山本 芳久『トマス・アクィナス 理性と神秘』 受賞者一覧・選評 サントリー学芸賞 サントリー文化財団

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Il Patto tra le religioni in Italia: note critiche a margine – Osservatorio Card. Van Thuân

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Il 25 giugno scorso la Chiesa cattolica italiana ha firmato assieme ad altre confessioni religiose, cristiane e non cristiane, un Patto per “La via italiana al dialogo. Le religioni nello spazio pubblico e per la coesione sociale”. L’hanno firmato varie sigle religiose islamiche, buddiste, bahai, protestanti, ortodosse, ebraiche, Induiste. Nello stesso giorno, i rappresentanti dei gruppi religiosi firmatari sono stati ricevuti dal Presidente della Repubblica Sergio Mattarella al quale hanno consegnato copia del Patto.

A nostro parere che la CEI abbia firmato questo Patto non è una buona notizia. Con le altre religioni si può cercare di convivere al meglio ma questo non ha bisogno di firmare Patti, lo si fa e basta. La firma di un Patto sociale e pubblico ha delle implicanze che vanno ben oltre i principi della buona convivenza e ha alle proprie spalle una non convincente visione della religione cattolica e delle altre religioni.

Prima di tutto c’è il sincretismo. Questo non significa solo sostituire le varie religioni con una unica che riprenda dalle altre alcuni spezzoni e li componga in un quadro nuovo. Il sincretismo non è costruttivo, ma decostruttivo e liquido. Esso tende a destrutturare le religioni per arrivare ad un ipotetico minimo comun denominatore sul quale tutte possano convergere. Questo percorso passa anche e oggi soprattutto attraverso il dialogo e la cooperazione per la giustizia e la pace. Le religioni intendono giustizia e pace in modo molto diverso tra loro, ma il sincretismo ritiene invece che le differenze si annullino davanti ad un substrato comune condiviso, che non c’è.

Il Patto in questione non segnala le enormi differenze esistenti, soprattutto tra il cattolicesimo e le altre religioni, ma indica solo le possibili convergenze pratiche, come se la prassi non dipendesse dalla dottrina. In questo modo lancia il messaggio che è conveniente mettere da parte la questione della verità o falsità delle religioni, che nessuna può ritenersi vera, e che conta solo la loro collaborazione pratica per creare coesione sociale.

Si potrebbe pensare che la Chiesa italiana facesse una proposta di collaborazione incentrata sui principi e i valori della legge naturale, terreno comune a tutte le persone, anche se di diversa religione. Ma questo non è possibile perché tra chi ha firmato il patto, ci sono religioni che non accettano nemmeno che ci sia un Dio, altre che non accettano che ci sia un Dio creatore e altre ancora che, pur accettando l’uno e l’altro principio, non accettano che esista una legge naturale. Del resto, la questione della legge naturale non è comune nemmeno tra cattolici e protestanti, che sono ambedue confessioni cristiane, figurarsi per le altre.

La firma del Patto richiede alla Chiesa cattolica italiana di pensare ad una sua presenza pubblica estromettendo Dio, e fondandola invece su esigenze politiche di coesione sociale. Si tratta di un laicismo mascherato di multireligiosità. In questa collaborazione non si potrà parlare del proprio Dio, ma solo di alcuni aspetti della convivenza sociale, che diventeranno, al posto dei “diritti di Dio”, il criterio fondamentale di discernimento. Per collaborare con le altre religioni, la religione cattolica è costretta ad assegnare più importanza all’uomo che a Dio. Per di più, non all’uomo inteso nella sua pienezza compreso il suo essere a somiglianza di Dio, ma dell’uomo inteso esistenzialmente e sociologicamente. L’uomo di oggi con i problemi di oggi, l’uomo di questo tempo.

Questo esito molto immiserito della relazione del cattolicesimo con le altre confessioni e religioni nasce da lontano. Alla sua origine c’è una visione non convincente della libertà di religione, c’è la svolta antropologica per cui si deve partire dall’uomo e mai da Dio, ci sono i notevoli cambiamenti nella teologia dell’ecumenismo e del dialogo interreligioso, c’è il pastoralismo e la sua richiesta di partire dal basso e dalla concretezza singolare delle relazioni, forse c’è anche  una conoscenza scarsa di cosa della natura stessa delle varie religioni.

Un’ultima osservazione merita il rito della consegna del Patto a Sergio Mattarella, che diventa il Gran Sacerdote di questo patto laico. Infatti, il Patto tra le varie religioni non è religioso, è laico. Lo firmano anche religioni che non credono in Dio, lo firmano mettendo da parte la propria visione di Dio considerata ininfluente per il loro impegno sociale, lo firmano assumendo il criterio tutto laico della coesione sociale. È evidente che, così facendo, le religioni si intendono come agenzie sociali che mettono da parte alcuni loro valori fondanti ma non condivisi, riconoscendo un valore fondante ad impegni civili condivisi, ossia i principi sociali e politici della Repubblica.

Stefano Fontana 

Solzhenitsyn's Commencement Address
Harvard University
June 8, 1978

A World Split Apartby Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on the occasion of the 327th commencement of this old and illustrious university. My congratulations and best wishes to all of today’s graduates.

Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter. A measure of bitter truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary.

Three years ago in the United States I said certain things that were rejected and appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said. . . .

The split in today’s world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of utterly destroying the other. However, the understanding of the split too often is limited to this political conception: the illusion according to which danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is both more profound and more alienating, that the rifts are more numerous than one can see at first glance. These deep manifold splits bear the danger of equally manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom—in this case, our Earth—divided against itself cannot stand.

Contemporary Worlds

There is the concept of the Third World: Thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture, especially if it is spread over a wide part of the earth’s surface, constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this category China, India, the Muslim world, and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as uniform. For one thousand years Russia belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its special character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in Communist captivity. And while it may be that in past years Japan has increasingly become, in effect, a Far West, drawing ever closer to Western ways (I am no judge here), Israel, I think, should not be reckoned as part of the West, if only because of the decisive circumstance that its state system is fundamentally linked to religion.

How short a time ago, relatively, the small world of modern Europe was easily seizing colonies all over the globe, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but usually with contempt for any possible values in the conquered peoples’ approach to life. It all seemed an overwhelming success, with no geographic limits. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden the twentieth century brought the clear realization of this society’s fragility. We now see that the conquests proved to be short-lived and precarious (and this, in turn, points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests). Relations with the former colonial world now have switched to the opposite extreme and the Western world often exhibits an excess of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns, will be sufficient for the West to clear this account.

Convergence

But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development bears little resemblance to all this.

The anguish of a divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between the leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all evolving toward each other and that neither one can be transformed into the other without violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side’s defects, too, and this can hardly suit anyone.

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, in my examination of the overall pattern of the world’s rifts I would have concentrated on the calamities of the East. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the contemporary West, such as I see them.

A Decline in Courage

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There remain many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts of boldness and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?

Well-Being

When the modern Western states were being formed, it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence.) Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. (In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: The constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.) The individual’s independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of the people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, preparing them for and summoning them toward physical bloom, happiness, the possession of material goods, money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures. So who should now renounce all this, why and for the sake of what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of the common good and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one’s nation must be defended in an as yet distant land?

Even biology tells us that a high degree of habitual well-being is not advantageous to a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to take off its pernicious mask.

Legalistic Life

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: This would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: Everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: After all, people are free not to purchase it.)

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is also less than worthy of man. A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

The Direction of Freedom

Today’s Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people’s right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realms of overt criminality? Legal limits (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also some misuse of such freedom. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency—all with the support of thousands of defenders in the society. When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. There are quite a number of such cases.

This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man—the master of this world—does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. Yet strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than in the destitute and lawless Soviet society. (There is a multitude of prisoners in our camps who are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state by resorting to means outside the legal framework.)

The Direction of the Press

The press, too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word “press” to include all the media.) But what use does it make of it?

Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb.

Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and are then left hanging? The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation’s defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan “Everyone is entitled to know everything.” (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.)

Hastiness and superficiality—these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: One discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend.

A Fashion in Thinking

Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden, have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block successful development. In America, I have received letters from highly intelligent persons—maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear him because the media will not provide him with a forum. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to a blindness which is perilous in our dynamic era. An example is the selfdeluding interpretation of the state of affairs in the contemporary world that functions as a sort of a petrified armor around people’s minds, to such a degree that human voices from seventeen countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will be broken only by the inexorable crowbar of events.

I have mentioned a few traits of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world. The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a survey, in particular to look into the impact of these characteristics on important aspects of a nation’s life, such as elementary education, advanced education in the humanities, and art.

Socialism

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world the way to successful economic development, even though in past years it has been sharply offset by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of no longer being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. And this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of expressing my partial criticism of the Western system in order to suggest socialism as an alternative. No; with the experience of a country where socialism has been realized, I shall certainly not speak for such an alternative. The mathematician Igor Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliantly argued book entitled Socialism; this is a penetrating historical analysis demonstrating that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich’s book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the US.

Not a Model

But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just enumerated are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points. Of course, a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to stay on such a soulless and smooth plane of legalism, as is the case in yours. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to numerous observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

Shortsightedness

Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: “We cannot apply moral criteria to politics.” Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong, and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute evil in the world. Only moral criteria can help the West against communism’s well-planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. Practical or occasional considerations of any kind will inevitably be swept away by strategy. After a certain level of the problem has been reached, legalistic thinking induces paralysis; it prevents one from seeing the scale and the meaning of events.

In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe partly because of it, the West has great difficulty in finding its bearings amid contemporary events. There have been naïve predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union’s Vietnam or that the impudent Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special US courtesy to Cuba. Kennan’s advice to his own country—to begin unilateral disarmament—belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the officials in Moscow’s Old Square [1] roar with laughter at your political wizards! As to Fidel Castro, he openly scorns the United States, boldly sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours.

However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that the way should be left open for national, or Communist, self-determination in Vietnam (or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity). But in fact, members of the US antiwar movement became accomplices in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in the genocide and the suffering today imposed on thirty million people there. Do these convinced pacifists now hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American intelligentsia lost its nerve and as a consequence the danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your short-sighted politician who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. Small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation’s courage. But if the full might of America suffered a full-fledged defeat at the hands of a small Communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?

I have said on another occasion that in the twentieth-century Western democracy has not won any major war by itself; each time it shielded itself with an ally possessing a powerful land army, whose philosophy it did not question. In World War II against Hitler, instead of winning the conflict with its own forces, which would certainly have been sufficient, Western democracy raised up another enemy, one that would prove worse and more powerful, since Hitler had neither the resources nor the people, nor the ideas with broad appeal, nor such a large number of supporters in the West—a fifth column—as the Soviet Union possessed. Some Western voices already have spoken of the need of a protective screen against hostile forces in the next world conflict; in this case, the shield would be China. But I would not wish such an outcome to any country in the world. First of all, it is again a doomed alliance with evil; it would grant the United States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion people would turn around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall victim to a Cambodia-style genocide.

Loss of Will

And yet, no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons even become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, in this case, but concessions, attempts to gain time, and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference, free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line of defense for which enslaved members of the Helsinki Watch Groups are sacrificing their lives.

Western thinking has become conservative: The world situation must stay as it is at any cost; there must be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society that has ceased to develop. But one must be blind in order not to see that the oceans no longer belong to the West, while the land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) constituted the internal self-destruction of the small progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one; I do not believe it will be) may well bury Western civilization forever.

In the face of such a danger, with such historical values in your past, with such a high level of attained freedom and, apparently, of devotion to it, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

Humanism and Its Consequences

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing steadily in accordance with its proclaimed social intentions, hand in hand with a dazzling progress in technology. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man’s physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.

And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century’s moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

An Unexpected Kinship

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed its concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that “communism is naturalized humanism.”

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of anti-religious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism’s rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today’s West and today’s East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism. The Communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism’s crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

Before the Turn

I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.

It has made man the measure of all things on earth—imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: The split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the president’s performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.

Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

This ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but—upward.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes

[1] The Old Square in Moscow (Staraya ploshchad) is the place where the headquarters of the Central Committee of the CPSU are located; it is the real name of what in the West is conventionally referred to as "the Kremlin."

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（多事奏論）空気を読む力　あってもなくても、なぜ疲れる　岡崎明子

朝日新聞　2026年6月13日

ふりかえれば、新人記者時代の私は、空気を読まなかった。へそ出しのＴシャツで出勤したり、大阪府警担当が長かった上司に「警察取材って、意味がありますか」と聞いて本気で怒られたり。

　「会社」に染まりたくない。今思えば、ずいぶん幼稚な反骨心だった。職場に漂う目に見えないルールに逆らうより、「従った方が楽だ」と悟るまでに、かなりの年月が必要だった。

　だから私は「空気を読めない人」にいらだつ人の気持ちもよくわかる。場の雰囲気を察して気を配っている横で、平然と空気を乱されると「自由すぎる」と憤ってしまうのも無理はない。けれどその怒りを向けるべき先は、「空気を読めない人」なのだろうか。

　　　　　＊

　早稲田大学の鄭有希（チョンユヒ）教授らは、日本の組織における「空気を読む」を概念化する論文を発表した。多様な職場で働く１５８人に自由記述を求めたところ、空気を読む力は、状況に気づく「認知」、調和しようとする「態度」、それに応じた「行動」からなる「重要な能力」として捉えられていたという。

　つまり「空気を読む」力は、単なる忖度（そんたく）ではなく、社会的なスキルなのだ。

　私たちは小さい頃から、お遊戯や学校生活、就職活動などを通じて、そのスキルを身につけて社会に出る。いや、身につけられた人たちが、多数派として扱われている、と言うべきかもしれない。

　発達に特性のある人を取材する機会が多いのだが、言葉の裏や行間を読み取ることに苦労する人は少なくない。友人関係や就活の面接、職場の人間関係でつまずいてきた経験を、繰り返し聞いた。

　一方で記事が掲載されるたびに、切実な訴えも届く。「当事者の苦労はわかるが、周囲も本当に大変だ」。理想論だけでは職場は回らない。でも、なぜ周囲はそこまで疲弊してしまうのか。

　　　　　＊

　「空気」は、その職場で権限を持つ人の価値観を強く映し出す。何を言えば評価され、どう行動すれば面倒くさがられるのか。空気を読む力がある人ほど、その先に起きることが見えてしまう。だから自分を抑えて、やり過ごす。

　一方で、空気を読めない人は職場で浮き、ときに孤立する。苦しさの形は違うが、「空気を読む」ことが当然とされる環境では、どちらの立場の人も消耗する。とくに空気を読んで自我を抑える人ほど、不満も違和感も知らず知らずのうちにたまっていくのだろう。

　空気を読み過ぎる組織は、判断力も鈍っていく。合意が優先され、異論がのみ込まれていくと、「集団浅慮」と呼ばれる状態に陥りやすい。

　空気を読む力は、危うい兆しに気づき、ブレーキをかけるためにも使えるはずだ。その力が同調圧力を保つためだけに使われると、空気を読める人ほど声を上げられなくなってしまう。

　かつて空気を読まなかった私も、今では無難な服を選び、角の立たない言い方も覚えた。社会人として必要な成熟だったのだろう。でもそれと引き換えに、何だか大切な牙を失った気もする。

　空気が読める人ほど疲れてしまう。しかも、その負担は可視化されないまま積み上がる。そんな仕組みを放置してきた組織こそ、問題があるのではないか。

　この能力をつかい、周囲に配慮しつつ、組織に小さな風穴をあけることもできるはずだ。それができないなら、問題は個人ではなく、その「空気」をつくる側にある。

　（編集委員）

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OGNI ENERGIA LASCIA UNA CICATRICE

OGNI ENERGIA LASCIA UNA CICATRICE

Il rischio è che il con­fronto sul nucleare resti sospeso den­tro slo­gan e dise­gni di legge che rin­viano le deci­sioni vere

Di Gabriella Grei­son

4 Jun 2026

Ci sono paure che fanno rumore. E poi ci sono quelle che eva­po­rano len­ta­mente nell’aria, così len­ta­mente da diven­tare pae­sag­gio. Le sco­rie nucleari appar­ten­gono alla prima cate­go­ria. La CO2 alla seconda.

Ho letto l’arti­colo di Dacia Maraini sul Cor­riere dedi­cato al nucleare. E men­tre lo leg­gevo pen­savo che in fondo il vero pro­ta­go­ni­sta del dibat­tito ener­ge­tico con­tem­po­ra­neo non è il petro­lio, non è l’ura­nio, non è il sole, non è il vento. È il tempo.

Per­ché le sco­rie fanno paura soprat­tutto per que­sto: durano più di noi. Attra­ver­sano le epo­che con una spe­cie di pazienza mine­rale. Restano lì men­tre cam­biano i governi, le ideo­lo­gie, le lin­gue, le gene­ra­zioni. Sono la prova fisica che ogni civiltà lascia die­tro di sé qual­cosa che non rie­sce più a con­trol­lare com­ple­ta­mente.

Ed è giu­sto par­larne. Anzi: è neces­sa­rio. Ma ogni volta che in Ita­lia si pro­nun­cia la parola «nucleare», il pen­siero si spezza imme­dia­ta­mente in due metà iste­ri­che. Da una parte i sacer­doti del pro­gresso. Dall’altra gli archeo­logi dell’apo­ca­lisse. Nel mezzo, quasi mai, com­pare la com­ples­sità.

Eppure la fisica dei sistemi com­plessi ci inse­gna pro­prio que­sto: non esi­stono solu­zioni pure. Esi­stono equi­li­bri insta­bili. Com­pen­sa­zioni. Scambi di rischio. Zone d’ombra.

Ogni sistema ener­ge­tico pro­duce resi­dui. Sem­pre. Solo che alcuni resi­dui li vediamo. Altri invece li respi­riamo.

Le sco­rie nucleari stanno den­tro con­te­ni­tori d’acciaio e cemento e per que­sto ci ter­ro­riz­zano: hanno un corpo, un luogo, un nome. Le sco­rie fos­sili invece gal­leg­giano nell’atmo­sfera come fan­ta­smi sta­ti­stici. Le chia­miamo ondate di calore. Le chia­miamo sic­cità. Le chia­miamo incendi. Le chia­miamo migra­zioni cli­ma­ti­che. Le chia­miamo bol­lette fuori con­trollo. Le chia­miamo guerre ener­ge­ti­che. Ma fac­ciamo fatica a per­ce­pirle come «sco­rie» per­ché non stanno ferme in una foto­gra­fia. Si dilui­scono nel tempo. E tutto ciò che si dilui­sce nel tempo, l’essere umano smette di vederlo.

E poi c’è un det­ta­glio di cui si parla pochis­simo: le sco­rie nucleari esi­stono già. Esi­stono adesso. Anche in Ita­lia. Le pro­du­cono gli ospe­dali, la medi­cina nucleare, la ricerca scien­ti­fica, alcune appli­ca­zioni indu­striali. Ogni volta che fac­ciamo una PET, una radio­te­ra­pia, certi tipi di dia­gno­stica avan­zata, stiamo già entrando in con­tatto con il mondo della radioat­ti­vità con­trol­lata. Que­sto non signi­fica bana­liz­zare il pro­blema delle sco­rie ad alta atti­vità pro­dotte dalle cen­trali. Signi­fica però ricor­dare una cosa fon­da­men­tale: la società con­tem­po­ra­nea usa già mate­riale radioat­tivo ogni giorno, spesso per sal­varci la vita. Il tema quindi non è «radioat­ti­vità sì o no?», per­ché quella soglia l’abbiamo attra­ver­sata da decenni. Il tema è: con quale livello di sicu­rezza, tra­spa­renza e respon­sa­bi­lità vogliamo gestire ciò che esi­ste già e ciò che even­tual­mente pro­dur­remo in futuro?

Negli Stati Uniti hanno ini­ziato a usare un’espres­sione inte­res­sante: «energy addic­tion». Dipen­denza ener­ge­tica. Ed è forse la defi­ni­zione più one­sta della nostra epoca. Per­ché il pro­blema non è sol­tanto pro­durre ener­gia pulita. Il pro­blema è che con­ti­nuiamo a con­su­marne sem­pre di più. Data cen­ter, intel­li­genza arti­fi­ciale, cli­ma­tiz­za­zione, auto elet­tri­che, ser­ver, reti digi­tali, indu­strie: tutto chiede elet­tri­cità, con­ti­nua­mente. Viviamo den­tro una civiltà ener­gi­vora che vuole con­tem­po­ra­nea­mente più tec­no­lo­gia, più com­fort, più con­nes­sione e meno emis­sioni. È una ten­sione gigan­te­sca. Ed è per que­sto che spesso le rin­no­va­bili e il nucleare ven­gono rac­con­tati male: come se fos­sero avver­sari, quando in realtà stanno rispon­dendo a scale tem­po­rali diverse. Le rin­no­va­bili oggi sono fon­da­men­tali per tam­po­nare, alleg­ge­rire, ridurre subito le emis­sioni. Fun­zio­nano a bloc­chetti, entrano pro­gres­si­va­mente nel sistema, abbas­sano la dipen­denza dai fos­sili. Il nucleare invece, per chi lo sostiene, è un’infra­strut­tura di lun­ghis­simo periodo: lenta da costruire, enorme, strut­tu­rale. Sono due tempi diversi della stessa crisi ener­ge­tica.

È que­sto che trovo ver­ti­gi­noso nel dibat­tito ita­liano sull’ener­gia. La sua infan­ti­liz­za­zione con­ti­nua. Come se bastasse dire «rin­no­va­bili» per can­cel­lare la fisica delle reti elet­tri­che. Come se bastasse dire «nucleare» per can­cel­lare la que­stione delle sco­rie. Come se un sistema ener­ge­tico nazio­nale fosse una frase morale invece che una delle archi­tet­ture più com­plesse mai costruite dall’uomo.

Per più di tre mesi ho lavo­rato alla scrit­tura della serie «Scin­tille» per il Cor­riere della Sera,e il cuore di quel lavoro è esat­ta­mente que­sto: togliere il riflesso ideo­lo­gico dai grandi temi col­let­tivi. Per­ché una rete ener­ge­tica non fun­ziona per slo­gan. Fun­ziona per sta­bi­lità, con­ti­nuità, accu­mulo, ridon­danza, distri­bu­zione, con­sumo varia­bile, gestione dei pic­chi.

Quando sono andata da Parenzo a «L’aria che tira» a par­lare di sistemi com­plessi appli­cati all’ener­gia, è suc­cessa una cosa quasi comica. Una metà del pub­blico era con­vinta che fossi con­tro le rin­no­va­bili. L’altra metà era con­vinta che stessi demo­lendo il nucleare. E lì ho capito quanto siamo diven­tati inca­paci di tol­le­rare il pen­siero com­plesso. Appena non urli una fede, qual­cuno pre­tende imme­dia­ta­mente una ban­diera.

Ma la fisica dei sistemi com­plessi, quando è pra­ti­cata con one­stà intel­let­tuale, non appar­tiene alle tribù. La fisica osserva i vin­coli del reale. E il reale, pur­troppo o per for­tuna, è sem­pre meno puro delle nostre ideo­lo­gie.

E pro­prio per que­sto, prima ancora delle tifo­se­rie, ser­vi­rebbe final­mente una cosa molto sem­plice: un piano. Un piano ener­ge­tico chiaro, leg­gi­bile, spie­gato ai cit­ta­dini. Per­ché oggi il rischio è che il dibat­tito sul nucleare resti sospeso den­tro annunci, slo­gan e dise­gni di legge che rin­viano con­ti­nua­mente le deci­sioni vere. Se il governo pensa dav­vero che il nucleare debba rien­trare nel futuro ener­ge­tico ita­liano, allora deve dire con pre­ci­sione dove, come, con quali tec­no­lo­gie, con quali costi, con quali tempi e soprat­tutto con quale stra­te­gia per le sco­rie. Altri­menti il rischio è che il Ddl sul nucleare diventi sol­tanto un modo ele­gante per spo­stare le deci­sioni alla pros­sima legi­sla­tura.

Per que­sto penso che Dacia Maraini fac­cia bene a par­lare delle sco­rie. Per­ché costringe tutti a guar­dare il lato lungo del tempo. Ma il passo suc­ces­sivo dovrebbe essere ancora più radi­cale: avere il corag­gio di guar­dare anche tutte le altre sco­rie che abbiamo nor­ma­liz­zato. Quelle che non stanno sot­to­terra in un depo­sito, ma sopra le nostre teste. Quelle che non dure­ranno migliaia di anni, ma che stanno già modi­fi­cando il pre­sente.

La vera domanda allora non è «nucleare sì o no?». La vera domanda è molto più sco­moda.

Quale forma di resi­duo siamo dispo­sti a lasciare al futuro pur di con­ti­nuare a chia­mare pro­gresso il nostro pre­sente?

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Dialogo inter religioso

La Chiesa cattolica italiana non aiuterà la politica a fare questo sforzo nell’uso della propria ragione, perché già da tempo impegnata sul fronte del qualunquismo religioso motivato impropriamente dal dialogo interreligioso. Le forze politiche anticattoliche, in accordo con la CEI, ne approfitteranno per denunciare l’improprietà del ruolo pubblico assegnato alla religione cattolica. iPadから送信

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Di Fede­rico Fubini Europa e America 1

Di Fede­rico Fubini 21 Apr 2026 Certo che l’«escur­sione» di Donald Trump in Iran, come la chiama lui, è stata un’avven­tura scri­te­riata: decisa senza capire le impli­ca­zioni, senza rispetto per i pro­cessi demo­cra­tici in Ame­rica o una stra­te­gia per il dopo. E certo che tutto que­sto pres­sap­po­chi­smo abbassa di un gra­dino in più il «soft power» degli Stati Uniti, quel cari­sma che por­tava gli altri Paesi a con­di­vi­dere i loro obiet­tivi e valori. In pro­po­sito si sta for­mando non solo un raro con­senso bipar­ti­san nella poli­tica ita­liana, ma un comune sen­tire nella società. Già, ma dopo? Quali con­clu­sioni può trarne la nostra classe diri­gente? Che senso di dire­zione può darsi un Paese i cui assetti da ottant’anni dipen­dono tanto dalla nostra col­lo­ca­zione — rela­ti­va­mente acri­tica — nella sfera d’influenza ame­ri­cana? Uno sguardo all’indie­tro dà un’idea dell’enor­mità dello strappo: quasi un quarto di secolo fa l’ita­lia di Sil­vio Ber­lu­sconi si schierò con George W. Bush sull’inva­sione dell’iraq; lo stesso non sta acca­dendo oggi con Trump e l’iran, anche per­ché l’opi­nione pub­blica non lo accet­te­rebbe. Per capire come possa evol­vere l’ita­lia da qui, aiuta però ribal­tare la pro­spet­tiva. Per­ché è facile dirsi che Trump è insta­bile, super­fi­ciale o che voglia sem­pli­ce­mente pre­va­ri­care. Su que­sto siamo (quasi) tutti d’accordo. Più utile sarebbe invece chie­dersi come gli ame­ri­cani vedano oggi noi ita­liani ed euro­pei: non per­ché abbiano ragione, ma per capire cosa li muove. Imma­gi­nate dun­que di essere vicini a Trump: in que­sto momento voi guar­date agli euro­pei e vedete igna­via e tra­di­mento. Non valu­tate che gli ame­ri­cani non abbiano par­lato con nes­suno degli alleati, prima di sca­te­nare una guerra che mette in peri­colo le loro eco­no­mie e i loro inte­ressi. A domi­narvi sono altri pen­sieri. Ciò che avete in mente è che per ottant’anni gli Stati Uniti con le loro risorse, i loro mezzi mili­tari, i loro uomini, i loro morti in Corea, in Viet­nam, in Afgha­ni­stan, hanno per­messo a noi di pro­spe­rare. Non era mai suc­cesso nella sto­ria che un ege­mone si sacri­fi­casse tanto per i suoi sog­getti. Invece sono stati gli ame­ri­cani a garan­tire la libertà di navi­ga­zione che ha creato il com­mer­cio glo­bale, facendo sì che ita­liani, tede­schi, giap­po­nesi — gli scon­fitti dell’asse — diven­tas­sero ric­chi. Sono gli ame­ri­cani che hanno pagato per l’europa e le demo­cra­zie dell’asia l’ombrello nucleare, lasciando che que­sti inve­stis­sero in wel­fare più degli ame­ri­cani stessi. Sono sem­pre gli ame­ri­cani che pro­teg­gono gli euro­pei con 85 mila dei loro sol­dati in oltre 40 basi in Ita­lia, Ger­ma­nia e altrove. Del resto sem­pre gli ame­ri­cani, che ave­vano messo a dispo­si­zione degli scon­fitti il piano Mar­shall, hanno anche garan­tito agli alleati il loro enorme mer­cato di sbocco. E natu­ral­mente agli ame­ri­cani la spesa mili­tare è costata almeno un terzo del loro enorme debito pub­blico, più un defi­cit com­mer­ciale che com­pensa debo­lezza cro­nica del mer­cato euro­peo. In cam­bio, gli euro­pei hanno guar­dato altrove. L’ex can­cel­liere tede­sco Gerhard Schröder si è lasciato assol­dare da un’azienda di Stato russa, dopo aver legato ad essa la Ger­ma­nia per le for­ni­ture di ener­gia. Sil­vio Ber­lu­sconi ha raf­for­zato con­tratti simili e si van­tava, come Schröder, dell’ami­ci­zia con Vla­di­mir Putin. Anche Angela Mer­kel con­tava tal­mente sulla Rus­sia per il gas dall’aver spento in anti­cipo il nucleare civile; la can­cel­liera pre­fe­riva un’europa debole e arre­trata, pur­ché dai conti in ordine: sal­vata ancora una volta dall’ame­rica, dalle sue armi, dalle sue tec­no­lo­gie spa­ziali e dal suo gas, quando Putin cerca di tra­vol­gere l’ucraina. Poi è arri­vato il momento della verità, pensa que­sta per­sona vicina a Trump. L’iran per­se­gue un’ato­mica con la quale tenere in scacco non solo Israele ma quasi tutta l’europa, oltre alle rotte della glo­ba­liz­za­zione fra l’asia e l’occi­dente. Gli Hou­thi, mano­vrati da Tehe­ran, dal 2023 hanno minac­ciano già sul Mar Rosso la porta che con­nette il Medi­ter­ra­neo alla Cina. E gli euro­pei si sono già dimo­strati imbelli, inca­paci di pie­gare per­sino quella pic­cola mili­zia irre­go­lare. Erano solo le prove gene­rali, pensa que­sta per­sona vicina a Trump. Nel 2026 la Guar­dia rivo­lu­zio­na­ria di Tehe­ran blocca Hor­muz e gli alleati cosa fanno? Vol­tano le spalle all’ame­rica. La lasciano sola a ria­prire lo stretto da cui rice­vono tanto del loro gas, petro­lio, fer­ti­liz­zante. Ma non solo, con­ti­nua que­sto trum­piano. Agli ame­ri­cani che hanno speso cen­ti­naia di miliardi per man­te­nere le basi in Europa, l’ita­lia nega Sigo­nella, Lon­dra la base di Diego Garcìa, Spa­gna e Fran­cia negano il diritto di sor­volo, il can­cel­liere Frie­drich Merz dice che non è affare della Nato. Il governo di Madrid defi­ni­sce la guerra «ille­gale e immo­rale». Parigi vota in Con­si­glio di sicu­rezza dell’onu con Rus­sia e Cina con­tro l’uso della forza per ria­prire Hor­muz e per­mette a una nave fran­cese di pagare a Tehe­ran il pedag­gio sullo Stretto. In yuan digi­tali. Ovvia­mente Trump, visto dall’europa, rac­co­glie ciò che ha semi­nato: le inti­mi­da­zioni, la guerra com­mer­ciale, le minacce sulla Groen­lan­dia, il suo opaco flirt con Putin. Trump inol­tre pre­fe­ri­sce non ricor­dare l’accordo nucleare con Tehe­ran (fir­mato anche dagli euro­pei) che lui stesso ha fatto sal­tare nel 2018. Ma rove­sciamo di nuovo la pro­spet­tiva, sta­volta nei panni degli alleati di Washing­ton che non sono in Europa. I Paesi sun­niti del Golfo, per esem­pio, hanno accet­tato le basi ame­ri­cane per avere sicu­rezza. Alcuni di essi hanno per­sino cor­rotto Trump e la sua fami­glia — tra­mite accordi sugli hotel o le crip­to­va­lute — per avere lealtà e tec­no­lo­gie. In cam­bio, que­sti Paesi arabi del Golfo si sono tro­vati sotto i mis­sili e i droni di una guerra sulla quale nean­che loro sono stati con­sul­tati, men­tre l’ame­rica si è rive­lata inca­pace di pro­teg­gerli. Poi i Paesi del Golfo si sono tro­vati chiu­sure e pedaggi su un brac­cio di mare per loro vitale, con l’ame­rica inca­pace di ripor­tare la nor­ma­lità pre­bel­lica mal­grado la forza mili­tare schiac­ciante: non ha più la coe­sione poli­tica per accet­tare le per­dite neces­sa­rie. Gli euro­pei, ma anche i giap­po­nesi o i sud­co­reani, vedono tutto que­sto. Vedono che l’ame­rica non sop­porta più il pro­prio ruolo di garante ed ege­mone, è troppo inde­bi­tata e pola­riz­zata al pro­prio interno per farlo. Non ci sarà dun­que un ritorno al sistema di alleanze di ieri. È solo que­stione di tempo prima che si for­mino nuovi gruppi di Paesi ed essi si met­tano a cac­cia di mer­cati, risorse stra­te­gi­che, tec­no­lo­gie, armi. Alcuni, dell’ato­mica. Ce n’è abba­stanza per­ché anche in Ita­lia si formi un nuovo con­senso: non dob­biamo per forza vol­tare le spalle all’ame­rica; ma non abbiamo alter­na­tive a un inve­sti­mento con­vinto in un’europa (molto) più forte. iPadから送信

Europa e America

Ma l’America nel dopoguerra ha agito per generosità verso l’Europa? Non proprio, leggendo le stesse analisi americane. Questa è la vulgata imperiale auto-assolutoria, e Fubini, pur ribaltando la prospettiva, la ingoia senza filtro critico. Gli analisti americani realisti, da Mearsh­eimer a Walt, da Leffler a Layne, hanno documentato il contrario: l’egemonia americana del dopoguerra è stata un progetto di interesse nazionale calcolato, non filantropia strategica. Il piano Marshall serviva ad aprire mercati europei al capitale americano e a bloccare il filo-sovietismo, il suo competitor di allora, in Francia e Italia. Le basi NATO non “proteggevano” l’Europa: proiettavano potere americano verso Est e tenevano gli europei dipendenti, secondo la formula attribuita al primo segretario generale NATO Ismay: “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. L’ombrello nucleare impediva agli europei di sviluppare deterrenza autonoma, il che li rendeva strutturalmente subordinati, non liberi. La libertà di navigazione garantiva prima di tutto le catene di approvvigionamento e i mercati di sbocco delle multinazionali americane. Il deficit commerciale con l’Europa non era una concessione: era il meccanismo con cui il dollaro rimaneva valuta di riserva globale, fonte di enorme rendita per gli Stati Uniti (il cosiddetto exorbitant privilege di Giscard d’Estaing) Il “sacrificio” americano era in realtà la forma più sofisticata di dominio mai costruita: un egemone che si fa pagare in obbedienza strategica, accesso ai mercati e supremazia monetaria. Ma cosa viene davvero rimproverato all’Europa, al di là di Trump? Qui il discorso è più articolato e merita onestà intellettuale, perché le critiche strutturali esistono e preesistono a Trump. Il beneficio della difesa senza sopportarne i costi è reale ma mal posto. Il problema non è che gli europei abbiano “scelto il welfare invece delle armi”: è che Washington ha attivamente preferito europei dipendenti piuttosto che un’Europa con capacità militare autonoma, perché l’autonomia avrebbe significato negoziazione alla pari. Quando la Francia ha tentato una difesa europea indipendente (de Gaulle, 1966), Washington ha sabotato il progetto. L’ingenuità energetica verso la Russia è invece una critica più fondata. Nord Stream non era solo un errore commerciale: era una scelta politica che indeboliva la coesione atlantica, e gli americani lo dissero esplicitamente, inascoltati ( Merkel si recò appositamente alla Casa Bianca da Biden per vincere la sua opposizione). Anche la mancanza di capacità di proiezione, il caso Houthi citato da Fubini è reale: l’Europa non ha potuto o voluto mantenere aperto il Mar Rosso da sola. Ma questa debolezza è in parte il prodotto di decenni di dipendenza incentivata dagli stessi Stati Uniti. La critica più seria, tuttavia, quella che circola davvero nei think tank di Washington come Brookings, CSIS, persino l’Atlantic Council negli ultimi anni, non è la mancanza di spesa militare in sé: è l’assenza di soggettività strategica europea. L’Europa sa dire no a Trump, ma non sa dire sì a un progetto alternativo coerente. Reagisce, non agisce. È un’entità economica che si comporta come potenza, la presunzione dei singoli Stati, senza esserlo, perché gli stessi Stati le impediscono di trasformare la potenza economica in potenza politica. iPadから送信

Fwd: Suore uccise in Burundi, un arre­sto a Parma Il man­dante è un gene­rale

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Suore uccise in Burundi, un arresto a Parma Il mandante è un generale
Andrea Pasqualetto © RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATA
Corriere della Sera
27 Feb 2026

A suor Olga Raschietti e suor Lucia Pulici tagliarono la gola. Suor Bernardetta Boggian fu addirittura decapitata. Era il settembre del 2014 e il brutale triplice omicidio fu commesso al Centre Jeunes Kamenge di Bujumbura, in Burundi, dove le religiose...
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