The freedom that we should safeguard

On April 25 in Italy the liberation from nazifascism is celebrated. This year it was not possible to celebrate as always because of the obligation of isolation.

This unusual coincidence leads me to some reflection on the concept of freedom that I share. Comments are not expected, but are very much appreciated!

Does it make sense to talk about freedom today? I think so, even if today it has been limited to us for "legitimate defense" of our and others' health, because freedom must always be defended, it is not forever, and if you don't renew it, if you don't reinvent it ,every day, you runs the risk of seeing it fade, losing value. In the time of our fathers, fighting for freedom meant fighting against an enemy who had a uniform, and clear and unequivocal banners. Today it is no longer so: the battle for freedom is more individual, there are no opposing armies, but internal enemies, undetectable, often invisible (like a virus). I also think of digital technologies, social networks. Who can be said to be truly free in the "Republic of likes" or if he has become addicted to messaging?

If we look around, wherever we can see a person with his head bowed on a small screen: perhaps they would never be able to travel to a place without a signal! Is this a form of freedom? And if it isn't, what barter did we accept? Do we agree to be permanently traced? Yet it cannot be denied that this aspect of technology also favors, if we want, greater security and the possibility of tracking down criminals. The contradiction is here: we have never been so alone since we can communicate so easily, if it is true, let's face it, that the fundamentals of our relationships are weakening, which are our senses, our gaze, touch, hearing, taste, smell, or the perception of our emotions. We even traded them for an emoticon! Our feeling good or bad becomes a yellow face with the lips up or down.

Even thought in part suffers from it because it is formed and nourished by listening and reading and if one reduces oneself to listening only to a message recorded on WhatsApp or one reads only the few words that can be contained in a tweet, to what will the novels, the stories, the poems serve?

If we want to be freer we don't have to immerse ourselves in technology until we forget a whole world of sensations that we shouldn't give up on.

Yet. Freedom means being indignant and believing that you can change the things that conflict with the sense of your own morality. But being indignant does not mean offending the thoughts of others, but rather unfolding one's own. Therefore, if individual thought fails, freedom also risks being delayed or transformed into a debased word.

Many rightly believe that freedom is linked to the concept of identity: the stronger it is, the more the degree of autonomy is strengthened. The problem is what identity means today. Quite a few people tend to confuse the idea of identity with that of belonging to a specific culture, a geographical area, an ethnic group, a religion; but all this carries the risk of confining individuals to the illusion of being superior to others. So they are led to believe that identity is a perverse selection in which everything that does not come from the home garden is excluded. But if this were the case, in the history of humanity there would have been no form of art or music or cuisine and not even any technological and scientific innovation.

Humanity is the product of its infinite and irreducible movements, of its peregrinations on the planet, of its curiosity, of its own grafts. If all this were to cease or dilute or become hostile matter that increases conflict and destruction, even freedom would no longer make much sense or would become a slogan without meaning of growth and salvation that it has always had.

I close this excursus by remembering that freedom is never forever: to save and defend it - not only that we have today and which we have only had to temporarily limit - everyone must find the courage to disobey the homogenisation attempts of which each of us is somehow an accomplice. Rediscovering the dignity of this word means guaranteeing us the only possible future.