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- The Hybrid SocialThe Future of Young People: Towards the Unknown
The Future of Young People: Towards the Unknown
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Italiano (Italian)
Personally, I consider Prof. Galimberti a neo-Enlightened figure, alongside very few other people who have maintained such a level of cultural depth, analytical rigor, and “elevation” that they can observe the world with X-ray vision into the reality around them. The analyses he conducts are always very clear, crystalline, and explained in simple words, which leads me to believe that he truly knows what he is talking about.
Those who deeply understand a subject—be it historical, philosophical, or social in nature—are able to convey the message of their idea to the masses with simple, easily understandable words. Here you can find his talk.
The Professor begins his talk by discussing the situation of young people—young people who do not have a clear view of their future. Their parents tell them they are fortunate, but that isn’t the reality. Indeed, if we think about it, those born in the 1950s rode an upward trajectory. Just emerging from the Second World War, which ended in 1945, they found themselves in a world hosting a society in poverty, with parents who had suffered through the great war—but, all things considered, they had hit rock bottom, and nothing could be done but to climb back up.
The First Republic had been established on June 2, 1946, and efforts were underway to build a better, more structured, and entirely new world.
Rebuilding means creating jobs, driving the economy, enabling people to earn and spend, and putting new entrepreneurs in a position to start businesses. The lira gained value on the market; as inflation rose, wages increased to the point that the currency’s purchasing power actually improved.
Our parents could find work with just a high school diploma; newly established companies were besieged by the first wave of consumerism, generating high revenues that translated into a greater number of job openings… Businesses were in a period of economic expansion.
Speaking as a 40-year-old… Our fathers had no trouble finding work with just a high school diploma; today, for most people, not even a PhD and multiple master’s degrees accumulated over the years are enough—in fact, I hear of people not being hired because they’re overqualified, and others because they’re underqualified. In truth, everything depends on only two factors:
- How good you are
- How much are you willing to lower your salary expectations?
This, in most cases, is not the result of a choice made by the entrepreneur, but the necessity for an entrepreneur to preserve cash liquidity, because due to reckless economic and political decisions, more often than not—even with the need to hire to ensure productivity—they cannot financially offer more attractive salaries.
All of this stems from what Nietzsche defines as Nihilism, as explained by Prof. Galimberti, namely the destruction of values.
In today’s saturated environment, where young people are accustomed to the comforts they grew up with during a prosperous childhood—when their parents could meet every need—those same young adults at 30 find themselves in a psychological state where they feel compelled to maintain those standards, but their working conditions don’t allow it. This generates anxiety, distrust in the future, and for the first time they experience what “need” truly means.
Facing necessity for the first time as an adult is not an easy concept to digest, especially when the world out there has become—due to individual circumstances—a world no longer defined by opportunities but by challenges. A world in which everyone must struggle against one another to secure sustenance for themselves and their family, or, even worse, merely to have the chance to start a family of their own.
A very interesting quote from Galimberti is that young people “live in live broadcast 24 hours a day, they experience the absolute present, because looking beyond the present produces anguish.”
How to plan for an unpredictable future? How to lay the foundations of one’s existence: to have a secure job to buy a house and start a family when living in uncertainty?
If we think about it, the thesis is the antithesis of itself…. Seeking security in insecurity! Here then, according to Galimberti, giving oneself to alcohol, drugs and, I’ll throw in, taking on bullying attitudes, are part of a shield that the young person builds against a world that does not give them possibilities, a world in which it is preferable not to understand, not to be clear-headed, rather than to understand and get down. This is why the young person lives in the present, because the present is the only time they can think about, the only time that gives them security because they are there.
Galimberti at this point mentions the concept of family, saying that today’s families are broken, that one in three families have separated parents. I believe that this problem is also derived from several variables…. The first is definitely attributable to nihilism, the destruction of family value. The second one due to globalization and digitization. Social networks are largely responsible.
Our grandparents, mostly born and died in a totally “analog” era knew their wives usually in their area, chose each other from a very small sample of people, and were perhaps by necessity better able to converse. Once they were married the concept of divorce was like blaspheming in the Church because those were the values and even in the face of difficulties they tried in one way or another to resolve them through dialogue and move on because there were not that many alternatives.
Today we live in a world full of alternatives where much more importance is given to appearance than to substance because there are stereotypes that have been shaped ad-hoc just for economic purposes. Today there are 13-year-old girls who look 20. Stoned women, wrapped in the stereotypes of the famous bloggers and social stars, always made up, perfect and impeccable, often totally remade from head to toe, married to soccer players and who, thanks to their status of notoriety get to work on television showing their lives made up of unbridled luxury.
The world of men certainly makes no difference!
These are the role models today. As a child my role model was Albert Einstein, Neil Armstrong. We have seen over time, with the advent of technology, a substitution of variables: a shift from art and culture, to the most boorish aestheticism, and this has created enormous damage to populations, both culturally and socially, and especially psychologically.
Young girls want to be showgirls or look like their favorite blogger, they think about getting a boob job at 15 because comparing themselves to those who have invested thousands and thousands on their bodies they see themselves as imperfect. It has come to the point of self-disavowal in a view that breeds psychological insecurity.
Yet it wouldn’t take much to understand that 7 million people cannot all be soccer players or showgirls at the same time. Mathematically speaking this would mean that 99.99999% of the population will remain disillusioned.
Coming back to the family, as already mentioned, today there are so many stimuli, the man and the woman in addition to a human part both possess an animal part, mostly carnal, and the stimuli and the ease with which they can meet other people who can give free rein to these stimuli through the web, makes the balance of the family more and more precarious, because in their heads it is quicker to look for an alternative, an outlet than to sit down, turn off their cell phones and reflect to find a solution to a problem together through dialogue. We live in the age of exemplification, where we foolishly believe that everything is easy to put into action. All these things add to the family’s problems, and eventually many families decide to opt for divorce. A divorce given by the lack of dialogue and driven by the ease of finding alternatives.
Children are severely affected, and this is a fact, and it affects their lives, including in the cultural sphere.
Schools do not improve the situation, and Galimberti gives, in my opinion, an extremely realistic picture of the situation regarding education.
Elementary schools that work, junior high schools that are a total disaster, high schools that do not educate but provide notions, and I would add universities that I would call obsolete in so many ways, at least here in Italy.
Interesting reasoning about different types of intelligence…
Each of us is totally different from others. Except for cases of delays due to physical problems, I believe that each of us is better at something than others. This is a purely statistical fact! The ability of teachers should be to understand, from the heights of their experience, what kind of intelligence is most developed in a child and direct them in order to help them cultivate it and make them excel in those trades that take advantage of that kind of intelligence.
It’s true! Today it is all about logical-mathematical intelligence, but I would further specify: logical-spatial intelligence. Even IQ tests are directed at understanding its mechanisms and scoring it. There are so many other types of intelligence: verbal intelligence which concerns the ability to express oneself, understand a text and synthesize its contents (we live in a country that has a population of 70 percent functional illiterates, that is, people who after reading a text are unable to understand its meaning). Mnemonic intelligence that allows us to memorize things we see and store them in our brains and then bring them up again when we need to remember them. Motor intelligence that allows us to synchronize movements perfectly. Musical intelligence, which allows us to maintain rhythm, remember sounds and timbres, and appreciate music in all its forms. Emotional intelligence, which is very important, allowing not only to pick up external stimuli, but also providing the ability to relate to others, ask questions, put oneself in someone else’s place before taking an action against or for that person.
Intelligence is an extremely complex concept, and a person cannot be said to be intelligent just because he or she has a very high IQ. It can certainly give some indication of a subset of intelligence, but it is not an absolutely comprehensive measure for objectively categorizing intelligent individuals from others who are less so.
From this it is easy to understand that emotional intelligence is perhaps the one we have least developed in the time in which we live, because the lack of it is also responsible for this loss of values. “I don’t understand that by acting this way I can hurt someone else because I am not smart enough to understand it,” … From here it is easy to follow the wrong stereotype of the bully, the one who gets everything through violence because he is not smart enough to understand how he would feel if that act of bullying was himself on the receiving end. The bully, however, is respected because he sets his supremacy over others through the sense of terror he instills, and that is why when the teenager has not yet developed a character of his own, he takes it as an example. All this can work in junior high, high school, what happens to bullies when these become men?
Following these stereotypes is beyond dangerous for a future that is already too uncertain, and the only certainty that pursuing this path can provide is that of failure in all respects: the occupational, the social, and the emotional; because bullies in adulthood are driven away.
In adolescence, with these kinds of attitudes we lose everything beautiful that mankind has produced to date, from literature to art, through what I consider to be Art with a capital A: music.
The stereotypical bully is one who considers classical music to be lame. I wonder how they do not understand how much beauty there is in classical music. Music composed by absolute geniuses who, according to the products of modern society, will never return, unless we abruptly divert this course.
How will another Mozart or another Chopin or a Bach or a Beethoven ever be born if the product of society is made up of young people who do not even recognize their objective height?
I, who have cultivated a passion for classical music since childhood (in parallel with my university studies, I majored in piano), live in a perceptual reality that is extremely different from what I would call the redneck reality imparted by misguided stereotypes. I constantly wonder how one cannot appreciate the artistic value of a first piano concerto by Chopin, of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which possesses a very strong spiritual meaning: “fate knocking at the door,” of Mozart’s concerto K. 488, which includes one of the most poignant and monumental adagios in the second movement of all the music of the classical period, but also of Mahler’s lesser-known (at least to neophytes) symphonies.
They are not understood because one has not developed the intelligence that makes their understanding possible.
Galimberti at this point also talks about the bad practices of teacher hiring systems.
I have always maintained that an excellent scientist is not necessarily also an excellent professor.
As a child I often listened to scientific broadcasts and happened to follow with great interest interviews with the likes of Margherita Hack, Antonino Zichichi, and Carlo Rubbia.
I personally believe that Zichichi is an excellent scientist but that his expository skills are absolutely limiting in explaining his subject matter to the masses. This is not to say that Zichichi is not a good scientist, I repeat, but the explanations given by Hack turn out to be much clearer…. Who knows, maybe Einstein was the same way.
Galimberti suggests a personality test in addition to a competition for hiring new professors, and I agree wholeheartedly. A contest can test professional skills and knowledge but it cannot test whether one can synthesize complex arguments to get them across to students. It cannot give indications about the charisma of someone who is going to pursue a teaching career. It cannot give any indication of one’s empathy.
When I think of this concept, I am reminded of Vincenzo Schettini, the high school physics teacher who has become famous on YouTube because of his videos in which he explains nature and by what physical laws it is governed. He explains it in simple language, giving many examples, and from these lectures it is clear that he does the work he loves. He has empathy with his students who during the videos are attentive and responsive to his questions.
Beyond the look that might be questionable for some, that professor I think he is very good at his job. He possesses the ability to teach while entertaining, creating expectation, capturing interest, and trying to get students passionate about a subject that is complex and therefore often hated by many.
I am pretty sure that professor has less scientific knowledge than Antonino Zichichi but from the point of view of education I personally consider him superior.
Here, professors also possess their large share of responsibility in the cultural and sociological growth stage of the adolescent, and therefore must be chosen wisely by evaluating a number of requirements and not solely knowledge as an end in itself.
Corrado Augias, another figure I hold in high esteem, told an anecdote from when he was a student. His philosophy professor asked the class what was the point of studying? Many students gave good answers: “To become adults, to become good people, to increase our cultural level.” Nevertheless, the professor was not satisfied with the answers and exclaimed, “Studying is for escaping from prison!”
The dismayed students were astonished to hear such an equivocal phrase…
The professor resumed, “Ignorance is a prison, because in there you don’t understand and you don’t know what to do! Studying is to escape from the prison, from those who want you stupid and gullible, and to climb over the wall of ignorance so that you can understand without asking for help. And it will be hard to fool you!”
Similar phrases also come from Nelson Mandela:“Education is the gateway to freedom, democracy and development.”
As far as I am concerned: to study and, more importantly, to cultivate all kinds of intelligence, especially emotional intelligence, allow one to turn on a light to be able to illuminate, even if not deeply, this very dark future that awaits us in the coming years. It will give hope and awareness in one’s abilities, willingness to do and stimulus to commitment.
Those who firmly believe in a project and have worked on themselves by training for the race of life will come out on top one way or another, but there is hard work involved, so don’t be fooled by the ghost of exemplification… There are no things in life that, done at a high level, are easy!
