Reducing the attempted murder of the teacher (and parents) to the wickedness of a thirteen year old is very convenient. Because this way we can pretend that his belief (“only I count”) doesn’t belong to us. Instead it is the sick figure of today
Without realizing it, the thirteen-year-old who stabbed his teacher in Bergamo wrote the manifesto of our era, he summed up the dark side of our society in a few words. And that goes beyond the usual issue of social media and technodependence. What happened is not a simple news story, but is a symptom of a widespread way of understanding life. In four sentences, probably copied, the boy summarizes well the syndrome that afflicts our time. Here they are, in summary: «I can no longer live a life like this. A life full of injustice, disrespect and banality. I’m going to kill my French teacher. I am unique, I do not imitate previous cases. I want to be recognized because I go against the norm. The only thing that matters is me, no one else matters, no life matters other than mine. And life is useless if you decide to live it like a mouse. Rules are not things to follow but to break, because I have to take revenge.” Here is the ideological manifesto of hatred or of the ego that believes itself to be god (which seems to be the extension of what we translate in summary as hatred). Add to all this the perception of impunity: I am a minor, they can’t do anything to me, I am immune, exempt from punishment.
Let’s try to decipher the message of those sentences. There is discomfort and contempt for reality and there is the consideration of oneself as Unique, which seems to be an expression borrowed from the anarchist thinker Max Stirner, true theorist of the Absolute Individual, without limits and brakes. Then the desire to emerge and stand out by going against the norm and the rules, taking revenge on the world, shines through in those words. Finally, the queen of selfishness, or rather of present egotism: only I and my life count, not others and their lives; I don’t want to live a rat’s life like them. This is not the manifesto of an isolated, disturbed and possessed boy, with a difficult life behind him and the usual separation of his parents chosen as a reason and pretext for his behavior (those parents he dreamed of killing, like his teacher). This is the explicit synthesis of a very widespread way of living and unreasoning, the result of a now sadly well-known mixture of solipsism, egocentrism and selfishness, pathological narcissism. «Only I count» is the most explicit version of a maxim which is cited as a sign of balance and wisdom: the most important thing is to feel good about yourself.
But can we feel good about ourselves regardless of the world, of others, of the people closest to us? What are we willing to do to feel good about ourselves, since that is the most important thing? Breaking an emotional bond, denying a friendship or commitments made, harming others or neglecting them… If the world around us can collapse but the important thing is that we feel good about ourselves; if even the closest people jeopardize our feeling good about ourselves, it is best to let go of them or let our feeling good prevail. A current phrase, quoted with natural ease and as a sign of inner balance and life wisdom, conceals within itself a ferocious selfishness.
The crudest translation is: only I count, only my life counts, the rest is worth nothing. It is the end of relationships and social bonds, starting from the most intimate ones, it is the absolute priority of saving oneself even at the cost of ruining those around us. If the same principle is also adopted by others, where does our society, our human relationships, our life end up? It is convenient to think that that inhuman manifesto was written by a disturbed boy, that is, it is the result of a pathology, of an extreme and unique case. Instead, it becomes more disturbing to think that many people recognize themselves in that idea, perhaps not made explicit. And not only among the younger generations; the selfishness-egocentrism of the old competes with the selfishness-egocentrism of the kids. It’s all a model of society based on individualism and atomization, perhaps “ennobled” with adjectives such as liberal, libertarian, libertarian. The difference is between those who live without others, and those who live against others, with an aggressive ego.
The modern world is founded on the social contract, the premise of which is of that type: only I count and only interests count, for mutual benefit we agree so that I can pursue my personal interest without suffering retaliation or damage from others, animated by the same desire to assert one’s selfishness. This is the “positive” version of the same way of thinking: but it is easy for it to then turn into a negative version also because it is then difficult to find insurmountable limits once the individualistic perspective has been accepted.
That principle taken to its extreme but coherent consequences is summed up in a double equation: I that is Everything, You that is Nothing. And you can be replaced with the whole world, others, society, your neighbor, while the I-All remains unchanged and supreme. In short, when faced with brutal episodes like the one in Bergamo, instead of blaming everything on an evil child, try to discover how much of that attitude is hidden in you and around you. Then we will understand that the worst aspect of that episode is not that it is abnormal but that it represents, albeit in an extreme way, a new, terrible normality. “I’m the only one who counts”, it’s not just him who thinks so.
