Today I watched a short video of President Vincenzo De Luca, a long-standing politician, who, with evident distress, lamented the lack of compassion from Italian politics, particularly from the Government.
His words made me reflect not on this deficiency, which I can more or less share, and which pitiably highlights the capacity for compassion.
So a deficit in recognising and sharing suffering.
No, I have no way of assessing this aspect, because I consider it intimate, personal, and not necessarily essential or effective in carrying out professional duties.
It is said, for example, that “the compassionate doctor makes the worm-eaten wound’.
In short, President De Luca raises a moral question about pity that challenges us internally.
This whole affair has brought another question to mind, however, and it concerns “pietas”.
A Latin term in the authenticity of its meaning, that is, devotion to the divinity, the homeland, and the family.
We can give this term the weight of the ideal architrave of the Roman Empire first, and then of international conservative movements.
I wonder, therefore, if today it is codified, interpreted, or even implemented, at least in the sense of public accountability.
This, on the contrary, compassion has a private, I would say intimate, exception.
I want to ask myself if “pietas” has been updated, I would say reformed, in the recognition of the three devotional references.
Whether there has been, or is currently in progress, an intellectual, if not spiritual, shift addressing the present respect for such an ideal architecture, or a revisiting of the identification of the threefold declension to which devotion should be given.
This effort is valid for right-wing movements, for popular movements, for those who are conservative or for those who are members of organisations with a Christian ethos.
Certainly, with the awareness that everything we analyse has a huge impact on the categories of current politics, which is incapable of finding a renewed identity in relation to a 20th century that it cannot shake off.
I'm trying to contribute to this reflection because it's relevant to me when I try to work out the composition of an international pacification policy or national social promotion.
First, we must re-establish the concept of homeland when we wish to build a common European destiny.
Then we would certainly need to bring the figure of the person back to the centre as a social value, expanding the centers of respect from three to four.
A great deal of reflection is needed regarding this, both concerning the channels of personal dignity and those of relationality.
The person is a node of social relationships.
The individual is a material body.
I'm taking a gamble in this field as an Associate Manager, linking the concept of a person to that of human ecology.
In short, today I highlight the urgency of fulfilling a historic public duty of international pacification through the decipherment of an authentic, reformed Pietas for inhabiting this Millennium.
(Nicola Tavoletta)
