Italian
There is an obsession that runs through our civilization, an idiosyncrasy that in distant centuries was not experienced with the pathological intensity of today: sex. Or, to use a more archaic and censorious term, “the flesh”.
Personally, when I think of meat, my imagination takes me to the butcher: I think of a good fillet, a hearty steak, or perhaps a plate of saltimbocca alla romana and vitello tonnato, perfect now that it’s summer. I certainly don’t think of eroticism. Yet, in common language, when “meat” is evoked, it always alludes to something disgusting and sinful, but at the same time irresistible, like everything that is forbidden. We are ready to jump back horrified at unusual erotic practices, too often confusing the illicit with the illegal.
Here lies the short circuit: the illicit relates to morality, the illegal to the law. Many things are illegal while being lawful, and vice versa. Authorized gambling is perfectly legal, yet it is morally illicit due to the disastrous consequences it has on families. Getting drunk is permitted by law, but it conflicts with health and public morality.
Our focus on sex is instead at its peak, constantly fueled by media that promote it everywhere, in more or less explicit ways. Only to then activate the axe of moral disapproval, which invokes the law causing gigantic image damage even before real sanctions.
In the ancient world, obsessions were different. For the Greeks, it was tuké, the inescapable fate that even the gods could not oppose (and if they tried, the fix was worse than the hole). For the Romans, it was imperium, command, the obsessive pursuit of pyramidical supremacy. This last legacy is something we still carry today when, faced with a service failure, we demand furiously: “I want to speak to the manager!”, deluding ourselves that there is always a single culprit.
Today, lost in this jungle of distorted priorities, we are even moved by the pain expressed on live television, forgetting that it is a luxury granted to a few chosen ones, while the rest of the world suffers in the shadows and in silence. It is a sign of decay – not to be confused with the neurocognitive decline of illness – that drives the elderly to nostalgically reproduce a past of happy childhood easily forgotten when one becomes an adult.
Today we are too busy defending ourselves from sexuality, both our own and that of others, forgetting to be adults. This obsessive interest in an aspect that should be considered simple physiological normality turns us into ruthless judges, ready to condemn without appeal. It is time to put sexuality back where it belongs: in the realm of normality. And finally stop making it a problem.
