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Portugal, european champion in fatalism (1)

A traveling story between places, stereotypes and legends (first part)

A lot of stereotypes from many European countries come to mind, but I have total emptiness on Portugal and the Portugueses,” an American guy comments on Reddit (social news site). To this a Spaniard replies as someone who knows a lot: “the Portugueses are rather sad, pessimistic and melancholy. These traits are represented in the typical musical style of Portugal, Fado, and in the word ‘saudade’ which has no translation in any other language”. Well, at least in Italian it can be translated into “nostalgia”. On the other hand, you know, another classic is the “clash of opposites”, between Portugal and Spain. (Like Italy with France). So much that the Portugueses says the Spaniards are fun, energetic and proud, with a tendency to raise the voice. While the Spaniards believe that Portuguese are reserved, indecisive and nostalgic, in fact, with a tendency to fatalism. “Fado” comes from the Latin fatum and means “destiny”…

Labruge. The register of a typical “pousada do peregrino” (pilgrim’s hostel): with a free offer you win a bed. Not everyone knows that “The way of St. James to Santiago” can be done also via Portugal: actually, it is really beautiful, the only way along the coast as well as inland. Traveling alone I have never been afraid. The Portuguese leave you (woman) alone much more than the Italians!

Maybe Portugal is a less known country, and therefore not very stereotyped, due to its geographical and political “isolation”. Entirely surrounded by Spain and the Atlantic Ocean, which is no longer the fundamental means of communication it once was, it consequently (or vice versa) suffered the longest European dictatorship of the twentieth century. Despite this, even Portugal has its own nice list of positive and negative stereotypes. The negatives are usually in greater number, while all of them can be a little bit true and a little bit false, in any case here we only have those that are expressed by the Italians.

Yes, because to list them all, it would be all too clear how much each stereotype (that one nation sticks to another) can be actually reciprocal or like a “stereotype train” … Starting from the coarsest observations, such as the Italian / Padanian one that states “the Portuguese speaks like Brazilians” (even if historically it is the opposite!). And a very famous Italian expression: “fare il portoghese”, literally “do the Portuguese”, to indicate the ones so “forgetful” that they don’t buy tickets for public transport. The origin could come from a free event for Portugueses taken place in XVIII century in Roma offered by the ambassador: many people pretended to be Portugueses to enter without paying. Very interesting the fact that this expression exists also in France, but for them the distracted people are the English. Viceversa in England the forgetful are the Dutch!

When someone leaves without saying goodbye, in Portuguese they say “sair à francesa” (“to go away in a French-style”). In English they say the same: “taking French leave”, while the Germans say the same for the Irish (“auf Irisch”) and the Hungarians and Italians for the English! The Spanish regards it as a way to leave without paying, involving the Americans: “pagar a la americana”. The French say “travailler comme portugais” (literally “to work like a Portuguese”) that is “to do a bad job”, just as the Portugueses say “do Paraguai” (Paraguay) to indicate a bootleg product or with a bad quality.

When someone is saying something incomprehensible or difficult to understand, the Portuguese (like Norwegians) “accuse” the same language: in fact they say that the person is “falando grego” (speaking Greek). We Italians are more shocked by the incomprehensibility of Arabic (“parla arabo”, “he/she speaks Arab”), the Poles of the Turkish, the Hungarians (and the Greeks) of the Chinese and the Germans of the Bohemians (?!) and so on. On closing, the Portuguese “blames” the Greeks again when it comes to gifts: “presente de grego” (“greek gift”) is a real bad gift (but no wonder, if you Greece started with the story of the Trojan horse…). In short, only punctuality is British for almost everyone (Italians, Spaniards, Greeks… including the Portuguese: “britanica pontualidade”).

Viana do Castelo. There is a cute legend about its name: Princess Ana was in love with a common man who love her back: an impossible love. Every time he saw her look out from the window he shouted full of happiness: “Vi a Ana do castelo!” (“I saw Ana of the castle”) and so the city got that name.

But let’s proceed in order.

Serious and taciturn, thieves, incorrect and, at the same time, kind and cordial, euphoric or, on the contrary, melancholy and depressed, tomato eaters, slow, traditionalists and lazy (like the whole South of the world), and again, men allies of the English, women with mustaches, all of them who smell of cod and adore Fado, great explorers with so many stories to tell… these are the stereotypes about the Portuguese that run on the internet. And so in the reality.

But in a short 12-day journey that took me to 10 cities between Portugal and Spain, by train or on foot (the “Portuguese way” to Santiago) from Porto to Aveiro, Labruge, Povoa de Varzim, Viana do Castelo, Valença, Vigo, A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela and Madrid… this is what I discovered.

The very particular fortified city of Valença overlooking Spain. It withstood the French conquest for centuries.

Portugal appears as a beautiful, genuine country, where vegan / gourmet fashions (no offense to true vegans) have not yet arrived. People eat mainly meat and fish, from churrasco (with prices that have nothing to do with the overpriced Brazilian restaurants in Rome) to grilled sardinhas served with boiled potatoes, raw onion and green peppers. Unlike Italians, in fact, they are not afraid to “cover” the fish with strong flavors! The octopus and potatoes here have also the variant of the green onion sauce.

People proud of their few, simple recurring dishes such as the “caldo verde(literally “green broth”) which is a soup made with potatoes and a (very green) variety of kale that is typical of the northern region of the country. The soup hides small slices of salpicão (which is the Portuguese chorizo). Even the wine is green! Not true, it is always red (or white or rosé), but when it is defined like this (“vinho verde“), it indicates a young wine (we would say “novello”) characterized by a natural sparklingness. The desserts are all very yellow, full of eggs and sugar (and often covered with almonds, peanuts, cinnamon). One of the best known is “pastel de nata“, a kind of saucer of soft puff pastry covered with cream, and served strictly hot… delicious!

The sardine, together with the cod, is the most “stereotyped” fish in Portugal

Porto in particular is beautiful. Unlike Lisbon, all white (the city where Fado is actually widespread), Porto is made of warm and dark colors and is not really on the ocean, but on the mouth of the Douro. The river is wide, crossed by rather ancient bridges (19th century), very surprising considering the European average (the Dom Luis I, built by a former Eiffel collaborator, is about 400 meters long), almost worthy the American sizes. In fact it is Portuguese (Lisbon bridge of Vasco da Gama, 17 km), the only European bridge that stands out in the top 10 of the largest in the world.

Porto is a city that for its “mixture” recalls Genoa (and someone else would also malign for the same “stinginess”). And also San Francisco, for the fact that the city climbs uphill (in addition to the bridges and complete with old wooden trams and cable cars!). In place of graffiti there are churches and buildings decorated with “azulejos” that are reminiscent of the blue ceramics of the Dutch, in particular those of Delft. An Italian, Tuscan to be precise, Niccolò Nasoni (whom they call Nicolau Nazoni), semi-unknown to us, is considered none other than “the architect of Porto”: he designed most of the buildings in the city, such as São Pedro dos Clérigos. Similarities with aspects of other cultures are not rare in Portugal, starting with a language which, by changing a single letter for each word, becomes Spanish or Italian (or Galician)… For the Italians the “problem” of the Portuguese language is in fact only the pronunciation: reading it can sometimes be easier than Spanish.

the very yellow Portuguese desserts

The connections are therefore not only the obvious ones, with the South. Especially the northern Portugal, bordering the Nordic but Spanish Galicia (kingdom from which Portugal separated definitively in the Middle Ages), has many affinities with the North of Europe, such for the azulejos. For example, there is a city south of Porto, Aveiro, “cidade da agua” (“city of water”) which is considered the “Veneza portuguesa“, but the final effect is… as if you were putting gondolas on the canals of Amsterdam! Its green and blue coastal landscapes, dotted with small churches on the ocean, and even better the Galician ones with highest cliffs on the Atlantic, look like glimpses of Ireland.

The bridge of Dom Luis I from the “teleferico” (cablecar) of Gaia

“Portugueses, allies of the British”, by the way. But why? The ancient land of the Lusitanians, a people of Iberian origin from which the Portuguese descend, was conquered several times over the centuries: the first were the Romans, then the Germanic (and even Iranian) peoples arrived, and finally the Arabs. At that point the Reconquista led, in the valley between the Douro and Minho rivers (further north than Porto), to the formation of the “county of Portucale, the first nucleus of the future Portuguese state”. Once the current borders were formed, the Treaty of Windsor was signed in 1386, “an alliance between Portugal and England that has remained to this day”. One of the oldest treaties, a closeness between “isolated”.

Porto-San Francisco and its black and green taxis

“To be slow”. It has two meanings: an atavistic slowness that concerns the country (and its roots in traditionalism) caused by the dictatorship of Salazar, which for over 40 years, from 1932 to 1968 “marginalized the country from the progress of the rest of Europe”. So when we Italians think about our slowness, traditionalism and the notorious “twenty years” (the fascism period), perhaps there are those who have had worse!

Then there is a more “personal” meaning. Patricia is thirty-three and when she thinks of Portuguese women she would like to see more freedom of expression. “They still live according to a mentality inherited from the years of the dictatorship, in which the important values ​​remain family, work and a strong modesty”.

But we must not forget that this attitude also has positive implications: the Portuguese are not an overly nationalist population and are more ready to accept a European identity than the British or French, for example. “We are not very proud of our culture. We love who we are, but we are more intrigued by what happens abroad and we don’t think we are the best. We speak several languages ​​and, perhaps for historical and geographical reasons, we are open to foreign cultures: even if we are a small country, we have never stopped looking far”.

All this can also have a scientific explanation…

See you next week for the second and last part of the Portugal story!

Porto. Azulejos between buildings and sky
The beautiful station of Aveiro
The beach of Aveiro: all the houses are painted in colored stripes
Aveiro: gondolas in Amsterdam?
Walking towards Povoa de Varzim: “Irish” glimpse with a small church
Viana do Castelo, praia Norte (“North beach”): in Portugal it is customary to build natural pools near the ocean, when it is difficult to reach it, due to the high waves, as in this case.
Valença: Spain in few meters
Santiago: “Europe was born on a pilgrimage to Compostela”
awesome less awesome
Without suggesting anything… (photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash)

In Italy, the matter of what is the right and what is the left suggests the approach of the 5 Stars Movement or a famous song by Giorgio Gaber, who 20 years ago sang that the differences between right and left were already minimal…

Today there are the enthusiasts of the 5SM (actually less than before these two last governments in 3 years) and, on the other hand, those who can’t really stand them, all without half measures. But have you seen that now all the other parties are magically showing their approach? “We will decide on the specific theme or proposal”: left and right wings are saying, but they all ridiculed 5SM when it proposed this scheme for the first time (actually real “politics” with the fear of losing the founding values).

In any case, there are also many of those that aren’t still able to express, because they live the impasse, still preferring the old disappointing parties or the abstention instead of a new “free association of citizens”? I am among them: I admit that after many years of voting I feel stuck in the middle of abstension.

One important reason lies precisely in this “ambiguous” nature: being neither right nor left makes them a bit of the right and a bit of the left. So everything looks very much the same and you can’t make up your mind, because those who are convinced of the left or right cannot pass over that part that does not correspond to them. Which does not correspond to their fondative “values”.

But what are these values ​​of the right and the left? Are we now talking about stereotypes or reality?

The “denominations right and left”, for the two opposite sides of the political arena, was born in France shortly before the French Revolution. In May 1789 the General States were summoned by the King among the clergy, nobility and the third state. The latter was divided between the conservative exponents, headed by Pierre de Malouet and seated to the right of the President, and the radicals by Honoré de Mirabeau on the left. This division reappeared later: “on the right a current aimed at maintaining monarchical powers prevailed, on the left was the more revolutionary component” (Wikipedia).

And even today, if the right is to be described in political language: “we refer to the component of Parliament who sits to the right of the President of the Assembly and which traditionally refers to conservative or reactionary components”. And the left that “sits on the left and, in general, is the set of egalitarian and progressive positions, diametrically opposed to those of the right”.

“There is a lot of talk about who goes right and who goes left, but the decisive thing is to move forward, and moving forward means moving towards social justice”. Alcide De Gasperi was the first Prime Minister immediately after the II World War. “He is considered by many one of the fathers of modern Europe. It is no coincidence that one of his most famous speeches is on August 10, 1946 at the Peace Conference held in Paris”.

But in reality things seem to be taking an even different turn. The “fluidity” that the digital age imposes on our lives is reflected in every aspect: the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman already said that it would have invested the whole of society, from work to love. And now it is also hitting politics. People are fed up with the now empty dichotomy between left and right. They are looking for a more honest adherence to reality.

From 1700 to nowadays, many things have changed: “after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the political debate between Right and Left has abandoned the exclusively theoretical issues and has concentrated on decidedly practical issues”. In the passage, however, it is as if a series of theoretical “values” of differentiation of the two have crystallized, for example the social solidarity of the left versus the individual responsibility of the right. And it was understood that “in the impact between thought and reality, it’s not true that we put value before the interpretation or management of a fact: values ​​do not exist in themselves, they are only manifestations of something deeper, that is the way which we interpret the world ”.

Rocco La Gioia from the online magazine Istitutodipolitica.it describes these two ways of human approach to the world: one is theoretical and the other works by models. The first seeks to recover a harmonious relationship with the outside world, solutions are developed, reality is governed by identifying principles capable of enriching the interventions with meaning, according to a bottom-up approach; with the second, a model considered to be optimal is applied to reality, principles are sought by modeling reality on the basis of themselves, and reality is governed by cloaking it with meaning, according to a top-down approach.

It may not be intuitive, but the first orientation pertains to right-wing policies, the second to left-wing ones… consequently, the differences between the two don’t lie in adherence to a system of values, but rather in a theoretical disposition: “the first of a strictly objective character with a realistic result, the second of a strictly subjective character with an ethical result”. In this way the Right remains on “phenomenology“, elaborating “a program made up of freedom, individual responsibility and a separate state”. The Left, on the other hand, slips “on elements with an ethical content, made up of solidarity, equality and a guaranteeing State”.

A useful example was the recurring dispute on the Italian “Statute of workers” article 18 (real and compulsory labor protection): the Right believed that the article must change because reality requires its fluidity to stabilize the work, the Left believed that it must be maintained because of in itself it sanctions the stability of work as a value. It would therefore be incorrect to state that work is only protected by one of the two: both consider it a “social value to be pursued”. And, in any case, it was an act from the left than then changed it in 2015. Confirming all the confusion.

It is the perennial clash between objective reality and “social contract”: both must be always taken into account, allowing us to live with and within that reality… and then maybe the 5SM were right, it is no longer a time of divisions, but of overcoming the two visions. Or would it be better to speak of union?

Always talking about the Italian reality, twenty years of Berlusconian inaction (a partly distorted and completely corrupt right) has generated angry and disappointed people, demoralized and hungry for change, while nothing around seemed to be moving, no new proposals. A whole country that went on ad personam, by turning off everything, from politics to culture, without no mention to the “femenine narration as a nice object” we have been enduring… until the 5SM arrived, an Italian novelty, indeed unique in the world. And today new imitations, like happened for the new Berlusconi around the world – Johnson, Trump, Putin, Orban, Bolsonaro… – actually they all are worse. If only because they are more powerful…

Yet many were unable, and are unable, to vote for 5SM. Me too.

Is it beacause of the 5SM “ways”? “The pissed off”, “the forced one”, “the incompetent but honest”… how a political party arises is no small matter. As long as it is not the excuse and the “total” meter of judgement beforehand, in order not to enter into the merits of important issues.

Or perhaps those on the left don’t like that all these great ideas and attentions for the most fragile, children, disabled, citizenship income, active citizenship and many beautiful things… are only designed for the Italians (Italians)? When it happens to talk about others, you no longer feel that great spirit of community and cooperation that seems to characterize the Movement, on the contrary, a certain “frost” falls. And that’s perhaps what the right likes: “stay on the ordinary”, as the M5S mayoral candidate in Roma said. And then she won in 2016.

“The fascisms are advancing” “Who cares, right and left are outdated categories”

Let’s talk about her, Virginia Raggi and her program. Nice plan for the efficiency of transport, a city designed also for cyclists and pedestrians, a freer and safer trade, attention to school, the fight against waste and “Capitol Mafia“, that ugly name that stinks of gigantic. (The opponent, ex radical now Democratic Party, Roberto Giachetti, also said more or less the same). So: they both promised great attention to the citizen, on the other hand “attention” is what the citizens (who votes) want. But how do the 5SM behave with others who are not citizens in Rome, and Italy in general, for various reasons? From tourists to immigrants (who stay) and migrants (who are passing through), Roma and all those of the first, second and third generation who live in conditions of semi-clandestinity? They are not citizens, in fact, so we can speak of them in other terms. That is in economic terms, in terms of order, safety, or decorum. Terms that are also real, but which should be accompanied by other more… “ethical” aspects. Eg: slums and Rom camps must be cleared – who lives there agree and all we agree. But one thing is doing it because we believe scandalous, in the 21st century, to still ghettoize parts of the population – Giachetti -, one thing is doing it because Mafia pockets the money – Raggi. The first is a right assumption, the other is a right consequence, which however is used as a prerequisite.

Fluidity teaches that in the reality “black and white” exist, but more often there are shades of them, and the key to living well is adapting to them. Not everything is ethics, there is also the real, but not everything is individualism, there is also a world to be preserved together. This approach would virtuously combine left and right in a policy that does not become an immobile and formless center, but is able to think about everyone without forgetting “how things are”. The 5SM certainly anticipated this vision, this “third way” that has some postmodernism, but on the result of overcoming or merging or whatever it is, we still have to work a lot.

awesome less awesome
Without suggesting anything… (photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash)

In Italy, the matter of what is the right and what is the left suggests the approach of the 5 Stars Movement or a famous song by Giorgio Gaber, who 20 years ago sang that the differences between right and left were already minimal…

Today there are the enthusiasts of the 5SM (actually less than before these two last governments in 3 years) and, on the other hand, those who can’t really stand them, all without half measures. But have you seen that now all the other parties are magically showing their approach? “We will decide on the specific theme or proposal”: left and right wings are saying, but they all ridiculed 5SM when it proposed this scheme for the first time (actually real “politics” with the fear of losing the founding values).

In any case, there are also many of those that aren’t still able to express, because they live the impasse, still preferring the old disappointing parties or the abstention instead of a new “free association of citizens”? I am among them: I admit that after many years of voting I feel stuck in the middle of abstension.

One important reason lies precisely in this “ambiguous” nature: being neither right nor left makes them a bit of the right and a bit of the left. So everything looks very much the same and you can’t make up your mind, because those who are convinced of the left or right cannot pass over that part that does not correspond to them. Which does not correspond to their fondative “values”.

But what are these values ​​of the right and the left? Are we now talking about stereotypes or reality?

The “denominations right and left”, for the two opposite sides of the political arena, was born in France shortly before the French Revolution. In May 1789 the General States were summoned by the King among the clergy, nobility and the third state. The latter was divided between the conservative exponents, headed by Pierre de Malouet and seated to the right of the President, and the radicals by Honoré de Mirabeau on the left. This division reappeared later: “on the right a current aimed at maintaining monarchical powers prevailed, on the left was the more revolutionary component” (Wikipedia).

And even today, if the right is to be described in political language: “we refer to the component of Parliament who sits to the right of the President of the Assembly and which traditionally refers to conservative or reactionary components”. And the left that “sits on the left and, in general, is the set of egalitarian and progressive positions, diametrically opposed to those of the right”.

“There is a lot of talk about who goes right and who goes left, but the decisive thing is to move forward, and moving forward means moving towards social justice”. Alcide De Gasperi was the first Prime Minister immediately after the II World War. “He is considered by many one of the fathers of modern Europe. It is no coincidence that one of his most famous speeches is on August 10, 1946 at the Peace Conference held in Paris”.

But in reality things seem to be taking an even different turn. The “fluidity” that the digital age imposes on our lives is reflected in every aspect: the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman already said that it would have invested the whole of society, from work to love. And now it is also hitting politics. People are fed up with the now empty dichotomy between left and right. They are looking for a more honest adherence to reality.

From 1700 to nowadays, many things have changed: “after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the political debate between Right and Left has abandoned the exclusively theoretical issues and has concentrated on decidedly practical issues”. In the passage, however, it is as if a series of theoretical “values” of differentiation of the two have crystallized, for example the social solidarity of the left versus the individual responsibility of the right. And it was understood that “in the impact between thought and reality, it’s not true that we put value before the interpretation or management of a fact: values ​​do not exist in themselves, they are only manifestations of something deeper, that is the way which we interpret the world ”.

Rocco La Gioia from the online magazine Istitutodipolitica.it describes these two ways of human approach to the world: one is theoretical and the other works by models. The first seeks to recover a harmonious relationship with the outside world, solutions are developed, reality is governed by identifying principles capable of enriching the interventions with meaning, according to a bottom-up approach; with the second, a model considered to be optimal is applied to reality, principles are sought by modeling reality on the basis of themselves, and reality is governed by cloaking it with meaning, according to a top-down approach.

It may not be intuitive, but the first orientation pertains to right-wing policies, the second to left-wing ones… consequently, the differences between the two don’t lie in adherence to a system of values, but rather in a theoretical disposition: “the first of a strictly objective character with a realistic result, the second of a strictly subjective character with an ethical result”. In this way the Right remains on “phenomenology“, elaborating “a program made up of freedom, individual responsibility and a separate state”. The Left, on the other hand, slips “on elements with an ethical content, made up of solidarity, equality and a guaranteeing State”.

A useful example was the recurring dispute on the Italian “Statute of workers” article 18 (real and compulsory labor protection): the Right believed that the article must change because reality requires its fluidity to stabilize the work, the Left believed that it must be maintained because of in itself it sanctions the stability of work as a value. It would therefore be incorrect to state that work is only protected by one of the two: both consider it a “social value to be pursued”. And, in any case, it was an act from the left than then changed it in 2015. Confirming all the confusion.

It is the perennial clash between objective reality and “social contract”: both must be always taken into account, allowing us to live with and within that reality… and then maybe the 5SM were right, it is no longer a time of divisions, but of overcoming the two visions. Or would it be better to speak of union?

Always talking about the Italian reality, twenty years of Berlusconian inaction (a partly distorted and completely corrupt right) has generated angry and disappointed people, demoralized and hungry for change, while nothing around seemed to be moving, no new proposals. A whole country that went on ad personam, by turning off everything, from politics to culture, without no mention to the “femenine narration as a nice object” we have been enduring… until the 5SM arrived, an Italian novelty, indeed unique in the world. And today new imitations, like happened for the new Berlusconi around the world – Johnson, Trump, Putin, Orban, Bolsonaro… – actually they all are worse. If only because they are more powerful…

Yet many were unable, and are unable, to vote for 5SM. Me too.

Is it beacause of the 5SM “ways”? “The pissed off”, “the forced one”, “the incompetent but honest”… how a political party arises is no small matter. As long as it is not the excuse and the “total” meter of judgement beforehand, in order not to enter into the merits of important issues.

Or perhaps those on the left don’t like that all these great ideas and attentions for the most fragile, children, disabled, citizenship income, active citizenship and many beautiful things… are only designed for the Italians (Italians)? When it happens to talk about others, you no longer feel that great spirit of community and cooperation that seems to characterize the Movement, on the contrary, a certain “frost” falls. And that’s perhaps what the right likes: “stay on the ordinary”, as the M5S mayoral candidate in Roma said. And then she won in 2016.

“The fascisms are advancing” “Who cares, right and left are outdated categories”

Let’s talk about her, Virginia Raggi and her program. Nice plan for the efficiency of transport, a city designed also for cyclists and pedestrians, a freer and safer trade, attention to school, the fight against waste and “Capitol Mafia“, that ugly name that stinks of gigantic. (The opponent, ex radical now Democratic Party, Roberto Giachetti, also said more or less the same). So: they both promised great attention to the citizen, on the other hand “attention” is what the citizens (who votes) want. But how do the 5SM behave with others who are not citizens in Rome, and Italy in general, for various reasons? From tourists to immigrants (who stay) and migrants (who are passing through), Roma and all those of the first, second and third generation who live in conditions of semi-clandestinity? They are not citizens, in fact, so we can speak of them in other terms. That is in economic terms, in terms of order, safety, or decorum. Terms that are also real, but which should be accompanied by other more… “ethical” aspects. Eg: slums and Rom camps must be cleared – who lives there agree and all we agree. But one thing is doing it because we believe scandalous, in the 21st century, to still ghettoize parts of the population – Giachetti -, one thing is doing it because Mafia pockets the money – Raggi. The first is a right assumption, the other is a right consequence, which however is used as a prerequisite.

Fluidity teaches that in the reality “black and white” exist, but more often there are shades of them, and the key to living well is adapting to them. Not everything is ethics, there is also the real, but not everything is individualism, there is also a world to be preserved together. This approach would virtuously combine left and right in a policy that does not become an immobile and formless center, but is able to think about everyone without forgetting “how things are”. The 5SM certainly anticipated this vision, this “third way” that has some postmodernism, but on the result of overcoming or merging or whatever it is, we still have to work a lot.

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