Leave all hope or you who enter (in the age of pimples). According to a research carried out by Ipsos for the Giuseppe Toniolo Institute, in fact, More than half of young people no longer hopes. He does not hope for life today and, above all, in tomorrow. Stop. Enough. Do not hope. He hopes for nothing. It doesn’t even hope for a while. He does not hope to change the world. He does not hope he can be better. He does not hope to earn. He does not hope to make a career. He does not hope to become a star. He does not hope to save others. He does not hope to make the revolution. He does not hope to invent a fashion. He does not hope to become a scientist. He does not hope to invent a drug that takes care of tumors or an engine that works in smiles. He does not hope for an idea. He does not hope for God. He does not hope for others. He does not hope for himself. He does not hope for anything. He does not even hope that the sun comes out tomorrow, because if the sun comes out, the drought arrives. And it does not hope it rains, otherwise the flood arrives. Once upon a time there were young people of “beautiful hopes”. Now, I miss ugly.
The research figure is truly shocking: Most of the young people between 18 and 34 years old, that is, those who should build the future, do not believe in the future. They are 52.4 percent in the north-west of Italy, 53.8 percent in the south and in the islands, 55 percent in the center and even 56 percent in the north-east, i.e. in one of the richest areas in the country. This shows that what is missing from children are not so much work, home or future: prospects are missing. Dreams are missing. There is no confidence that previous generations had in a different future, and to try to build it. Maybe slamming your head. Maybe taking wrong and dangerous roads. But always pushed by enthusiasm. Not crushed, as today, by the weight of the resignation. It said: hope is the last to die. Evidently it is not so: the hope in fact died first in those who should use it as a flag, that is, precisely the representatives of the new generations. A phenomenon that, unfortunately, has exploded in the last decade. It was 2017, in fact, when the Wall Street Journal He published an article to report the spread of a new and bizarre phobia among young people: the “bell phobia”. He claimed the newspaper that the improvised sound of the intercom, not anticipated by a message or a notice on WhatsApp, was a harsh psychological proof for the boys born in the new millennium, children of the hyper -technological era. A first sign of that spread of anxiety which was then the figure of the following ten years.
In 2019 two scholars, Kate Pickt and Richard Wilkinson, they used in their work The balance of the soul The expression “epidemic of anxiety”. A prophetic formula, as Valerio Benedetti recently recalled on the Truth: a few months later the pandemic broke out, whose anxiety -shared effects have been increased in Italy by a management full of hope yes, but only with a capital. Prolonged lockdown, social isolation, closure of all playful and recreational activities have generated devastating effects on the nerves of those who found themselves facing all this in the most delicate years of life, that is, those of adolescence. As if that were not enough, after the anxiety from Covid, it was well thought of causing anxiety as a climatic cataclysm, also called eco-anxiety, for the imminent environmental apocalypse, together with a little healthy nuclear war anxiety, thanks to ranks of cathode fighters in the talk show.
Think about it: what’s the name of the only youth movement that has had some visibility in recent times? “Latest generation”. Already in the choice of the name there is the index of the surrender: you do not fight to change the world, it does not get a struggle continuous, the worker power does not dream, the panther is not insectable, as happened in the past. No: he declares himself the latest generation. We fight on the verge of extinction. It is perhaps the first time in history, that we are faced with a generation that feels lost even before starting to dream. That even when rebel does it on the wave of catastrophe and not of hope.
It is the society of anxiety, like the philosopher Vincenzo Costa. It is the anxious generation, as the psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes. But perhaps we should stop commissioning these guys with the poor poverty: poor people, Covid. Poor people, social networks. Poor people, the environment. Poor horn: our Nonni managed to dream of a better world on the rubble of the Second World War. They taught us that everything can be lost, but not the desire to believe in the future. Therefore if 56 percent of the boys reply that, on the other hand, in the future it no longer believes, I want to get them in the ass. And maybe someone agree with me. I don’t lose hope. n
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