I return to a theme that, according to the statistics on the reading of the articles, seems to be closer to my heart than to the readers of these pages: the impending need for men and women to quickly return to tasks and functions closer to their natural inclinations and to re-establish between them that relationship of complementarity and collaboration so deeply split by many years of conflicting propaganda and discord knowingly sown between the two sexes. I continue to believe that it is necessary to prepare now for this kind of process, before it is external and traumatic circumstances, at this point inescapable, that make it compulsory, with that amount of forcing that makes any evolution burdensome. Being ready to transform, especially if the transformation involves a ‘return home’, can make the emergencies and dramas underlying the transformation much softer and more tolerable.

In a recent article I expressed my pessimism regarding the prospects awaiting our country, and indeed the entire West, following the tragic pandemic-war sequence, with the latter promising to be far more real and devastating than the former. Covid, in fact, by its very nature has spread transversally, involving, albeit to varying degrees, the entire world, from north to south, east to west. The war, on the other hand, pits two spheres against each other, and is increasingly revealing itself for what I have always claimed it to be: not a regional conflict between Ukraine and Russia, nor even a warlike confrontation between NATO (the US) and Russia, but a true clash of civilisations. The one is nascent, eastern, moving on an axis from the Middle East all the way to Beijing, passing through Russia, with the indirect involvement of a mass of developing satellite-areas (and with a great desire to get rid of rusty chains); the other, the western one, is showing in every respect the signs of a decadence in its terminal state.

A matter of survival.

One only has to take an objective overview of the international situation from an economic and geopolitical point of view to realise that with torturous slowness we are certainly heading towards a critical context never seen before, except perhaps in the Middle Ages, and perhaps even towards a global war, where, moreover, the parties involved have already declared themselves ready to use atomic weapons, which would make the overall scenario even more burdensome. The two conflicting civilisations do not intend to back down from their plans in the slightest: their survival depends on it, as does the credibility of the regimes leading them. With these prospects, no scruples of any kind are to be expected, and the recent sabotage of the North Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines by the Anglo-Americans clearly demonstrates this. The escalation is obvious: the USA is a giant now on its knees in every respect, and to maintain its hegemony it has no choice but to pull all its other competitors, as well as all its colonies (Italy is among them), further down.

This explains actions of an openly terrorist nature such as those on the two North Streams, which condemn Germany and Italy, Europe’s first and third industrial power, to a prolonged period of cold weather, energy and food rationing, and a very deep economic crisis. But this also explains all the acts of destabilisation that the US are promoting in various countries around Russia, in Taiwan against China, in Europe in the area of Kosovo and Serbia, in Iran with attempts of ‘coloured revolution’, and before long, easy to predict, even in the Saudi area, which is increasingly sceptical of US leadership. Which is after all a giant Samson, determined to take all the Philistines with him in view of what, judging by the simplest basic economic indicators and the state of the US armed forces, is an imminent demise. Here and now, however, it is not a question of choosing sides: who was right will be told by historians decades from now (assuming there is anyone left to tell the tale), and these are in any case reflections that could have been made months ago.

Men and women to re-plan a future.

Now is no longer the time to get lost in disquisitions or partisanship. Now is the time to prepare for a veritable systemic collapse, which only a glimmer of lucidity on the part of the European leadership could prevent. A glimmer that, however, is not to be expected: at every level it is clear that those leaders are trapped in a kind of dreamlike cage, totally detached from the reality of the people they govern, in a form of delirium that can only be explained by psychopathy. Liz Truss cutting taxes in the UK while her central bank is busy fighting inflation, managing to astonish even the International Monetary Fund; Ursula Von Der Leyen exulting like a child (or better, a mechanical doll) by announcing further millions to be transferred to the Ukrainian regime; Radek Sikorski, former Polish foreign minister and now EU MP, thanking the US for blowing up Nord Stream, the day before the pipeline between Poland and Norway was inaugurated; these are just some of the manifestations of the irresponsible psychopathy that rules our continent. And Italy? Our country, in theory, given the recent election result, could make a difference, preventing history from repeating itself and Italy from once again becoming, along with Germany, the starting point of a disease capable of sinking Europe. The morning, however, with Meloni cooing with Zelensky on Twitter, does not seem to herald a good day at all.

At the bottom of this chain, exactly at the leash, are we, men and women. Who in most cases are likely to find ourselves having to decide, in late winter, whether to turn on the heating or put a dish on the table, while those who will be affected more than us, the poorest areas of the world, will from November onwards storm Europe in search of bread and life. What can we do in the face of this scenario? When all the socio-cultural superstructures, especially the more ephemeral ones, fall, giving way to real states of necessity, the options are always two: tear each other down or work together to mitigate the impact of the disaster. Within these two options creeps another possible division, that between men and women, so cynically fuelled by toxic ideologies such as feminism or LGBT, which have dictated the law in recent decades. There the choice will be between trying to keep alive the well-known bubbles (patriarchy, oppression, women empowerment, etc.) and that of looking into each other’s eyes, accepting the respective differences in strengths and weaknesses, optimising the former and limiting the latter in a form of complementary collaboration that will be essential so that, in the coming disaster, the law of the jungle will not prevail on the streets and in homes but a new form of solidary and constructive sociality, capable of laying the foundations of a balanced future for our children. That is, if the psychopaths running the world allow them to have one.