Translator: Roberto Minelli Reviewer: Michele Gianella
Let's talk about the fear of the other,
and its possible origins.
About a century ago,
Freud became one of the world’s most influential people
by, basically, putting forward a pretty simple idea:
we human beings are an animal species –
albeit a very complex one –
a product of the evolution.
As such, we have a body, some instincts.
These instincts –
which are to be expressed in a civil fashion –
if excessively compressed,
might result in neurosis and mental disorders.
Let’s ask ourselves whether there are –
of course, today, a century on, sexuality
has found endless freer forms of expression –
but let’s ask ourselves if other instincts are there
that not only have never achieved such freedom of expression,
but have seen their freedom of expression curtailed.
If we own a dog,
we will notice that, despite living in a flat in town,
it still preserves its original territorial instinct.
So, what about the territorial instinct
of the Homo Sapiens species?
Looking back on our evolution, we were already Homo Sapiens
when we shifted from nomadic to sedentary following the discovery of agriculture.
However, throughout history,
until the early 20th century,
historians say that an average human being –
even in Europe, that is the vast majority of the population –
would meet 200 people in their lifetime.
This did not pose any major problems in terms of space,
nor were there any feelings of mistrust that naturally arise –
and this is another fundamental instinct, we can’t trust everyone –
when someone invades our personal space.
By the way, since then – since the early 20th century –
the population has increased almost eightfold, hasn’t it?
In the past century, actually over the last century,
we have witnessed overwhelming urbanisation.
Ten years ago, the United Nations reported
that the world's population is predominantly urban.
This disproportion continues to grow
due to the mass movement of people to cities
in search of better opportunities –
even though the risk
of developing mental disorders
is infinitely higher in urban areas.
What happens in cities?
We meet thousands of people, whenever we go out.
Not in our lifetime, but every single day.
And those who commute to work –
by underground, for instance –
are forced to share the same space with another hundred people,
which is quite at odds with our territorial instinct.
We also notice that those 200 people
closely correspond
to what modern neuroscience
considers to be one of main functions of our brain;
that is, our brain is capable of storing up to 150 faces;
by 200 it starts to get confused
and is unable to recognise any more.
This means – according to neuroscientists –
that social media are radically deceiving new generations
by telling them, “You’ll have thousands of new friends”
which, they say, is totally impossible
unless the entire concept of friendship
is falsified and voided of meaning.
Anyway, we are compressed – for example inside a carriage –
with our instincts violently repressed
as our good manners keep us from indulging in any aggressive outburst.
Yet, it would be impossible –
even for the most intelligent and closest to us, such as chimpanzees –
to force a hundred individuals inside the same carriage.
All this has been worsened –
this sense of unease and mistrust –
in recent times,
as many of the people we share our space with
have suddenly, doubly, turned into strangers.
That is, they are immigrants.
Ours used to be a country of emigration, there were no immigrants.
The colour of their skin, the language they speak, is different.
Unfortunately, ethologists say –
at some point –
this overlapping of nature and culture
deceives our instincts to such an extent,
we no longer perceive them as human beings
and this triggers our aggressiveness towards other species.
Let's now shift our attention
from human instincts to major historical events.
We know that last century
Hitler caused one of the greatest tragedies in human memory
by offering a very simple,
once again almost animal-like, instinct-driven explanation
to a Germany prey to a state of unprecedented anxiety
due to its defeat in World War I
and, shortly later, to unparalleled inflation,
which led to a state of uncertainty as to what tomorrow would bring –
claiming that the country was degenerating
because it was losing its essential racial purity.
Today we know that this concept of race
had no scientific grounds
and led to the Jews being accused of conspiracy.
Hitler never even tried to prove the existence of such conspiracies:
he immediately resorted to racial laws,
concentration camps first, extermination camps and eventually war.
This kind of intolerance, also towards the slightest differences,
is known in psychopathology as paranoia.
A paranoid is so lacking in psychology
that he is unable to recognize his own mistakes;
he therefore resorts to a set of instinctive mechanisms
according to which, since mistakes do exist,
he always points the finger at an external culprit.
Unlike other mental illnesses –
such as schizophrenia or depression, which tend to isolate individuals –
paranoia has this extremely dangerous characteristic:
when it affects people in power,
it doesn’t result in social exclusion
but rather serves as catalyst for their power,
all the more so at times of deep collective anxiety.
Here, anthropology comes in handy.
Indeed, every society –
again, we are talking about very basic responses,
typical of tribal societies at a very primitive stage of development –
has rites of this kind, cleansing rituals
and the ritual of the scapegoat.
That is, many tribal societies
that simply live on – let’s say – hunting,
should there one year be a scarcity of meat, won't try to find
a rational explanation, as we would.
No, they will look for a magical explanation:
they will wonder who cast the evil eye on them, identify the culprit,
sacrifice him
and finally – as anthropologists and psychoanalysts tell us –
temporarily experience a degree of relief.
It’s a sort of collective psychotherapy,
very similar to what Hitler and Stalin did,
on a much larger scale
when, by laying the blame on their racial and class enemy,
they obtained the consensus
of large swaths of a population crippled by their own repressive policies.
Well, now – sorry – now let's move on to the present day
and ask ourselves if we always need rational explanations
or whether, maybe, with all the cultural tools available to us,
we could become more rational.
In reality, technical-scientific progress
is not necessarily conducive to ethical progress.
We discovered printing 500 years ago,
but are well aware that still today
the mass media – while making more and more information available to us –
sometimes offer us more truths,
at other times simply multiply lies, not the truth.
The turn of the century
brought us the Internet –
another huge step towards technical progress.
However, the so-called “Internet paradox”
became evident from the very start:
if I wish to become more competent in any given field,
I can find everything on the Internet, so I get more knowledgeable-
But again – after all we are human – up to a certain extent:
if I pursue boundless knowledge,
when a certain limit is exceeded, it isn’t knowledge that augments,
but rather the confusion in my mind.
And over the last few years,
social networking sites have also come into the picture.
True, they do have the advantage
of helping us reach countless people all around the world,
but studies on social media
reveal that they all tend to favour extremely short messages.
And short messages
are not the reflection of accurate thoughts or explanations,
but rather tend to be aggressive and accusatory simplifications.
Again, pointing the finger at someone, looking for a scapegoat.
You may know
that there have even been a few deaths because of this.
In some countries, slanderous comments on some people
have been posted on Facebook,
causing episodes of lynching.
The fake posts were removed, fine, still some people died because of this.
Talking about the present and our country,
there is something objective
we are all scared of, a fear that may result in paranoia:
the fear of a terrorist attack, an absolutely objective phenomenon itself.
However, even in Italy –
although the most serious attacks have been in France –
even in Italy there are cases of anxious people
saying, “I haven’t dared go out since the onset of terrorism”.
Yet, if we look at statistics,
terror still hasn't made any victims in Italy –
Islamic terrorism that is.
Actually, there were a few victims but of a terror scare
when, in Turin, a stampede started, with people trampled in the crowd.
out of the fear of a terrorist attack - which by the way had never occurred.
The person that says,
“I'm not going out: as far as I know, there may be a killer outside”
is not saying, “I’m not going out
because there is a killer called pollution”.
Yet, the European Environmental Agency
tells us that pollution accounts for 84,000 deaths per year in Italy alone,
and almost half a million in Europe,
supposedly a pristine continent.
Finally, let’s look at this diagram
that represents the main European countries
and the presence of Muslim immigrants
who, obviously, are those we are afraid of
since radical terrorists may be hiding among them.
The yellow line indicates the actual percentage,
the gray one indicates the presence of Muslims
as perceived by the people, according to surveys.
The gray line, as you can see, is steeper than the actual percentage.
That is, the danger is real,
but paranoia is even greater.
However, this alarming data
hides a piece of good news:
the difference between real and fake data -
imaginary fear - peaks in Hungary,
where Muslim immigrants are thought to be
70 times more than they actually are.
This is all due to paranoia.
Instead, it's minimal in France and Germany -
a despite being quite high -
where millions and millions of Muslim immigrants have been living
and working side by side with the locals for some time now.
What this means is that the best defence
against the degeneration of real fear into paranoid fear
lies with knowing those who are different
and not pointing the finger, doesn’t it?
Collaborating with them, admitting that they’re also human.
Of course, when it comes to environmental pollution,
we shouldn't point the finger
at other but at ourselves ...
Thank you.
(Applause)