We drove through the outskirts of Naples today... and saw kids on motor scooters do things that OH&S rules in Australia would not even allow in a circus. We are now sitting on the balcony of our apartment in Montepertuso enjoying a spectacular view of houses clinging to the edge of a 1,000 feet drop down to the sea... one decent earth tremor will send dozens of houses into the abyss... and Mt Vesuvius (periodic active volcano) is just 50 klms away. We have seen policemen having a chat... leaning on a car parked in a fashion that breaks every parking rule in the book... with no sign of law enforcement to be seen. We see pedestrians walk into speeding traffic... turning their back on the impending risks... in the hope that the distracted driver will see them and take evasive action.
We are tourists who flit across the landscape without understanding what is really happening. Either Australia is a nanny state that has got it terribly wrong... or Italians are paying a private price for what I see as reckless behaviour. We did see a minor accident while in Rome... a middle-aged man stepped out into traffic and was bowled over by a middle-aged bicyclist. They both got to their feet dusted themselves down and enquired as to each other's welfare... all remarkably calm. Then the pedestrian said something in Italian (we couldn't understand) that must have questioned the marital status of the bicyclist's mother at the time of his birth. The bicyclist flew into a rage... determined to finish off what the accident failed to achieve.
What happened next was very interesting. Without a word being spoken, four unrelated pedestrians quietly stepped between the aggressor and the intended victim... and kept circling to keep them separated. One person in the defensive wall then put his arm around the shoulder of the aggressor... and offered quiet words of wisdom. The bicyclist ranted for another minute or two... then got back on his bike to complete his journey. In Australia, community advice would be to avoid the physical frey... call the police to settle violent disputes... in Italy, the community seems to see it as their role to help those whose frustrations have led them to violence.
To generalise (always dangerous), perhaps Italians have to take more risks... just to get through the day... compared to their Australian counterparts. The community anticipates more accidents... and is willing to become personally involed in resolving issues. It leaves the question regarding Australia and the nanny state... should Australia spend so much resource protecting people from doing stupid things... or should it let the community learn the hard way... through experiencing the pain of stupid mistakes... just saying.
We are at Montepertuso for a week... there is a lot to see. This afternoon, we climbed up the mountain to see the hole in the top. Geologists are stumped to explain its origin... there are only two other instances of mountains having holes in their tops... the other two being in India.
No comments:
Post a Comment