Monday, July 16, 2012
Saddam and Siena
I have just spent a week in Tuscany: I spare you the terrible details of 30 degree sunny weather, boar sausage and Brunello tastings. My visit here concurred during the worst phase of fighting in Syria and with Berlusconis announcement that he will run for office again. So it was with considerable interest that I paid a visit to the museum in the “Palazzo Publico” to look at Lorenzettis “Allegory of Good and Bad Government”. These large frescoes in the main hall of this building are considered the first and most impressive secular representations at the beginning of the Renaissance, which is why I was surrounded by Dutch, German, American and even Italian tourist running through these rooms before going on to look at the medieval Duomo and then travelling on to Florence.
The allegory shows two thrones, and on each of them a ruler: tyranny is a two-horned creature, good government looks like a regal ruler, serene and majestic. The creatures surrounding these rulers are not humans, but vices and virtues respectively, such as avarice, envy and injustice or magnanimity, justice and charity. The message is clear, painted right in the meeting hall of the council of Nine, the most powerful oligarchs of Siena at the time: it is a blessing to be ruled wisely and the fruits of such government are visible for and enjoyed by all. And such good government is not dependent on wealth or commerce, but on the possession and exercise of virtue. What a strange idea!
When we follow current European or Middle Eastern politics a very different discourse prevails: Italy is in trouble not because it’s previous prime minister was a proven adulterer and used his governmental immunity to avoid prosecution, but because he did not keep his eye on the economy and failed to modernize the state apparatus; Syria is a cause of concern because it lacks “democratic structures” and so the West should potentially use military force to depose the evil ruler and eventually hoist somebody else into power, like as Mr. Karzai in Afghanistan. But the question whether or not upright men can be found and convinced to take up office does not get raised anywhere.
The West has lost its way, both Lorenzetti and Alistair McIntyre would say. The latter is a philosopher who, 30 years ago, argued for the need to rediscover the virtues (After Virtue- Bloomsbury Academic and University of Notre Dame Press 1981) as a framework according which to evaluate the good life, society and government. But this requires a very different emphasis in education, the media, political selection and the legal system. A German court recently argued that it is immoral to circumcise your child because of the pain you inflict on him; yet those same courts force nurses to assist in aborting children, who seemingly don’t experience any pain? Apart from the lack of logic of this argument, it proves that people who hold any kind of moral or religious convictions are increasingly forced to act in contradiction with those values; the only creed still acceptable in the West is economic liberalism. But when nothing holds back the vices, then the polis suffers. Saddam was evil, everybody agrees; but very little moral scrutiny is exercised when looking at their successors, as if Mr. Romney, Mr. Berlusconi or Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn were necessarily any better.
So maybe the next G8 meeting should take place in Siena, with a visit to the Palazzo Publico?
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
The Most Embarrassing Moment of My Life
Have you ever played this game? It’s a sort of ice-breaker amongst teenagers and involves each participant anonymously divulging an embarrassing moment in his or her life, and the participants then needing to guess who it involved. Some incidents are innocent, such as jumping into the pool and losing one’s shorts in the process; some are more “serious”, such as calling somebody ugly only to find out that it was your future boss; but all prey on the human fact that there are things in our life and history which we would rather not reveal. Why is that? Because we don’t like to look stupid, we want to keep our reputation intact, we have an image to preserve, appearances to keep up. And mind you, some of that is good, because it stems from the instinct of self-respect, a healthy
human trait.
rogue: a set of friends are about to go on their yearly holiday in the south of France. Each carries a wound: an inability to stay faithful in a relationship, a marriage gone stale, an obsessive-compulsive disorder, gay tendencies. What is hard enough to conceal in day-to-day city life becomes a nightmare when you live with your 8 friends for two weeks in a cottage along the sea; which does not keep each of them from trying, and this leads to funny and tragic moments. The only person immune to this theatre is a fisherman who has been their friend for many summers. They all admire him because “what you see is what you get”, he seems true to himself. But change only occurs when tragedy hits…and I better stop here lest I spoil the plot.
Christians have traditionally had a recipe against such silliness, which seems so ingrained in human nature: from the days when hairy monks went to the Egyptian desert to live together, through the days of community life in places as varied as the Italian hills, Bohemian cities or Russian archipelagos, all the way to today, Christians have practiced the art of confession. The details varied, but the basic idea was always the same. Find a person whom you trust, be they a priest, nun, elder, brother, and tell them your little white lie. As you do, it shrivels up: you suddenly realize that what has ruled you has no power of you; as you bring it to the light, you stand in the truth of who you really are and you can start afresh. Therapists and AA groups have taken over these functions, and the effects are often similar. But the first step remains as difficult as ever: owning up to something you are ashamed of.
