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.