Hunger and Heaven: the Christian Italian culture

 Italy is made up largely, today as in the past, of people interested above all in survival and reputation. It is not by chance that a large part of the world's fame in this country is linked to food and fashion. In psycho-sociological terms these two preeminent interests can be interpreted as the social affirmation of two collective defense strategies aimed at stemming the anxiety caused by two fundamental fears: death and judgment. Naturally these two fears are present in every human being and, therefore, in every culture but in Italy, because of historical, cultural, political, religious and economic reasons, the fear of death and the fear of judgment have assumed a clear preeminence over what has happened elsewhere. Distrust of others, envy, irrepressible greed, perennial dissatisfaction, jealousy for one's own things, attachment to material goods, the widespread hypocrisy for which values that are punctually betrayed by actions in the private sphere, the tendency to publicly pose oneself as champion of the collective good, as altruist and savior of one's neighbor but living in the private sphere according to principles of selfishness, careerism, opportunism, disloyalty, dishonesty and cunning: this contradictory behaviour can be interpreted as the effect of a huge and latent fear of starving combined with the ancestral desire for salvation, perfection and absolute fueled by Christianity itself. In short, We Italians are so afraid of starvation that we are never satisfied with what we have because "you never know what can happen" and, at the same time, we pretend as much as possible to be "decent" or even "noble" people in front of the eyes of others just like in front of the eyes of God who observes us from heaven. And the more cowardly, miserable, selfish, self-centred, narcissistic we are, the more we need to demonstrate in public that we are just the opposite.  We use others to deceive ourselves, to feel more beautiful, younger, purer, better people than we really are. We use other people, by convincing them that we are good people, to feel less foolish, miserable, corrupt, wrong, bad and less "evil" than we really are. We use appearances as a way to relieve our Biblical ancestral guilt. We use reputation as a way to feel less sinful. We are Christians who feel guilty a priori and who, while seeking heavenly salvation, dig their own grave in hell. Basically we are not able to forgive ourselves and that's exactly why we continue to sin.

Stepping out of Plato's Cave

Conversations between human beings in uniform on a football field: each one defends his role, his perspective, his interests. The question is: when is this not the case? In other words: when is a conversation more than that? Philosophical consultation proposes to raise the level of communicative interaction between subjects to a more meaningful one. Philosophical consultation takes into consideration one's own perspective as a determined perspective in order to test it, to evaluate it, to consider its daily, concrete and existential implications. Get out of one's own perspective and observe its boundaries, its contradictions and its limits in order to broaden it. Going out of our cave to unmask the shadows, illusions and lies that characterize our relationship with reality. In philosophical consultation, through the philosopher's questions, the subject becomes the object of his own thinking: it could be considered a way to know oneself through a dialogue. From this point of view thinking and dialogue represent a larger, higher and in some way also a more objective dimension than the subjective one in which we are all more or less constantly trapped.

Dialogue as a bridge among humans being

Dialogue leads to inner discoveries: we learn while recognizing something within ourselves; we learn while bringing something to light; we learn while something that was inside us comes to the surface and becomes something external to us; we learn while we reason with someone else who challenges our thinking system; we learn while we become strangers to ourselves and begin to observe ourselves from outside. Dialogue is precisely the practice that fosters this sort of self-knowledge. Dialogue is the mirror that does not reflect the illusory image of what we would like to be, but that shows us how we really are "here" and "now". Dialogue allows us to transform our thinking into critical thinking. In short, through dialogue we have the chance not only to know ourselves better, but even to open ourselves to the other and, at the same time, to open ourselves, through the other, to a higher dimension: the dimension of ideas and reasons. In fact dialogue is not an individual, private and self-closing act, but on the contrary it represents a dimension that opens us to confront with others and with reality. In short, dialogue is a bridge that connects humans to each other. Human beings who otherwise would limit themselves to imposing their own vision of the world instead of enriching their own through that of the other. Human beings who otherwise would remain unreachable islands even for the most daring, capable and experienced explorers.