by Leonardo Lugaresi
Benedict XVI’s message for the world day of social communications, made public on January 24, draws our attention to the problems posed by certain “limits typical of digital communication: the one-sidedness of the interaction, the tendency to communicate only some parts of one’s interior world, the risk of constructing a false image of oneself, which can become a form of self-indulgence.” [...]
It is interesting to note that the pope’s reminder, although it refers to a completely new phenomenon, presents significant similarities with an ancient question on which the critical reflection of the Fathers of the Church was exercised in a masterful way, and from which it could therefore be useful to take some cues, for a deeper understanding of this teaching of Benedict XVI.
The Fathers obviously did not know about the internet, but the “virtual world” with which they had to come to terms was for them was constituted – in a “society of the spectacle” as Greco-Roman society of the imperial age was to a large extent – by the dimension of the “ludus,” meaning scenic representation, and more broadly that theatricality which invaded so many aspects of civil life in late antiquity, even outside of the walls of the theaters, amphitheaters, and circuses, and of the numerous festivities of the calendar.
The condemnation of spectacles, so decisive and without ambiguity in the ancient Church, is not in fact motivated in the last instance by their idolatrous or immoral contents, as is so often repeated, but by deep concern about the threat that Tertullian, in his “De spectaculis,” calls the “ratio veritatis,” the criterion of truth.
The reality of spectacles, in fact, presented itself to the eyes of the Fathers as a profoundly ambivalent one, in which true and false were mixed up, to the point of bringing into crisis the very validity of such an opposition. Suffice it to think of the fact that the actor, in the act of interpreting a character, is “true” precisely in his being “false,” in that he is, and at the same time is not, the character he represents.
His ability to transform himself, surpassing all the “normal” limits posed by distinctions of age, gender, “status,” by which the same individual can be, depending on the moment, man or woman, king or slave, thus appears as a dangerous threat to the natural identity of man: as if the pluriform shadow of Proteus had risen up to obscure the face of Adam.
The theme of the critique of the ambivalence of representation is of Platonic origin, but saw a decisive development in Christianity. The identity that is threatened, in fact, is felt as a creatural identity, in that in the nature of each human being is reflected the original image that God imprinted there.
Patristic thought therefore recognizes, in this overturning of natural reality performed by the “fictio” of spectacle and in the construction of pseudorealities more capable of raising passions and emotions in the spectators the more devoid they are of ontological substance, the hand of the devil, meaning the one who by definition is the “evil imitator” of God, the “simia Dei” who, incapable of creating, can only adulterate the nature created by God. In this regard, Tertullian speaks explicitly of the devil as “aemulator” and “interpolator” of the divine work.
When the pope raises frankly the question of the authenticity of friendship in the virtual world one hears, in his words, the echo of a profound patristic reflection.
In a famous page of the “Confessions” (3,2), Augustine, recalling his youthful experience as an impassioned theatergoer, pointedly notes how the spectators like to suffer by contemplating on the stage painful and tragic events which should prompt compassion if they were encountered in real life, and asks himself, “But what kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? The spectator is not expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him. And the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these fictions.”
This passage deserves extensive exegesis, but the essential point is very clear: for Augustine, a truly human relationship is realized only where there is responsibility. The other, in the moment in which I encounter him, makes me in some way responsible, in the sense clarified perfectly by the parable of the good Samaritan with which Jesus responds to the same question that Benedict XVI, not by accident, proposes to us again in reference to the virtual world: “Who is my neighbor?”
The relationship of neighbor, which is the only truly human one, always implies the element of responsibility, in the sense that the other makes a claim on me with his very existence, he constitutes for me a challenge to which I must respond.
Augustine denies precisely that this could happen in the pseudo-relationship between the spectator and the actor, and of course we cannot help but agree with him if we apply his analysis to television, the medium par excellence that puts us in a position of “false closeness” with reality, where we see everything, but as completely passive and exonerated spectators.
The internet, it is said, is something else, and indeed it is precisely its accessible and widespread interaction, with the possibility for each user to be an active subject in the communications network into which he is inserted, that seems to be its most innovative and seductive characteristic.
There is, however, an indispensable condition for this to take place, and it is commitment to the truth and with the truth. “The truth of Christ,” the pope reminds us, “is the full and authentic response to that human desire for relationship, communion and meaning which is reflected in the immense popularity of social networks.”
But commitment with the truth demands continuity of attention, concreteness, concentration on what is essential. Here another factor of ambivalence typical of the virtual world enters into play.
The enormous multiplicity of points of interest, of opportunities, of the attractions and the extraordinary facility of the connections that can be established with the most diverse camps of human experience – in a dimension that seems to nullify the obstacles posed by time and space in the real world – is indeed a great resource, but also a very powerful stimulus to distraction, even the dispersion of the ego from “inside” to “outside” of itself (according to a psychological dynamic that is very well known to every navigator of the web, when he realizes that he has lost precious hours going from link to link, but that perhaps was never as lucidly analyzed as it was by Augustine).
It is that illness of the spirit which ancient thought had diagnosed as “polypragmosyne,” “curiositas,” and on which – in the context of the controversy over spectacles – the Fathers also said memorable things. Suffice it to remember the pregnant formula with which Tertullian, in the “De praescriptione haereticorum” (7, 12), indicates the novelty of the Christian position: “Nobis curiositate opus non est post Christum Iesum nec inquisitione post evangelium.” After the encounter with the good news that is Christ Jesus, there is no more room for “curiositas,” nor do we need Google anymore to know who we are.
The ancient Christian condemnation of the theater certainly cannot be proposed again today, much less does the Church want to distance itself from the internet, at which it looks instead with sincere appreciation.
But some of the reasons with which the Fathers, with great power of thought, upheld that judgment deserve to be the object of our reflection even today, to help us to embody that “Christian style of presence also in the digital world” that the pope desires.
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