Stories and News No. 1238
These days I am often thinking about the well-known legend of the two wolves from the Native American people of the Cherokee. For those who do not know it, I summarize it: an old man is trying to teach his grandson a life lesson. “There's a war inside me,” he tells him. “It's a terrible fight and it's between two wolves. One is evil and is made up of anger, envy, pain, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is good: it is made up of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. The same struggle is happening inside you and inside every other person". The grandson thinks about it for a moment and then asks the grandfather: "Which wolf will win?" The old man replies: "The one you are going to feed". Well, my impression is that the metaphor inherent in this simple but great story can be further extended to the ways in which we connect for to spread of all kinds of content, assimilating it, sharing it, or even undergoing it. In my humble opinion, in the reality that concerns us, the distinction between the two allegorical wolves is not so clear-cut between the good and the bad one. Furthermore, I believe that there is a further differentiation of the various qualities that respectively belong to them. But that's not to say that there isn't one type of healthy food and another that is particularly self-destructive. I offer a succession of corollaries to the aforementioned legend applied to what keeps us obsessively glued to internet or TV, between social networks, websites, television broadcasts, in order to suggest who or what we are actually feeding. If it is a mere prejudice of confirmation of your previous beliefs to move your steps you are feeding yourself with the storytelling that reassures and gratifies you most. In short, your ego. The same where the information you seek and hopefully find is uniquely linked to your world, where those who think exactly like you live and share your principles and vision of the future. If what you are pursuing is a possible validation of your paranoia towards the alleged plot against you by the so-called strong and even occult powers, you are fueling your chronic alienation from reality. At the same time, you are cultivating the megalomaniac sense of revenge of the one who, according to him, was right and everyone else was wrong (see the more prosaic parable of the guy in the wrong direction on the highway...). In short, you're feeding your madness. When what catches your attention has to do with the story of an increasingly cruel humanity, it often means that you are feeding your own cruelty. It is a common and widespread habit, but if on the one hand it helps to exorcise your demons, it often convinces you that the world out there is really all like this. And it's a real shame when that happens. On the other hand, if you find yourself eating the delicacies cooked by master chefs of the easiest enemy to hate, you are feeding the deafening desire to stop hating yourself. However, it is the most illusory food. Because once you stop spewing the contempt you have for your own life on your chosen target, the next day you will find it intact inside you. In addition, multiplied. If you are stubbornly obsessed with what demeans and transforms all into insane and meaningless mush, you are feeding chronic apathy and distrust you have towards everything and everyone, yourself too. The truth is that you are not actually feeding those parts that make you up, but starving the precious rest, where every ability and chance you have to build something that may survives the present resides. Do you know what is the paradox of this two-dimensional world, here and beyond a monitor? Whatever wolf we choose to feed on our side, on the other hand there is someone who is feeding his wallet and privileges thanks to this sort of unwitting digital bulimia. However, if on the contrary your looking at the window, virtual or not, is moved by sincere curiosity and the desire to inform you, to question and confront yourself with new ideas and people, different from you, with the courage and strength to accept that this can make you suffer, angry and indignant, frighten and distress, but also grow and evolve, you are really feeding yourself. And by offering your contribution, you will do the same with others.
My last book: A morte i razzisti (Death to racists)