What does it mean to prohibit something? What do we achieve when we define what is lawful or not to do, when we draw the line between what is good and bad, what is convenient and what is harmful? And even more: who prohibits? These questions, less rhetorical than they seem to be, arose after my meeting with Philipp Blom, intertwined with another, perhaps more pressing: what is our horizon of progress? In the tension between the two attempts, in preventing the passage of any prohibition, but also in the long look towards a horizon that promises a good life, is, I believe, the most pressing issue of our time, which also concerns everyone, but especially to the left. We are talking, of course, about climate change. And of so many other things.
Although it is essential, it is not enough to regulate negatively and establish clear limits to our polluting activity, to prohibit practices and encourage others that are healthier for the planet. Who rules prohibits, but can also use power as an anchor to offer a story that defines a horizon of improvement, without forgetting the terrible ambivalence of progress: our technological and ethical advance has generated many turbulence far from here, and of course exploitation, injustice and misery. But if Montaigne’s intuition is correct, if “to forbid something is to arouse desire”, why not take advantage of it as a push forward? Where is that ability to imagine alternatives, the audacity to start thinking about the climate debate in terms of what we decide, not against what or whom? These are the words of Blom, who explains the urgency of looking at changes as societies in another way, of imagining the world that we are choosing, not prohibiting. It would be about turning the discourse of prohibiting towards one that opens possibilities, that grants primacy to doing.
And I wonder if this approach is not valid for so many other issues where the left is not capable of offering that power to create ideals and not just norms, to launch unrealized possibilities into the present, to work together to make them possible. The triumph, perhaps momentary, of things like the culture of cancellation, the criticism of “puritan” feminism or the success of the silly Ayusian emblem on freedom are, in part, a result of the impotence of the left to express itself positively and with hope. We are facing a time of radical transformations that will affect our levels of well-being, employment, money for the care of our fellow men, and a potential politically unmanageable social reaction. For this we need imagination, a pinch of ideals, desire to undertake everything that comes our way. We are moving towards times of crisis and the alternative to the darkness of identity withdrawal is radical change: to consume in another way, to distance ourselves from the authoritarian temptation, to persuade ourselves once again of the possibility of more actively just, freer, better societies.
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