06/04/2019 00:04 Updated on 06/04/2019 06:29
Many people are calling for dialogue, but they do not indicate what they want the outcome of the dialogue to be. Apparently, the how matters more than the what. And surely it is not so; everyone has opinion and wants things to go in a specific direction, but they fear to say it. The discretion, the prudence, the caution dominate the scene of the civil society. Whether it be in the economic-business world or in the debate of ideas, the taste for the lack of definition wins. Generalizations, abstractions, ideas and hardly compromised reflections. In a word: fear of the free expression of own thought.
This is not good; it is a bad symptom. A powerful society is one in which the debate is socially and openly alive. On the side of everybody; nowadays, in our environment, only radicalism manifest itself without complexes. Even too much; sometimes, radicalness is confused with plot simplification or the satisfied weakness of the most primary cue-taking. Or radicalness or silence: it would seem that this was the scenario.
And, certainly, in this crossroad, the appeal to dialogue is sincere or effective? From radicalness, dialogue would be the excuse to make it impossible. From caution, it would be the fear of compromise. In the end, the dialogue is invoked only to get along with. But forgetting that dialogue is much more than a formality. At first, the dialogue must be the acceptance of the pact. Dialoguing is translated or can be translated into a pact, in an agreement. Are you prepared to do it? To agree, to pact, means or could mean resignations, rectifications, leading the epic of the discourse of feelings to realism. Is this possibility accepted? Dialoguing is to put the living together over and before other values; it is to turn everyone’s freedom into the progress and well-being for all; it is to seek institutional stability by the way of integrating the differences. Is this a shared ambition?
There is a need for more courage to give the claim of the dialogue more credibility. Political leaders seem more interested in claiming dialogue than in making it possible and effective. This translates into a permanent and sterile debate about who has more responsibility for the lack of such a necessary dialogue. Too much claim; little real predisposition.
When the claim for dialogue is accompanied by the simultaneous accusation of lack of democracy, what is the meaning of this claim? Dialogue cannot be demanded neither under dictatorship nor in a lack of freedom; it is a contradiction in its very foundation.
Dialogue is the tool of democracy and freedom, the consequence of pluralism, the need for respect for difference. Only because there is democracy and freedom, in the framework of a rule of law, dialogue makes sense. Is this accepted? Yes or no?
In fact, we run the risk of moving away from dialogue as a solution. You want to win before you start talking; you want to impose the dialog as an expression of renunciation. This is nothing to do with going forward. And the radicals will continue with their obsession, and to those who are not it will cost them to leave the silent prudence, hoping it will be from the passage of time from where the solution comes in the end. Forgetting that dialogue is the tool that society imposes on the political world and that, therefore, we must find out what are the goals to achieve. Dialogue to progress, to live together, to make out of differences an enriching element of the common project.
It is hard to accept that dialogue is impossible. Oops, it must not be accepted. Dialogue as a victory of democracy.
https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20190604/462661415601/dialogo-democratico.html
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