Understanding without enlisting

Let's run an experiment: for a week, let's jot down the topics people talk about around us, at the bar, in the town square, at the office. Gaza and Tel Aviv, Kyiv and Moscow, Tehran and Washington, whatever general is in the news. They've read three headlines and already handed down a verdict. Then let's notice how often people talk about the condo's boiler, the city budget, the waiting list for an MRI. Faraway wars matter, sure, but we have no way of checking them firsthand and no leverage over them — and meanwhile, plenty is going on right here at home.

The mechanism pays off: it generates attention, clicks, viewers, and votes. Politicians and the media chase whatever pays, and debate over a faraway conflict — easy to oversimplify, hard to verify — pays. I call it Disegno sinistro, because the diversion works and the effect is dark.

Look, I'm not saying we should only worry about what's on our own doorstep. There are structural problems we can check for ourselves, and politicians have to answer for them. Artificial intelligence and robotics, for example: we all use them, and we can already feel their impact on society. And then there's the future of the job market, of pensions and wages. There are no sides to root for here, just issues to be managed. If we sweep them under the rug because they don't lend themselves to polarization, sooner rather than later we'll find ourselves facing an emergency, with decisions already made by others.

So before we raise our voices about a topic, let's ask ourselves three questions.
Are we giving credit to a claim whose validity we can verify directly, without relying on secondhand sources? If the answer is no, we have to suspend judgment.
Are we trying to pick out the good guys and the bad guys inside a tangle? Two-line explanations reassure us more than they hold up, whereas accepting chaos is exhausting but keeps us from falling victim to obsessions, dystopias, and assorted spin doctors.
Does this news inform us or stir us up? If it leaves us outraged, moved, or ready to pick a fight, it may be recruiting us instead of helping us understand: it's emotional (dis)information. And that goes for mainstream and anti-mainstream alike.

But then why always and only the same sides? There are plenty more in the world. That certain crises touch us more than others — for reasons of history, energy, alliances, or borders — may well be true: the subject matter concerns us. That this entitles us to root for Palestinians or Israelis, Russians or Ukrainians, Iranians or Americans, no. Justice and rights don't have a passport. Other wars and other minorities stay out of the main event, and not because they're a second-rate matter, simply because they draw a smaller audience. That isn't justice, or defending rights: it's self-interested selection. Learning more about certain crises — as subject matter that touches us — makes sense. Picking a side doesn't.

Here's my advice. If an issue fails the three tests above, let's not give in to cynical indifference, but let's not swallow partisan propaganda either. Understanding the subject is fair game; rooting for a side isn't. As for the time to choose and act, let's spend that on what we can verify.

I'm writing a saga about this, Disegno sinistro. Start from the first installment or filter them all by label, then make up your own mind: don't let yourself be influenced, not even by me.

This post was machine-translated from Italian with Blog Translator.

On the edge of the cliff

Sometimes I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of a cliff. Beyond the edge lies the dark abyss of absolute despondency.
For years I believed — and only now do I realize the incredible, optimistic naïveté that drove me — that people, even when they make mistakes, were still able to correct their course, whether through their own analysis or with someone else's guidance.

I have to resign myself. An enormous part of the population — Italian for sure, but probably not only Italian — and perhaps even the majority of it, even though every day in their private lives they're forced to wade through the muddy swamp of a reality that is plainly, unmistakably and undeniably complex, the moment they move up a level — to political, social or even scientific questions — terrified by perspectives that necessarily involve accepting chaos, uncertainty and sometimes even chance, they cover their ears, shut their eyes, switch off the prefrontal cortex of their brains and give themselves over to the same old ridiculous, childish, absurd Manichean explanations that are fed to them by design. They then polarize into two opposing camps, leaving themselves wide open to those who manipulate them through the age-old technique of divide et impera.

This dynamic had revealed itself to me some time ago. It was a nasty blow, I admit, but it didn't make me lose faith in my fellow human beings. I thought, in fact, that by explaining things — and a bit of evangelizing — the lost souls could be brought back onto the right path. Forgive the messianic-sounding bit, but metaphors work better the stronger they are and the closer they sit to the individual's cultural roots (and maybe I'm fooling myself again).
Unfortunately, it was an outlook marked by an optimism comparable to the happy ending of a C-grade romantic flick.

Not only does explaining things get no traction on the minds of the polarized puppets. It even draws their sarcasm (the barroom kind, of course), their indignation and, if you keep at it, even their wrath. When you raise doubts about the position of someone lined up on any side of any polarized issue whatsoever — a fan of the Israelis or of the Palestinians, of Russia or of Ukraine, of Iran or of the USA, a conspiracy theorist or an "officialist" — it doesn't even cross their mind that you might be referring to a factor in the dispute that only makes sense if you take a certain level of complexity for granted. No, the simpleminded, polarized fan takes for granted that only the moronic binary reading is allowed, and so he immediately thinks you're AGAINST him and therefore WITH his enemies. When, after an exhausting and endless effort of clarification, you've managed to make him understand that you're not a fanatical fan (like him) but are simply dedicated to understanding the situation in all its complexity, and are therefore uninterested in the simplifying idiocy of the polarization itself, he treats it like a joke.

If you persist, and he realizes that you truly accept neither his absurd partisan stance nor the equally absurd opposing one, he starts to get indignant and accuses you of ethically unacceptable behavior. His distorted view of reality doesn't allow for chaotic, inevitably hybrid situations, so it doesn't admit disinterest in either of the two factions along with interest in the issue itself. He'd paradoxically be happier if you were on the other side of the barricade. That you refuse to put up the barricade at all he finds incomprehensible. You're a coward, a deserter. He forgets, though, that the war you're deserting was invented by him.
And if you still don't give up, the indignation sometimes even turns into wrath.

This kind of attitude, which I believed was the province of a minority of frenzied zealots, turns out to find room among the calm, silent majority too.
It's a tragic, discouraging, shocking aspect of the social reality we live in today.
Just when science and technology put in our hands tools that could be used to build that better world we've been fantasizing about for years, people decide to create perhaps irreparable rifts within the very social structure they live in and depend on.
A senseless attempt at a slow (and maybe not even that slow) collective suicide.
Pure madness.

This post was machine-translated from Italian with Blog Translator.

Managing chaos: antisemitism and anti-Islamism

We currently find ourselves at the crest of yet another wave rippling across that historic sea of accusations of antisemitism and anti-Islamism that Europeans have been hurling at each other, or fending off, for centuries with extreme virulence and indignation. So, who's right?

As usual, I suggest we not rely on broad categories, as arbitrary as they are poorly matched to reality. Let's leave binary readings like good-evil, good guys-bad guys, right-wrong to the cartoons. And if you resort to childish reasoning of that kind, go ahead and go back to watching cartoons: there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you, like good kids, don't play with serious things, because then all hell breaks loose. Socio-political questions — especially delicate ones like the one at hand — are made for people who can accept and handle chaos, complexity and randomness. For everyone else there are sporting events, our traditional recipes, or reality and talent shows.
So, let's stick to a serious approach and judge case by case. Here's the guideline I suggest applying to every single instance.

Accusing Israel, Israeli civilians or soldiers, or any individuals of the Jewish faith, of having unequivocally committed specific criminal or even ethically despicable acts — like striking innocent children or occupying other people's property — is, in my opinion, NOT antisemitism. Just as accusing Muslims of heinous acts of terrorism, or of not respecting and perhaps insulting the customs and values of the countries that host them, can NOT be considered anti-Islamism.

That's for the "no" part. Now let's get to the more sensitive part: the "yes" one.
Attributing responsibility for any geopolitical event to alleged Jewish cabals, Jewish lobbies, international Zionist networks or Mossad operations, off the cuff, without proof — because come on, they're surely behind it all, always — this, besides being slander, is YES, as far as I'm concerned, antisemitism. Of the same kind used a few decades ago to unleash pogroms or justify exterminations.

In the same way, leveling vague, sweeping accusations of barbarism, bigotry and backwardness at the Islamic world — because come on, it's obvious, just look at them — is YES, in my opinion, anti-Islamism. Of the same kind used in the past to proclaim crusades or launch witch hunts.

Personally, I stick to the first scenarios. And there are plenty of unequivocally criminal or ethically despicable acts for which to condemn one side or the other.
The second type of scenario, on the other hand, strikes me as not only sordid but also quite irresponsible.

This post was machine-translated from Italian with Blog Translator.

Managing chaos: fascism and anti-fascism

Another prominent victim of the average (mediocre) individual's inability to accept and manage chaos is the debate on fascism and anti-fascism. Or rather, on fascism and non-fascism. The distinction will be clarified at the end.
Those who feel they belong to the socio-political groups accused of sympathy for fascism deny, out of convenience, that fascism exists. Those who, on the other hand, identify with the factions devoted to anti-fascism accuse the former en masse of being fascism apologists.

As usual, I have to say everyone is a little right and a little wrong: that's the fate of someone who's at ease handling chaos and is called on to assess the positions of people who, unable to appreciate the extreme complexity of reality, need simplified models to make it easier to understand, only to end up not understanding squat.
The first group is wrong to deny that fascism exists. They're right, though, to reject the polarized explanation resting on the traditional political camps: "fascism is all on the right and anti-fascism all on the left" (using those terms has the same effect on me as nails screeching on a chalkboard). The others, obviously, are right and wrong the other way around.

Okay, so what's the explanation without the simplifications? Here it is. Fascism as a well-defined political force no longer exists. As an attitude, though, it very much does.
What it makes sense to call fascism today is really an atavistic, creeping, cross-cutting cultural trait of Italian society. A trait that predates the twentieth century, probably present already in the Renaissance, and maybe even earlier. The ventennio, the twenty years of Fascist rule, embodied it as the hallmark of a specific political movement, gave it a name, and blended it with other components, customizing it.

This is the source of all the misunderstandings, mix-ups, and confusion. And those who by nature can't grasp the nuances of a complex reality, instead of accepting their limits, try to get past them through simplified interpretations. Simple, then, but unfortunately wrong.

If you stop thinking of fascism as a political force and identify it instead with an intolerant, overbearing, aggressive, sly, opportunistic, and cowardly attitude, you'll realize (unless you're a hopeless case) first of all that fascism is alive and well, and second that, even though it may at times be more frequent within certain socio-political groups than others, it's still a cross-cutting phenomenon.

Washing your hands of it — by denying fascism exists in one case or declaring yourselves anti-fascists in the other — isn't enough, my friends. To be sure you're not fascists, you have to make sure you really aren't. And the only way to do that is to behave like non-fascists.
Always.

This post was machine-translated from Italian with Blog Translator.

Emotional (dis)information

The news should convey information. Add to what the viewer knows. Nothing more and nothing less.
If, when you watch a newscast or a video, it hits you emotionally instead — outraged, angry, saddened, euphoric, or moved to pity — you're the target of manipulative techniques designed to rally support for some cause. The aim may be political, economic, military, strategic in general. What's certain is that nobody is trying to inform you.

Government bodies, propagandists, the so-called "spin doctors" are masters at using these techniques, and they rely on compliant media to carry them out.
I'm not talking only about state TV and state newspapers. You're a victim too, you who think you're drinking from the pure springs of that flashy bluff called anti-mainstream.
The techniques are sly, but the effects are so blatant that they become harmless, as long as you're aware of them and keep your guard up.

To escape the spell, all you have to do is ask the question implicit in the opening: does this news hit me emotionally? If the answer is "yes": switch off the squawking box right away, use the filthy rag to wipe your ass, or set your phone down on that pile of papers that are blowing away.
Discipline yourself to run that simple test every time. And act accordingly when the answer is yes. Don't worry: what you give up isn't real knowledge.

This post was machine-translated from Italian with Blog Translator.

Wars and simpletons: part two

You can find part one here.

Let's spell out why the simpletons who root for one side or the other in a war, convinced as they are that they're guided by sharp analytical and geopolitical insight, actually don't understand a fucking thing. Worse, they're more or less knowingly playing into the hands of some filthy propagandist.

Remember, we're not talking about fans of Putin or Zelensky, of Israelis or Palestinians, of Trump or Khamenei. There's no "or" here, only "and": we're talking about ALL of them. About anyone who oversimplifies issues that are in fact complex and whose roots are lodged deep in the rocky soil of history. History they ignore, of course, apart from a few scraps filtered in on purpose here and there. And which, just as obviously, they can't analyze in any way that's remotely useful to the debate.

In war, any war, everyone has a little right on their side and everyone is very much in the wrong. There's no right or wrong. There aren't good guys and bad guys either. Or rather, none of that exists in absolute terms. You can only talk about it in relative terms: relative to each side's motives, which are driven by survival, security and prosperity, and therefore by domination. These are viewpoints that are subjective and partisan by nature, selfish and ruthless. Also, why not, ancestral, primordial and tribal.
Often, as in feuds between families or clans, conflicts have gone on for so long that nobody remembers anymore why they started. They get handed down from generation to generation, as if they were part of the genetic code.

Besides, the tangle they're caught up in is far more chaotic than the spokespeople for each side make it out to be, or than their supporters perceive it to be.
Finally, in every war, communication is always polluted by censorship and propaganda. ALWAYS. So if you read or hear something that seems to prove one of the combatants right — maybe your favorite — or to prove the other one wrong, know that it's not information confirming or refuting your partisanship — which is misplaced anyway, by its very nature. You're actually the target of crude advertising. The kind we call propaganda.

So if you pick a side, not only have you not understood a fucking thing, you're also complicit, as a mouthpiece for a sleazy megaphone.
Go on, if you feel like it. But now that you know, you can no longer afford to pose as a champion of justice.

This post was machine-translated from Italian with Blog Translator.

Wars and simpletons

There are plenty of poor deluded souls: a great many, far too many.
You see them squaring off in two camps of public opinion, artfully manufactured on the battlefield of a conflict, a feud, or a dispute.
With the stubborn certainty of a mule, they always know who's right and who's wrong. Each side accuses the deluded on the equally bogus opposing side of naïveté or malice. They charge the other camp with being enslaved to propaganda, and they wave around the sources lined up on their own side as the keepers of pure truth.
They root for their team, putting on that pathetic and irritating air of misunderstood analysts.
The tragicomic twist in all this is that they're right. Every one of them is right. The accusations they hurl at the "enemies" are true. They're true on both sides, though.

The reason for this idiotic polarization is well known: the inability, typical of certain simple minds, to handle chaos, the complexity inherent in every area of reality, not just social but also anthropological, biological, natural. It's a complexity they deal with every day in their miserable little lives, yet paradoxically can't accept when it comes to events unfolding at a higher level, and therefore an even more complicated one.

We could watch them with tenderness and leave them to wallow in their pathetic little simplified kiddie pool for children who can't swim in rough water.
The problem is that their numbers aren't negligible. They're massive, and so they influence the society the rest of us have to live in too. Those who wield power, whether political, media, or financial, know this and act accordingly, feeding the polarized explanations to these self-proclaimed sharp minds. That way, power slips out from under the oversight needed to make it do its job for the benefit of the community rather than itself.
It's the "divide et impera" of Roman memory. Still extremely relevant and effective today.
Unfortunately, it's a self-reinforcing spiral, a vicious circle, an almost irreversible trend.

Still, we have a duty (moral, human, sacred in a secular sense) to keep trying. If it turns out to be in vain, at least we'll have nothing to blame ourselves for.
And if it ends in catastrophe, we'll be able to point the finger and say: "We told you so!" A slim consolation is always better than fat and base inaction.

This post was machine-translated from Italian with Blog Translator.

Sinister agenda - part seven: the extremization

Find the other episodes of the "Sinister agenda" saga by following this link.

The imbalance generated by polarization fuels—and is fueled by—a socio-political-media vicious circle through which polarization itself is amplified and exalted rather than mitigated or placated.
In the long run, this unstable process aimed at constant growth can only lead to extremization.
Today we are indeed at one of the peaks due to this diabolical mechanism, the effects and symptoms of which are evident by observing the tone and level of the debate within public opinion.
A debate that I would summarize like this: bullshitting, bullshitters shouting at the top of their lungs.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Sinister agenda - Part Six: Collective Madness

Find the other episodes of the "Sinister Drawing" saga by following this link.

However, the sinister drawing also has a side effect that, who knows, might even work against the person who causes it.
Italians, but perhaps not only them, are progressively and inexorably sliding into an abyss of collective madness. They now live in a virtual world where they believe they are involved and engaged in struggles increasingly distant from the fabric of their lives, crises of which they only know what the propaganda feeds them, regardless of the faction they follow.
Once upon a time they argued over the shared fence with the neighbor, the price of eggs, boiler maintenance. Now they gather in the public square and tell each other to fuck off in the name of distant countries, peoples, and events.
Not to mention the time and energy they spend for free, uncritically accepting partisan directives, when for more reasonable and paid requests they do not hesitate to flip the middle finger to their employer.
Truly incredible is the power of propaganda, the thoroughness of the brainwashing imparted.
Goebbels seemed like a loser who, without the rise of Nazism, would have been destined for oblivion. But it is incredible how much talent, even malicious talent, historical events can leave buried or bring to light in an absolutely arbitrary manner.
The Nazis were defeated, of course, but some of their techniques were thoroughly studied.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Sinister agenda - part five: the translation

Find the other episodes of the "Sinister Drawing" saga by following this link.
And yet, notice: the polarizations that work best in the context of the "matrix" are precisely the "translated" ones. The examples are the usual ones. There are two peoples fighting a real war, thousands of kilometers from here. And in parallel, two factions develop among us–"translated" factions–which simulate a conflict whose roots, motivations, and ideals belong to ecosystems totally alien to ours and therefore difficult to understand in their most minute cultural details and anthropological recesses. These are the most recondite and ancestral elements of the dispute, and precisely for this reason the most fundamental ones. This elusiveness is the reason why the whole issue is simplified in a banal, pathetic, and sadly ridiculous way.
The same happens for other issues, translated onto dimensions other than the spatial one: fascism and anti-fascism on the temporal dimension, viruses and vaccines on the scientific one, capitalism and communism on the economic one. What makes these polarizations effective is precisely the elusiveness of the themes, very far from the concrete areas of the lives of the people who fall for them, and therefore persistent as they are not directly verifiable. The motto by now is well known: "Let the chickens squabble over translated issues. It will then be easy to screw them over in their most intimate context."

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Sinister agenda - part four: Matrix

You can find the other installments of the "Sinister agenda" saga by following this link.
I've brought up the Matrix often lately. It's time to talk about it in more detail.
Pretty much everyone has seen the wonderful trilogy starring Keanu Reeves. And many got excited after watching it: "It's an intelligent story, I understood it, so I'm intelligent too," they think.
And indeed the result seems encouraging. But then you observe them and it becomes clear to you that they haven't grasped all the symbolic sides, the metaphorical aspects: what makes it relevant even without the technological apocalypse. They stopped at the plot of sentient machines sucking the energy of humans by making them live in a simulated dream, the matrix itself. They can't put two and two together, to connect those blessed dots.
Let's therefore explain the allegory. In our reality, the machines can be represented by the level of power. The dreams - the matrix - are instead the polarized issues that are provided to citizens from that level. The sucked energy is ultimately that of the individuals who fall for the trick and dedicate body and soul to fueling the mechanism.
Let's give a few examples taken from the sequence of polarizations spread for the masses in recent years. Have you taken sides, with helmet and bayonet, taking a stand (any position) on the various disputes related to the pandemic? You are in the Matrix. Have you taken sides on the Russia-Ukraine war? You are in the Matrix. Have you taken sides on the Palestine-Israel issue? You are in the Matrix. Have you taken sides on the US-Iran war? You are in the Matrix.
And rest assured that when interest in the crisis of the moment fades, the controllers of the Matrix will provide you with others. As already mentioned, the content is not the key. The goal is distraction, the splitting of public opinion. Divide and conquer.
Okay, take some time to reflect on it. Then, those who didn't grasp the above parallel on first viewing can go re-watch the movie. Maybe this time they'll really understand it.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Sinister agenda - part three

You can find the other installments of the "Sinister agenda" saga by following this link.
Now let's better explain the citizen's point of view.
When they position themselves at the level of polarizations and select a faction for one or more of the polarized issues, they have already chosen to operate at the subordinate level: they have therefore already entered the Matrix.
The citizen can therefore choose whether to jump into the fray or not and which pole they prefer. However, they cannot decide the merits of the polarized issue, since they have already chosen it and thus approved it as it is.
Thus, at the upper level—that of power, to be clear—the polarizations of the moment are selected and then spread through compliant media. These are offered for the citizens to choose from; one pole or the other makes little difference, the goal, as we now know, is distraction, not content.
It's as if they were saying: "This is the hot issue of the moment (the polarized topic). These are the factions, choose one and commit to supporting it. Look for sources, do propaganda on social media, in the square, at the bar. In short, spend hours of your life in our service, on topics you cannot truly understand in depth and on which you have no power to intervene. Of course, you do it for free. And don't worry about what we are doing while you are distracted like that. We'll take care of your interests."
And to this invitation to intellectual, cultural, and moral suicide, the citizen clicks their heels and responds: "Sir, yes, sir!"

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Sinister agenda - part two

You can find the other installments of the "Sinister agenda" saga by following this link.

I would like to better explain how I believe mass manipulation works through the technique of polarization on "distant" issues, those for which there is no possibility of direct verification by citizens.
We need to abstract from the polarized issues themselves and imagine a higher level, where these issues are carefully selected, fed, and guided to split public opinion into opposing factions. Factions that waste time and energy supporting one pole or the other, without, as mentioned, being able to verify anything.
Those who choose one of the sides have already been sucked into this sort of Matrix, so they remain oblivious to the higher level. They believe that the plane on which they have positioned themselves is the one pertaining to reality, where they would have free choice, and they blindly trust the sources of information they drink from. Obviously, this applies to every faction. Everyone is convinced they are right. In reality, they are all wrong, not so much regarding the merits of the issues, but precisely for having taken the bait and taken a stance.
At the higher level, in the meantime, having thus activated the "divide and conquer" mode, it is possible to act undisturbed on "close" issues, those on which citizens would have the power of verification and control, but on which no one has the time or desire to poke their nose into, given the full-time effort fruitlessly spent on "distant" crises.
Essentially, traps are set for us. Avoiding them would be very easy, it would be enough to resist the temptation to take sides on matters that are not verifiable anyway. But we cannot resist the temptation, we step into the trap, we waste energy debating and fighting like Manzoni's capons. Meanwhile, someone is burglarizing our house undisturbed.
The malicious ones are them, at the upper level. But the fools are always us down here.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Borrowing from abstract art

These are two very famous abstract art paintings.
I'm not an art expert and I'm not gonna talk about art here. Yet I find art an extremely good tool to visually convey counter intuitive ideas, even those that have nothing to do with the artworks themselves.
I will use Kandinsky's "Composition VII" (the first one) to represent reality. Rothko's "No. 4, two dominants" (the second one) on the other hand can be thought to represent a polarized simplification of that same reality.
Now imagine trying to understand the complexity inherent in the first representation by using the second one as a model. Ridiculous, right?
Worse still, consider how stupid it would be to operate on the complex reality by using the polarized model.
Well, as absurd as it may seem, that is what many of us do every day, when it comes to pretty much everything we can think of.
In my opinion this is one of the main tragedies of our times.