I was with some young people. And among other things I said, “ … Pisciotta’s coffee”. Question marks in their faces. Then I went on: … yes – like the cyanide-laced coffee that Sindona drank …” Muteness and blank faces. Given that no one has recently been assassinated in prison with a coffee and that both Provenzano and Riina are in good health, I haven’t found other examples. During the 1960s, the TV broadcast “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoyevsky in the early evening slot. Today it’s been replaced by “Big Brother” and by "I Cesaroni". Masi, director of the RAI, having survived Anno Zero, would be sacked on the spot if he were to propose a novel by Gogol or Chekhov at a peak viewing time.
Ignorance of the past, that gives rise to our present and everything that we are, is there but no one worries about it. New knowledge is limited in terms of time and depth. A fact, even an important one, is here today and tomorrow it has dissolved, the son of Nothing, the “throwaway” reality. The vocabulary of the Italian language has got smaller, not more than a thousand words are used and when it’s possible we are shortening the terms in order to be able to communicate faster by imitating Twitter and Facebook. The next step will be the language of gestures.
Knowledge and language are shared by people even less. By now what exist are many social islands that are separate from each other and the river that separates them gets stronger as time goes by. The result is an overflowing of daily life of the “conversations in the pub”. A hyper-simplification that relates to everything. It makes it banal and it makes it understandable at the same time. Easily-exchanged merchandise, even though it is completely obscure, and meaningless. Free territory where it’s possible to socialise, say everything without saying anything. An upside down Tower of Babel, where everyone speaks the same language so as to not communicate, that has occupied the TV channels, the newspapers and the living rooms of our homes. The insane talk shows are the most popular programmes because they are “understandable”. At lunch-time on Sunday, with relatives and friends, the conformity of shared ignorance is a taboo that cannot be violated. Anyone who delves deeper between the maccheroni and a dish of salad is a person who is “different” and a trouble-maker who doesn’t know how to share food at the table.