc.) make of experimentalism and language mixture their flag and attack the traditional institutions; in the science circle outdated newtonian principles are put in question,and new scientific concepts (A.Einstein,N.Bohr,W.Heisemberg), based upon the relativity theory and atomic physics,are used to dematerialize the world and redefine the concepts of space and observation.
The ambivalence modernity meant to dissolve has returned;in fact, by U.Beck, it lubrificates contemporary science mechanisms. A new ideal of knowledge makes its way, based on circularity,continuous experimentation, constructivism,valorisation of sociocultural differences, of a simbolic consciousness where "empty" can have the same meaning as "full". Complexity means inseparability between man's interior antagonisms, so that man is at the same time sapiens and demens,prosaicus and poeticus,faber and ludens.
The necessity to consider the gnoselogic relevance, along with applicatory and concrete relevance,of one side of complexity,where many different threads entwine and where what is not quantifiable or formalizable "exists", becomes more and more strategic. Knowledge,that allows us to survive, is not only blue print but also - as K.Polany reminds us - unspoken. Exactly this kind of knowledge has been revaluated by managers,formative-process specialists and local development consultants. Present-day society - often defined society of knowledge - is trying to recover that unspoken kowledge which,toghether with the explicit one, can allow a social innovation.
Civil rights - and the connected characterization process that psychic scholars hold dear - are the expression of a need for freedom in a man who yearns for individual renewal and social innovation; democracy is a peaceful way for diversity's managment and coexistence. But until the subjunctive suggestion involved in democracy will not be considered seriously ("democracy, says E. Morin,"forms the 'union of union and disunion'"),globalization will play exclusively on its image,leaving the not-so-shiny aspects to their fate in degraded and depersonalized susburbs.
La Città Sociale suggests to find an interdisciplinary and trandisciplinary way to face problems;giving more importance to what individual, historical and local differences demand,on one side; not giving up on fighting for a better world that admits the need to extend the awareness of few essential values in as many people as possible,on the other.
Youth's right to live in a healthy environment,to creativity and peaceful dialogue with others of same age but different ethnic groups,prisoner's human rights,native population's collective rights are the social topics discussed in this issue. These rights can be better ensured by getting rid of the "stupidity" that, according to G. Bateson,is set by pure finalized rationality.
Knowledge that derives from art,religion and dreams bring us back to the consciousness of a world made in a circuital structure; this knowledge allows us to correct such "stupidity". To agree with Bateson:" unaided consciousness must always tend to hate". Insisting on art's corrective nature, this author, reminding us of Aldous Huxley, who sustained that humanity's problem is primarily the search for grace,indicates that "art is a part of man's quest for grace"; so in this sense, God might resemble animals,who still own this trait, more than man.
If an essential link between the notion of man and fundamental right's category truly exists, (A.Rosmini used the terms "ingrained" and "ingrained rights"),the kind of man we imagine is one to whom social and educational conditions sufficient to gain grace, can be guaranteed:grace is simply integration between the mind's different sides (consciousness and unconsciousness).
When B.Malinowski, an english anthropologist,suggested to make a distinction between primary and dervied imperatives,on one side, and additional imperatives on the other, he simply wanted to recall the necessity to account of the need for freedom,next to the need for safety.
In La Città Sociale's second issue,we want to stimulate a discussion about the necessity to consider how far we are from fulfilling our right to freedom sanctioned during the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and about how desirable it could be to return to a "strong" consideration of our ideal of man. |
