We live in a historical period which, without too many difficulties, can be defined as a transition period. In many respects, in fact, the world as it appeared a few decades ago has almost completely disappeared. In its place, however, no paradigm that can be said to be truly new has yet materialized. The era to come, which always seems to be on the verge of a future driven by perhaps too naively acclaimed technological development, is as if it were slowed down by ideas, visions and practices that still belong to the past.
Take for example the urgent need to convert industrial production, but also individual consumption, through sustainable, ecological, greener and more aware practices. It is our own planet that requires us to make a change in this sense: climate change is there for all to see, but the political institutions that should deal with the issue are unable to be decided and united to stem the problem. We know that the resources we have are limited but we continue to exploit them even though there are already alternatives, so we squander what nature can offer us in a year well before this year is over because we still believe in the mad and blind race of progress.
We also take the incredible technological development that information technology has made possible. We can store an incredible amount of information in devices that we can put in our pockets, we have at our fingertips practically much of all the knowledge that humanity has produced throughout its history, but ignorance continues to spread like a river in full.
The areas in which it is possible to recognize that much the current historical period is a period of transition are still many others, from the political one, with the crisis of representative democracies but also with the absence of a real alternative, to the economic one, social, with the giants of the web that increasingly impoverish small businesses, thus contributing to widening the gap, now almost unbridgeable, between the few who have too much and the many who have less and less. Or with the appearance of a new precious commodity: our personal data that is exchanged too lightly, as if they were a traditional market product.
In this framework, already quite unstable in itself, the Covid-19 pandemic, directly or indirectly, is also radically changing our sociality.
In fact, the spread of the virus has highlighted not only the fragility of the world economic-social system, in which if you break a link in the chain it is the whole chain that breaks, but it has also made clear, by difference, how much the our way of relating to others, even the most banal, even the most everyday. Especially in a country like ours, which has made conviviality its distinctive feature. What seemed natural to us, like hugging and greeting each other with a kiss with an acquaintance or going to a concert piled on top of each other, now that we are discouraged - if not forbidden - takes on even more value.
Probably a value that we didn't even know, so obvious and taken for granted, was there before. In other words: we only discover what our social freedom was worth now that it is being restricted to us. And we discover it, precisely, by difference, by comparing what we could have done before with what we must do now.
In this regard, I would like to ask a question: why should all of us accept that our way of life, our daily habits and our social freedom are limited?
The question is deliberately provocative. His answer, quite obvious. In some cases, however, even the question whose answer seems obvious and obvious must still be formulated. It must be formulated in order to attempt to review the question posed in a clearer and more profound way, that is, to better understand the underlying reasons. Therefore, although the answer is evident as well as common sense, I believe that asking this question can help to better understand some intrinsic reasons.
The reason that has guided the choice of the institutions to limit our freedom is precisely that of trying to control the spread of the virus with what is possible. Keep the distance between me and my neighbor, use the mask, avoid crowds. At the basis of these personal safety practices, however, there is an ethical principle that not everyone can see or perceive as "normal", but which I personally find very profound, and which I believe is worth making evident. A principle that directly concerns the responsibility that each of us has towards his other.
You are never alone, especially in a society like ours, which makes the relationship and exchange with the other its foundation. For this, I have to limit my range of action to safeguard the health of my neighbor. I can also be in excellent health, I can also be infected without having symptoms, however those in front of me may not react in the same way as I do to a possible infection. And who is in front of me can be someone dear to me, of course. But not only. It is not only my affections that I must protect.
My neighbor is also who I happen to meet on the street, the person who is next to me on the bus, the neighbor with whom I never even exchange a greeting, the stranger who asks me for alms. It is he too that I must protect. Being responsible means thinking about others while making choices. Being responsible in this particular historical moment means making decisions while holding firm to the principle of caring for my neighbor. It means feeling part of a community of individuals towards whom I must maintain an attitude of respect.
This respect must regard diversity in all its forms, that is, it must regard the other as an inexhaustible source of the variety of common life, it must regard all otherness as that wealth that exceeds my little world and that I must never pretend to be able fully understand.
Yes, because it is the other unknown to me, the other who exceeds all my understanding, the other who is irreducible to me and to my interpretative schemes, which is the origin of that difference that makes life something varied and colorful. , something that is unique, unrepeatable, surprising at every moment. And it's worth taking care of, before taking care.
Being responsible towards the other therefore means recognizing the value of existence, of that sacred principle which is the right to life. Taking care of those I don't know also means taking care of myself and my world; it means helping to safeguard the world as a place with multiple possibilities. Being responsible in the transition period we are experiencing means that it is up to us to choose which world will be born, starting from a simple reflection: do we want a world that helps and respects the other or a world that still tramples on the next?
written by Corina Abdulahm Negura
