Italy – A Power Crazed Nation? Part 1
I’ve been in Italy for a good few years now, and my psychoanalysis of the place and its people continues.
Maybe, just maybe, I’m starting to grasp how the Italian mind works. In fact I have written quite a bit on this subject several times including, oddly enough, after I came back from my last summer holiday down in Tuscany and wrote ‘Why Italy is the Way it is.‘
My post entitled ‘Furbo‘ also looks at another aspect of Italian mentality.
When you think about it, Italians do seem to display a strong desire for status, superiority, and that most addictive of drugs, power. Once the desired level of power has been reached, Italians will then jealously guard their positions by any and all means in an attempt to enable them to retain the status, superiority, and power they believe they have managed to attain.
Why is this attraction to power noticeable to me? Well, I guess it’s because the same fixation with power and status is just not as overt back in the UK as it is here.
In Italy, manifestations of Italians’ lust for status are everywhere. From the preponderance of almost garishly uniformed police forces, to use of the ‘Lei’ form, and all the titles which Italians go by – dottore, ingegnere, architetto, and avvocato. Age is also a great indicator of status for Italians, and grey hair commands respect, and the inevitable ‘Lei’ or ‘Voi’ form.
However, there is more, much more.
Part 2 is coming soon.
Yes, much of what you say is dead on, Alex. However, you haven’t seen a status-oriented society until you’ve been to Latin America… but that’s another story for another time.
I think in addition to “status”, there is a big emphasis on “respect” in the Italian mindset. There is the concept of “uomini di rispetto”. Men of respect. Hence all the titles and honorifics, e.g., dottore, cavaliere, etc.
This may differ from the UK’s system of peerage, with all its titles and perks, in form and emphasis, but not necessarily in function. After all, the UK is a society where a full-blown aristocracy not only still exists, but is fully and firmly recognized by the State and is in many ways intertwined with the State.
Not so in Italy. So, in its transition from monarchy to republic, Italy had to replace many of those royal and aristocratic forms with republican ones. Still, the aura of a stratified, status-obsessed society persists in many quarters.
I actually dig many of the bows to respect, which we don’t have in the US. Here in the US, there is only one thing that counts: Money. You can be the most vulgar, slovenly, ignorant person, but if you’re “bucks up”, then you get the red carpet treatment everywhere and Corporate America and all of its minions will curtsy.
Yes, in America we have fully democratized vulgarity.
Hi Joe,
You’re right about other societies being pretty status oriented.
I think that you have also hit the nail on the head too with your comparison with the UK. In the UK, as you say, there is an aristocracy, whereas in Italy it has been killed off to a great extent.
However, we humans seem to need status in some form or other, and Italians, in the absence of a formal system, appear to have re-created one! Again, as you point out – this is most probably the result of the transition from monarchy to republic.
Actually, I don’t object to the respect thing – it’s a little quaint, but nice in its own way.
There is a funny paradox though. As you know, Italians are not well known for their respect of authority, but they do seem to like commanding respect – as a result of their personal authority. Odd, is it not?!
In the US respect, as you say, is tightly related to money, which in a society that has no aristocracy and very few titles, is quite natural.
Money, as we both know, does not really make someone a better person but, as the old saying goes ‘money talks’, or rather, it shouts. And with enough cash you can be as vulgar as you wish!
Luckily though, there are still a good few people both with and without money who are ‘respectable’ in every sense.
Regards,
Alex
I think that US culture is unusual in the world; it seems to me that acknowlegements of perceived higher rank or status is the norm in most cultures.
Americans hold high an ideal of egalitarianism. We love to behave as if “You’re my buddy” and we’re all equal. We don’t use titles or honorifics but if you look carefully it becomes clear that some of us are more equal than others.
It’s harder to figure out what’s going on in a U.S. American setting (especially if you’re not from this culture) because we’re so invested in maintaining the illusion that there’s no social hierarchy, that we’ve done away with all the markers.
I totally agree that in the US, status is often based on money alone. Don’t think that doesn’t happen in other cultures, though. I’ve seen nuveau riche in Italy, and it ain’t pretty there either.
I read your article, Alex. Very interesting.
Hi Kate,
Thanks for dropping in and commenting, and for saying you found my post interesting.
Now, to reply to your comments.
I’m not so sure that US culture is that unusual, especially when you consider the history of the States and the fact that it was, literally, built on the backs of many people from quite humble origins.
In a society like that of the US, the only way of measuring status is by way of financial power, but even the US has its ‘aristocracy’ – the old families with old money – the Rockefellers and Kennedys spring to mind.
As for egalitarianism, well, the utopian ideal that we are all equal is just that, utopian. The human desire for status is what relates us so closely to animals, which of course, we are. Clever animals, but animals, nonetheless.
Even if societies, like the US, claim to have no hierarchy, this is merely wishful thinking. All societies appear to need their dominant males (even if they are not male…), and I don’t think I can think of anywhere which does not have an individual or group that leads, that sits at the top of the pyramid, or is the leader of the pack.
This is the nature of social animals.
If we ever manage to rise above this, then we can claim to be more than animals, but such an evolution is still, in my eyes, a very long way off.
Whether we actually even make this ‘ascension’ is open to question because our insatiable thirst for power could end up with our destroying the planet, observes he a little ominously.
With regard to Italy, I guess what I’m trying to piece together is why the concept of meritocracy is so alien to the Italian way of thinking.
Possibly the Italians are rather more aware of human failings than many other races, and cynically accept that we are animals, and that behaving as such is really perfectly normal.
Maybe I should accept what I am.
All the best,
Alex