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LA STAMPA

Italy: The Strange Ambivalence Of Looking To The Future

Two mounted police patrol Rome, Italy.
Two mounted police patrol Rome, Italy.
Mario Deaglio

-Analysis-

ROME — "Curiouser and curiouser!" the famously ungrammatical exclamation from Alice in Wonderland in the 1865 Lewis Carroll classic. The current situation created by the pandemic is certainly not wonderful, but it is quite curious, and grows stranger and stranger with every passing day.

We are caught between the willingness to continue the social distancing measures, as that is the only way to defeat the virus, and the desire to start living again, because only in that way will we be able to move to a better place, beyond just ensuring our physical wellbeing. We are in a sort of indescribable limbo, with the number of positive cases still rising, but the speed of this growth decreasing, putting us on the apparent cusp of a shift from a medical to an economic crisis.

We are caught between the willingness to continue the social distancing measures, and the desire to start living again.

Businesses in Italy, especially large and medium-sized ones, have until now managed to stay afloat, albeit with increasing difficulty. Supply chains have held up, and, although it may be challenging, this could go on for another few months without grave consequences for them. The lockdown has lead to an unexpected increased civic awareness, both inside and out of the hospitals. All the while this has become increasingly unbearable on the schooling of children and the pocketbooks of adults (and business).

Grass and flowers grow in the cracks ofthe pavement in Plebiscito square, in the city center. Photo: Salvatore Laporta/IPA

On one hand, there are factories eager to turn their conveyor belts back on to preserve their bottom line — and indeed, to hope have a future at all; on the other hand, there are individuals who risk having no future at all without the availability of a respirator or a bed in the ICU. We are stuck in between the necessity to stay safe today and to be flexible to what tomorrow may bring — all with the European Union negotiating how and how much they will help us.

It is hence not a battle between capital and labor, and for that reason it is difficult to draw up a strategy. Our traditional ways of conceptualizing society have become outdated — it is no longer a battle between winners and losers, but rather the necessity to reconciling different interests — and to do so quickly.

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Society

Do We Need Our Parents When We Grow Up? Doubts Of A Young Father

As his son grows older, Argentine journalist Ignacio Pereyra wonders when a father is no longer necessary.

Do We Need Our Parents When We Grow Up? Doubts Of A Young Father

"Is it true that when I am older I won’t need a papá?," asked the author's son.

Ignacio Pereyra

It’s 2am, on a Wednesday. I am trying to write about anything but Lorenzo (my eldest son), who at four years old is one of the exclusive protagonists of this newsletter.

You see, I have a whole folder full of drafts — all written and ready to go, but not yet published. There’s 30 of them, alternatively titled: “Women who take on tasks because they think they can do them better than men”; “As a father, you’ll always be doing something wrong”; “Friendship between men”; “Impressing everyone”; “Wanderlust, or the crisis of monogamy”, “We do it like this because daddy say so”.

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