In these times, dear readers, hold tight to the desire to report what is wrong. Maybe the world won’t change, but at least it won’t change you
Dear friends, I’m writing to you so I can distract myself a bit. The old year is over now, as Lucio Dalla sang, and I want to thank you for putting up with me up to this point. Being in every issue of Panorama, in this position, on the last page, in the space that once belonged to the greatest columnists, is a privilege to be deserved week after week. I apologize for those weeks in which I failed to deserve it, I disappointed you, I bored you or I didn’t convince you. Or where I simply couldn’t make myself read. In this case, you can always propose to director Belpietro to replace me with artificial intelligence, as is used now. Or, at least, propose to replace the title holder.
Jokes aside, this is one of the things that scares me most about facing the year to come. I don’t know if there will be three Christmases and celebrations all year round, to quote Dalla again, but I’m sure that technological devilry will advance further, ready to replace our lives and, even more seriously, our brains. I know that some people think that, given the level of certain brains, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. But that’s not the case. I remain in love with the romantic idea of a still human world. And also of a still human newspaper. A newspaper that was born not from a computer algorithm but from our thoughts. From our ideas, from our comparison, from our sensations and even from our weaknesses. To say: could I ever replace Edoardo, the tutelary deity of Grillo, who this year has gloriously taken over from the previous and unforgettable tutelary deity Mauro, with any ChatGpt?
They told us that technology would make us all freer, happier, more independent. I don’t think it happened that way. Independence, as I see it, here from the last page of Panorama, is still a word that smells of antiquity. In this publishing group, for example, we are free because we are publishers of ourselves. We don’t have a John Elkann on our mind, in short, and therefore we can write what we think, starting from the Fiat car crisis and the hereditary events of the Agnelli family, without anyone being able to stop us, apart from you readers. Furthermore, since it is not owned by John Elkann, we don’t even risk being sold to some passing Greek: it is our publisher/director who fights (successfully) to keep the accounts in order and let us write what we think freely. Even when he doesn’t share even a comma. And I’m afraid it happens often with me.
Sorry if I allow myself to remember it, but in this issue that closes the year, I want to be sincere as always and more than ever, with you and with myself. And, above all, I want to remember the great fortune we enjoy. A fortune that few people in Italy have: that of being their own publishers. Lucky for us that we make the newspaper, but also lucky for you that you read the newspaper and perhaps it is also lucky for those who denigrate the newspaper, but know very well that, if it didn’t exist, it would have to be invented. Forgive me if I made it a little out of Grillo, but I can take pride in this year. After all, after having witnessed hundreds and hundreds of gay pride events, will we at least be able to quietly put a small Panorama Pride on the page once? I swear I won’t show my butt to the wind, also because it wouldn’t be a decent show.
Let’s cheer ourselves up, though, because we need it. I know many of you are discouraged. I know some people stopped voting. And someone else has stopped hoping. I know that every time we talk about (because reality must be told) the problem of waiting lists in healthcare or safety in our cities, of green follies or other European ridiculousness, the question spontaneously arises for many of you: “But then nothing ever changes?”. I confess to you my fear: the risk is that it could change for the worse. Indeed: if we stop fighting, it will certainly happen.
Sorry, but I am terrified of leaving my grandchildren a world where it is easier to find euthanasia than a wheelchair (as already happens in Canada), where children are taken away from mum and dad based on who knows what superior principles and where Islam will rule, to impose its laws that are contrary to our civilization and our Constitution. I have mentioned only three of the immense dangers that loom over us. I could name others, but you know them. And if you know them, make sure that you never lose the desire to fight against them. And therefore the desire to know. Because, you see, you can stop voting, as far as I’m concerned: but you can’t stop believing in the strength of battle, denunciation and indignation. I don’t know if all this can change the world, but I’m sure it can stop the world from changing us. And it is the best wish I can give you for the new year.
