Italian
This is what psychology teaches us. In a broader view, neuroses are not diseases, but existential conditions. They are part of the common characteristics of the individual, learned from personal history and events, from the way the subject relates to circumstances and others. If neurosis is therefore “normality,” we must consider conflict as an ordinary and constant situation.
If we extend the reflection to the social dimension, we should understand that conflict — and thus war — appears as a necessity, given that living beings are in perpetual contrast. The absurdity is pacifism, not belligerence. All the great ideological and philosophical systems, from idealism to Marxism, have spoken in favor of a peaceful coexistence based on the advantages of peace over war. The perfect society, they say, is a society without conflicts. But history has given us different solutions: the history of humanity is a history of struggles for dominance, rather than for survival.
The recent attack on the President of the United States has been considered by some as the effect of verbal violence capable of generating real violence. What we witness in daily debates has now become an exaggerated mode: the more one shouts, the more one offends, the more successful one becomes. Once it was said that “words are stones”; today it seems they are no longer, emptied of weight and thrown like background noise. Conflict is experienced in a violent, fictitious antagonism, properly “neurotic”.
The danger arises when someone translates this antagonism of gestures and words into action. It is then that we reach destructive violence, the kind that truly wants to kill the opponent, no longer just metaphorically. Donald Trump himself, in a sort of verbal de-escalation after the attack, stated that those who attempted to kill him were “mentally ill,” justifiable only through madness: an act incomprehensible to reason.
According to the President, this would be a “psychotic,” a true sick person. But if we must resign ourselves to endure the neurotic conflict as part of our normality, what should we do when this manifests in psychotic violence? Who should take care of it? It will be said that this is a psychiatric matter, that treatment is needed. But what kind? There are many answers, but no solutions are in sight.
Let us continue to fight for ideas, even though the risk of real violence remains extremely high. We walk the tightrope of a tightrope walker, in a constantly precarious balance. Affirming peace in a world of conflicts is a valid act, even if it is destined to remain, for most, unheard.
