Necessary efforts

It’s seven years now that writers, publishers, reporters, and above all hoards of readers who annually meet in Mantua for Festivaletteratura (literature festival) in September. Amid happenings of all sorts, readings, press conferences, and concerts all across the town centre, blockbuster authors meet and have a friendly bar-like chat with simple folk who have a passion for literature.

What’s the “pundit” (as he jokingly likes to refer to himself) of the daily “La Repubblica” and satirical columnist for the weekly “L’Espresso”, Michele Serra, up to, then, on the outskirts of town at eleven p.m.? In a bit of time left over from his many engagements of the day he is speaking to a group of college students who’ve invited him to give a talk. In a way, it’s the meeting of two different cultures. On the one hand there’s Serra’s culture that dates back to the tumultuous seventies in Italy, and then there’s that of the sons and daughters of the apathetic minimalists of the nineties, the generation that will go down in history labelled with number, 9/11, on the other.
A quarter past midnight and the event’s over without any intergenerational clash or bone of contention. The journalist looks almost disappointed: he was looking forward to being challenged on something, rejected as a role model, replaced by something new and different. He was hoping to be called on to defend his point of view, to provide valid and convincing reasons for his beliefs. But the talk had ended up focusing on his satirical style, on the sources of his outlook and inspiration, on his biography. This will in any case 
be the generation called upon to attempt to plan and provide for a different world, like all those before it. It’s a challenge and an effort they can choose to pick up and carry forward or let fall by the wayside.

Let’s start from this idea of having to make an effort. What’s your opinion on the subject?
Getting to really know others, others that are different from ourselves, can be painstaking. That’s a topic I’d really like to write up on, the idea of having to make an effort. It’s a concept that’s almost being lost by the younger generation. It’s spurned, even though it’s the unavoidable price-tag attached to living. Achieving, loving, understanding, all require striving for. We’re risking turning into a society of ineffectual misfits. I find alarming this refusal to even entertain the idea that any process may be trying and require commitment and exertion to be carried forward. And yet, in the long run, it’s precisely this that makes life worth living. To some extent, the idea of change is rejected. But there should be a desire for change – it upsets the status quo, it breaks the monotony of a routine. Instead, there’s a tendency to withdraw into a cocoon of apathy, very much induced by the modern-day comforts with which we surround ourselves.

What do you mean?
The digital age affords us the time and opportunity for devoting ourselves to other, less mundane interests. The net, but also telephone address storage capacity, satellite navigation systems, and so forth, are helping to set free some of our intellectual skills. There’s more time to think things out, if we want to, to pay greater attention to what’s going on about us, to attempt to better understand the world. The trouble is we haven’t yet filled the void that this newly acquired freedom has given us with the desire and determination to stretch out and overcome our narrow tunnel vision. We’re simply content to effortlessly and comfortably sit back on a couch and watch a cathode tube tell us about what’s going on in the world without risking to get embroiled in it.

In this context, would you consider stereotypes as being short cuts, relieving us of the effort required to come to terms with other cultures?
When I was younger, stereotypes were enough to make my blood boil. I thought they were a load of rubbish. I didn’t think they could possibly account for a community of individuals. I’m sorry to have to say that as I grew older I discovered that there’s some degree of truth at the root of any stereotype. Indeed, it’s that hard core that can help to partially understand a culture. Of course, stereotypes can never stand for the whole picture and what underlying truth there may be can only act as a cue, an inroad into a culture that has to in any case be worked on to get to know it better. One has to see for oneself, read up about that culture, delve more deeply into it. Settling for the stereotype can otherwise lead to bias and prejudice towards that culture. Admittedly, a stereotype makes for short-sightedness towards the community it refers to.

When is it that one can be said to be the guardian of a cultural tradition?
Never, I hope! Individuals no less than the culture of any given community should be continuously evolving. Static thought doesn’t make sense. Believing that one’s values are at the peak of intellectual and moral perfection is sheer nonsense. Individuals who shun the rest of the world in defence of their own civilisation, to which they more than likely haven’t even contributed to building up, frighten me. Especially when these sanctuary watchdogs shift from the defensive to the aggressive mode. Indeed, they’re often my favourite targets, the perfect subjects of my satire. I try to neutralise their message through ridicule. Any culture is the product of an osmotic process among neighbouring peoples. It develops through a comparison of the various solutions that different civilisations have come up with to satisfy human needs, that on the other hand are universal.

So you reckon we’ve got to learn to put up with, acknowledge, and indeed go after cultures that are different than ours, do you?
Going after other cultures would be too easy. The real challenge is learning to acknowledge the other. That doesn’t mean going along with everything the other submits to us. We’ve got to be absolutely clear as to what we reckon universal values are and we must not falter on these. For instance, human life cannot be traded as if it were a commodity. It’s got to always be defended; we’ve always got to be ready and willing to stand up for it. Then there’s having to put up with cultural differences when they can turn out to be irksome. Well, it’s the price that’s got to be paid if we don’t want to end up living in a standardised and featureless world made up of individuals and peoples that are all the same. Let me say, I don’t care much for facile “do-goodism”, either. It’s an attitude that often conceals blatant ignorance. Do-gooders as such simply want to relate to the positive stereotypes of a culture. A good dose of realism is a must if one wants to come to terms with a decidedly complex state of affairs. 
A world whose architecture is based on different interlocking codes is not easy to make up, keep together, and understand. A lot of effort has to be put in if we want to come to grips with it at all.

Interview by Fabio Pornaro