He was fired because he was the first to report a certain news item during the U.S. presidential election. Only it was a political news that stung for his channel's audience and even more so for the editor. It happened in the United States, but the echo came to us in the lines of an editorial that Chris Stirewhalt, the journalist involved, wrote for the Los Angeles Times. A vibrant piece in which the author takes the baton of dismissal to reason about the tension between two opposing words, habituation and informationand information.
The American public, one reads, has been gorged (metaphorically) by a type of media product with a high caloric content (fake news) and a poor nutritional content (truth) and has become accustomed, misinformed. To the point that when news is transmitted to it, that is, when it is exposed to pure information, the organism collapses, it does not recognize the daily diet, it rejects it to the point of vomiting.
The metaphor is exaggerated, but it sheds light on a corner that we voluntarily leave in the shadows: many of us are now only able to listen to what we already know or what we want to hear, or it confirms our judgment. We are prone to habituation, we are accommodated to the narrative of a simplified reality in which the irruption of a divergent thought is disturbing: it is presented as dissident, it is not even recognized for what it is, that is, something different from us with a curious potential. It is therefore rejected a priori.
We are accustomed to the narrative of a simplified reality in which the emergence of divergent thinking is disturbing.
It would be interesting to investigate the historical moment when this process of loss of taste for confrontation with difference began. When did difference become so unbearable for us? Or when did we become so bitter?
For our Latin authors, the "divergenza"was an everyday dimension that had to be dealt with, in war, politics and philosophy. Latin diverto – diversum indicates a turn towards two opposite, separate, distant sides. For Caesar, different can be, for example, a path that proceeds in the opposite direction to the desired one (iter a proposito diversum), so it can be treacherous, but attractive; while for Sallust it is the right word to describe the agitation between extreme emotions, between fear and debauchery (metu atque lubidine divorsus agitabatur).
Here is, between Caesar and Sallust, the painful and fascinating point: divergence moves, opens windows, shows different edges, therefore exposes to risks. Like that of changing one's mind, of accepting that one can take a step backwards or to one side. It reveals things about the reality that surrounds us, phenomena that we did not see, much less calculate. That is why we need it, especially when the world around us is increasingly complex and trying to simplify it only distracts us.
Conversation (from cum - verto, same composition as di-verto) asks us to dialogue with those who are not the same, who do not think the same way.
Fortunately (and this is not just a game of etymology) there is a way to withstand the test of divergence without falling off dark cliffs: it's called conversation.
The conversation (from cum - vertosame composition as di-verto) asks us to dialogue with those who are not the same, who do not think the same and do not see the same as we do, and yet participate in the same community.
Conversation is a time dedicated to trusting one's own difference and, at the same time, allowing oneself to be invested by the divergent opinions of others, in order to push oneself to previously unimagined realms of creativity. A frank conversation about how to readjust lifestyles, politics and economics in the wake of the pandemic is the most banal example that can be proposed. But everyone can see it in their everyday experience: at different levels, the conversation is an invitation to relinquish one's responsibilities to others.
Those who "get used" (to borrow the expression of the American journalist) to this type of conversation will hardly give it up. Because it is an activation of humanity: personal deposits of certainties and projects are risked for a higher stake. It counteracts addiction, that unpleasant form of obesity of the soul.
Yes, you have to give up something, but what you gain is more. It is a matter of deeds, not words.
Degree in Classical Literature and PhD in Sociology of Communication. Communications Director of the AVSI Foundation, based in Milan, dedicated to development cooperation and humanitarian aid worldwide. She has received several awards for her journalistic activity.
