An Argentine philosopher and psychoanalyst Miguel Benasayag, who has lived in Paris for many years, whose works are also partly translated into Italian, and a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry Gérard Schmit who teaches at the University of Reims, placed below observation the psychological and psychiatric consultancy services spread in France and have noticed that for the most part, they are people whose sufferings do not have a real psychological origin, but reflect the widespread sadness that characterizes our contemporary society.

THIS IS THE ERA OF SAD PASSIONS.

These have their origin in the crisis of society which, without warning, enters the psychological and psychiatric counseling centers, leaving operators unarmed. What does this crisis consist of? From a change of sign of the future: from the "future-promise" to the "future-threat". And since the psyche is healthy when it is open to the future (unlike the depressed psyche all gathered in the past, and the manic psyche all concentrated on the present) when the future closes its doors or, if it opens them, it is only to offer itself as uncertainty , precariousness, insecurity, restlessness, then "the terrible has already happened", because the initiatives are extinguished, the hopes appear empty, the demotivation grows, the vital energy implodes.

All this began with the death of God which marked the end of theological optimism, which visualized the past as evil, the present as redemption, the future as salvation. The death of God has left not only orphans, but also heirs.

Science, utopia and revolution have continued, in secular form, this optimistic view of history, where the triad: guilt, redemption, salvation found its reformulation in that homologous perspective where the past appears as evil, science or revolution as redemption, progress (scientific or sociological) as salvation.

The positivism of the late nineteenth century was in fact animated by a sort of scientific messianism, which ensured a bright and happy tomorrow thanks to the progress of science.

On the sociological side Marx highlighted the contradictions of capitalism in view of a radical transformation of the world, on the psychological side Freud hypothesized a drying up of unconscious forces not controlled by the I, because "where the ES was, the ego must take over. This is the work of civilization ".

The West, abandoning the pessimism of the ancient Greeks who, according to Nietzsche: "They were the only ones who had the strength to face the pain", unreservedly gave themselves over to the optimism of the Judeo-Christian tradition which, both in the religious version, both in the secular forms of science, utopia and revolution, looked at the future supported by the conviction that the history of humanity is inevitably a history of progress and therefore of salvation.

TODAY THIS OPTIMISTIC VIEW HAS COLLAPSED.

God is truly dead and his heirs (science, utopia and revolution) have failed to promise.

Pollutions of all kinds, social inequalities, economic disasters, emergence of new diseases, explosions of violence, forms of intolerance, rooting of selfishness, habitual practice of war have precipitated the future from the extreme positivity of the Judeo-Christian tradition to extreme negativity of a time entrusted to randomness without direction and orientation.

The future from "promise" has become "threat". And this is because if it is true that technoscience progresses in the knowledge of reality, at the same time it throws us into a very different, but perhaps more fearful, form of ignorance, which is what makes us unable to face our unhappiness and the problems that face us. disturbing.

To say it with Spinoza, we live in an era dominated by what the philosopher called the "sad passions", where the reference was not to pain or tears, but to impotence, disintegration and lack of meaning, which make current crisis something different from the others to which the West has been able to adapt, because it is a crisis of the very foundations of our civilization.

Certainly no one goes to a psychological counseling center for a teenager beginning: "Good morning doctor, I suffer a lot because of the historical crisis we are going through''.

On the other hand, the consultants are urged daily by parents and teachers who no longer know how to cope with the indolence of their children or their pupils, the demotivation processes that isolate them in their rooms to stun the ears of music, the escalation of the violence, to the dizziness of the joints that alternate hours of ignorance.

How are all these symptoms attributable to the "historical crisis"? The lack of a future as a promise stops desire in the absolute present.

Better to feel good and gratify today if tomorrow is without perspective. This means that in the adolescent that natural transition from narcissistic libido (which invests in self-love) to object libido (which invests in others and in the world) no longer occurs.

In the absence of this passage, adolescents must be pushed to study with utilitarian motivations, setting up an education aimed at survival, where it is implicit that "you save yourself", with the consequent weakening of emotional, sentimental and social ties.

The lack of a future as a promise does not give parents and teachers the authority to point the way. A "contractual" relationship then takes place between teenagers and adults, where parents and teachers feel continually obliged to justify their choices towards the young person, who accepts or does not accept what is proposed to him in an egalitarian relationship.

But the relationship between young people and adults is not symmetrical, and treating the teenager as his own equals not containing him, and above all leaving him alone in the face of his own drives and the anxiety that derives from it.

When the symptoms of discomfort become evident, the attitude of parents and teachers oscillates between hard coercion (which can make sense when the promises of the future are guaranteed) and commercial seduction.

Except that even the young people of today must do their Oedipus, that is, they must explore their power, experience the limits of society, face all the typical functions of the rites of passage of adolescence, including symbolically killing the authority, the father.

And since this process cannot take place in the family where, due to the contractual relationships between fathers and children, the authority no longer exists, young people end up doing their Oedipus with the police, unleashing in the neighborhood, in the stadium, in the city, in society the violence contained in the family.

These are two examples of the many that the authors of the book illustrate to show the link between the historical passage of the future as a promise to the future as a threat and the logical psycho (pathological) manifestations of the uneasiness of young people who can no longer perceive the social integration, the acquisition of learning, investment in projects, as something connected to their deep desire, which is then the desire to desire life.

Add to this that sad passions and fatalism do not lack a certain charm, and it is easy to be seduced by the song of the sirens of despair, to savor the expectation of the worst, to let yourself be enveloped by the apocalyptic night which, from the nuclear to the terrorist threat , falls like a dark sky over all of us.

But it is also true that sad passions are a construction, a way of interpreting reality, not reality itself, which still retains resources if only we do not let ourselves be ensnared by that dominant signifier that today is insecurity.

Certainly our age unmasks the illusion of modernity which made man believe that he could change everything according to his will.

It is not so.

But the insecurity that derives from it must not lead our society to adhere massively to a paranoid discourse, in which we talk about nothing but the need to protect and survive, because then we get to the point that society she feels free from principles and prohibitions, and then barbarism is upon us.

If the radical eradication of insecurity still belongs to the modernist utopia of human omnipotence, the way forward is another, namely that of building emotional and solidarity ties, capable of pushing people out of isolation into which society tends to enclose them, in the name of individualistic ideals which, starting from America, are spreading fearfully even among us.