Anika in Italy!: February 2014

Time is really starting to speed up! I hadn’t realized that it’s been more than a month since my last post. The past month has been filled with so many fun experiences, such as going snowshoeing in the Alps with Ellen (my exchange friend), making valentines day cookies with Marco (my little host brother), going to a glass-making factory in Venice, and singing for an evening mass at a beautiful church with the conservatory choir. I’m really looking forward to the next few months because I have some great travel opportunities coming up! In March I’ll be going to Berlin for 5 days with my class from school, and in April I’m flying to Israel for a week for a Rotary peace conference. More on that later!

Right now it’s time for more deep speculation on the Italian culture. (Aren’t you excited? J) Now that I’ve been in Italy for more than five months, I’m starting to understand this country in new ways. There are so many aspects of the Italian culture that I didn’t fully understand when I first got here, but the longer I stay here the more I learn.

One day at school we had a guest speaker come in to talk to us about an initiative called VocAzione (the name means “vocation” or “calling” but it’s also a play on the words “voce” and “azione” meaning “voice” and “action”). The program’s goal is to address some of Italy’s social issues, and they wanted to reach out to young people to see what we had to say on the topic. The presentation was fascinating to me because it revealed (and confirmed) a strange, pessimistic mentality about Italy that I’d been noticing here but hadn’t really understood before. I also really appreciated the program’s mission of spreading positive social change! Let me explain. Whenever the topic of Italy as a country comes up in conversation, Italians often sigh and say the phrase “Italia sta scendendo”, which means “Italy is going downhill”. At first I was surprised and confused that Italians would say this about their own beautiful country! Italy is idealistic in so many ways- it has friendly people, amazing history, gorgeous landscapes, delicious food, the list goes on- and whenever I hear Italy mentioned in the US people usually talk about how wonderful Italy is. Yet when our guest speaker asked us to think of one word that describes Italy, almost all the words were negative. In addition, many of my classmates have said that they want to leave Italy for college, and I’ve heard countless rants about Italian politics. What were the Italians talking about?

My question was answered when our guest speaker showed us some data from a survey that the VocAzione initiative had done. They had asked different Italian citizens from various ages, incomes, and regions to answer a set of questions about their values- the things most important to them. They were asked to first list their personal values (things they hold important for themselves), and then their cultural values (things they believe are values for their culture as a whole). The difference between the two lists was astonishing. On average, the second most important value Italians said they hold for themselves personally is honesty. In contrast, the first value Italians listed for their country on a cultural level was corruption. How, the speaker asked us, could the number one cultural value in Italy be corruption, when on a personal level everyone said that honesty was among their top three most important values? Honesty and corruption are, after all, opposites. No one could answer his question. He then went on to show where “personal responsibility” (defined as feeling personally responsible for how things go in your community and country as a whole) was ranked on the list. As a personal value, people ranked it #48, and on a national level, it was #68. That, he said, is the root of the problem. People rank just about every other value they can think of higher on the priority list than personal responsibility. If nobody feels responsible for the future of the country, things go downhill pretty fast. Interestingly enough, Italians rated patience and adaptability high on the value list, suggesting that the commonly accepted response to things going downhill is to be patient and just adapt to it. This explained some of my observations about Italian culture here. For example, whenever I ask people about the political system in Italy, they usually shake their heads and say that it's a mess, that it's corrupt, but that there's nothing to be done. Some people have stopped voting. I'm not saying patience and adaptability are bad values- in fact, before I got here I was generally very impatient, so the patience I am learning here is definitely a good thing.

What I really appreciated about Vocazione, though, was that it wasn't just depressing research predicting unavoidable social decline. Our guest speaker went on to talk about the VocAzione initiative and about how we could all create positive social change, especially as young people. We did a brainstorming exercise about the problematic education system in Italy and thought about ways to change it. We also wrote out personal commitments (things we promised to do better in the future for ourselves, our families, and our communities) on post-it notes and stuck them on the blackboard. I thought it was a great way to create a sense of personal responsibility. After all, if everyone holds themselves responsible for what happens to their country, the country as a whole will improve.

All in all I was so impressed by the presentation and thought it was a great lesson for everyone who lives in a community anywhere on the globe, and not just in Italy. It’s not just the Italians who lack a sense of personal responsibility for their country. I can see the same problems in the US. It was just interesting for me to see those issues addressed in Italy, because it gave me a deeper insight into their culture. It also made me think about how globally we all have similar social issues, and that the solution is really the same for everyone. I hope there are more programs like VocAzione to get the message out to people to start changing themselves if they want social change. (Writing this is making me think of the Micheal Jackson song “Man in the Mirror” J)

All matters of social issues aside, however, all this has been making me think more about a career in international relations and foreign affairs. I’m really enjoying being an ambassador (well, I guess I’m not officially an ambassador, but I do represent the US to my school and my host family) so it could be a good job for me. We’ll see what happens.

Until next time, Ciao a presto!