event organised in collaboration with Cantieri Danza – Ravenna

Are we ready for the sacrifice? Obviously not our own! It will always be up to someone else to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community; perhaps to a virgin, the most fragile and naive… And who has got the right of choice? The old, wise and elect ones, obviously. But are we sure the elderly hold within themselves the power of absolute wisdom and the authority to decide what is right for others and what is not? By what right? It is about justice and someone will be executed, one more time, in order to honor the Gods.

We are just there facing the delicate concept of morality: a (hereditary) principle handed down to us from the past generations through the invention of myths and narratives, useful for controlling the masses. They “hide” statements such as this is right and this is wrong, that’s good and that’s bad, this is moral and this is immoral. And we take them as truths, proven and irrefutable facts: that’s how it is. It follows that, at the end of a war, the winners will be the Righteous, just because we have been taught that Justice always wins and the massacres are justified for good, while the losers will be forgotten from the books. The result is: concentration camps and mass exterminations of human and animal species (see: the abomination of intensive farming and slaughterhouses). When it happens we have been deprived of our rights, we simply believe we can take justice in our hands. And therefore it follows that a popular jury can decide the evidence of guilt of an accused one, just according to its own subjective concept of morality. And if we want to keep a clear conscience, we can always refer to the orders straight from the top.

History does not change. It is curious, funny and weird how many meanings the english word right contains! This begs the reflection on us as human beings, our contemporary society, the relationship with power and the trust we place in it. How much do we actually delegate big decisions for us and for others, again for good purposes? In a fragile society weakened by events, cataclysms and pandemics, it is too easy to rely on the new savior, delegating him to the power of deciding in the name of the community. Perhaps we do it without even paying too much attention and then we complain about the consequent outcome.