Written by Marcello Cini
I fear that we will stay long in opposition. It means staying in opposition take in daily life an opportunity to raise collective responses against the endless things we can not accept.
One of these things, which, as you all know, I was personally involved, was the initiative taken by the rector of La Sapienza, looking for media notoriety, to invite the Pope at the opening of the academic year, with the hunt witches that followed, unleashed against those who had criticized the fine details.
The crux of the matter was, as it should be clear to all, the contradiction inherent in having given to the highest religious authority in the West and the central role of the closing ceremony the most secular important part of a public University in a non-sectarian republic. The events will take, in fact, different meanings in different contexts. An invitation to the pope to visit the Wisdom disconnected from any other event would have purchased the value of a tribute to the authority of the visitor and would take place in an atmosphere of respectful listening to the words he spoke, so to speak, the Chair of Peter. But this chair can not be confused with a university, they have, of course, dignity and very different functions, which can not be confused with each other as he tried to do instead of Professor Ratzinger. However
ask to learn from this lesson: what is the hinterland of the reckless escalation of the Catholic Church against the autonomy of the state Republican as we witness every day? I try to make two brief remarks in this regard.
The first relates to the cultural crisis of modernity. I can not dwell but I assume the causes and manifestations. I merely stated that this crisis does not match the growth of a culture based on new values \u200b\u200bthat permit the company to avoid being overwhelmed by the total commodification of every aspect of individual and collective life, and to object to its tragic consequences.
The second point is closely related to the first, concerns the science. I have repeatedly stressed that with the transition from the twentieth Twenty-first century science is undergoing a radical change. Its main objective is in fact passed from the domain on inert matter to living matter and that the human mind. With this breakthrough science and technology are to be ever more closely intertwined and increasingly submissive to the laws of the market. The widespread practice of patenting of any living organism and every fragment of it is a clear testimony. An action against the bottom of this trend is therefore becoming increasingly necessary. Not only
. The turning point occurred in science at the turn of the century also implies necessarily that is breaking down the traditional separation between knowledge and ethics. One thing is fact, manipulate, control, forge an object made of inert matter and another thing is to make the same operations on a living organism, or even humans.
In this vacuum of values \u200b\u200bwe also find the approximation of certain areas of Western culture to the traditions and religious beliefs and institutions who own representation. But for me this seems short-sighted and self-defeating, in particular in our country, the heirs of the socialist and democratic culture is rushing to go along with this trend with acts of submission to a Catholic Church which, as said Eugenio Scalfari, is increasingly to commit to abandoning the sacred profane.
It 's a great battle ahead. Certainly not against religion - god forbid, you are saying with a joke - but against the expropriation, which is rejected, the sphere of the sacred inherent in the depth of feelings and emotions of every human being by an institution which claims monopoly of mediation between the human and the divine. It is in fact an appropriation that ignores and demeans the many different historical and geographical forms of this sphere so intimate and delicate, without respect for personal dignity, moral integrity of every individual believer, agnostic or atheist should be.
Finally I take this opportunity, and I have done, to mention another key area in which we must oppose, in response to the rampant commodification of all intangible assets, new knowledge and new values. It 's the field of new information and communication technologies. The fight that for some years has opposed the supporters of the practices that go under the name of open source (open source) and free software (free software) to the philosophy of Bill Gates has become a global conflict between opposing visions of the production process and sharing of knowledge. I hope someone more authoritative and knowledgeable than me Left-Net Association, to which I belong for a long time, so he better explain its aims and its activities.
