Unsupervised Liberty

(An English version of my Podcast)

Good morning from Gianluca Grossi. It is Sunday, 22 March 2026, and the things one reads these days are, frankly, remarkable.

All to the good, I should add at once, as someone who believes in unrestricted freedom of opinion and expression. Only that sort of freedom allows us to see what is actually going on inside people’s heads. Even journalists’ heads. Even the heads of those who believe liberty should apply in full to themselves and to those who think as they do, while prescribing a short leash and a muzzle whenever freedom is claimed by others — or, more generally, by anyone who happens to disagree.

The partisans of this supervised liberty are usually responsible for the dreariest ideas in circulation. No great creative effort is required to produce them. Which is convenient, because such ideas rarely leave their authors isolated. On the contrary, they attract a solid crowd.

They are disciples of the photocopy principle: not one of their thoughts fails to resemble somebody else’s.

A particularly fine expression of this atmosphere of crowded mediocrity appeared in a passage from an article by Ivo Mijnssen in Saturday’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

The headline was promising enough: Die grosse Unruhe — The Great Unease. Naturally, I read it at once. I have just published a novel entitled A Negligible Unease, and I was curious — keenly curious — to discover Ivo’s views on the matter.

Then I came upon a sentence so extraordinary that I felt compelled to lay a small offering on the altar of unrestricted free speech. Here it is, translated from the German: “Instead of shuddering at the misery shown on our phones, we should put our unease at the service of the community. That requires a greater effort. Why does the Swiss army not offer self-defence courses to the public in order to channel this feeling of insecurity?”

I read it again. Then again. Then once more. I had to rule out the possibility that it was a joke — some elaborate leg-pull.

It was no joke.

Its author wrote it in all seriousness, with the conviction of a missionary. The Swiss army, in his view, ought to offer self-defence classes to civilians in order to contain this general sense of insecurity. In other words, to manage the unease spread so lavishly across the article’s headline.

I laughed, I admit it. Laughed partly in despair. But I quickly recovered, reminding myself that I am prepared to defend to the last our dear Ivo’s right to continue sharing his aspirations in the pages of the NZZ.

That said, his proposed remedy for Swiss unease reveals a spectacular failure to understand the human being.

Unease has accompanied humanity ever since human beings began reflecting on what it means to be in the world, and on the meaning of their own actions within it.

To suggest — without the faintest trace of irony — that the Swiss army should offer urban self-defence courses is a symptom of intellectual estrangement from the very subject of “the human being”. It is hard to imagine a more chilling estrangement than that.

Incidentally, it is merely the latest product of the NZZ newsroom’s desk-bound, loafer-wearing militarism. But that is another story. I merely wonder, before closing the parenthesis, what the editors in Zurich would actually do if a real conflict broke out. I have a fair idea.

But back to unease. Its source is plain enough today, as it has always been whenever it has surfaced in the past. People struggle to make sense of the direction the world has taken. At the same time, many hesitate to voice their opinions for fear of being stoned — metaphorically, of course — by the censors of the official version.

I have discussed that official version on many occasions, and anyone familiar with my work knows the argument well enough. In brief, it works like this: the official account of the world relies on the same categories over and over again, increasingly stale ones whose purpose is to simplify reality in the most brutal fashion. Good lives on this side, evil on that one. These are the good people — oddly enough, always the same good people, always us — and those are the bad ones.

One could put it more elegantly. But that is the gist.

You can see, dear listeners, how this little template deprives us of the adventure of thought, and therefore of knowledge itself. Were we to embark on that adventure, it would lead us — indeed, it does lead us — to far more interesting discoveries.

Unease is inseparable from human nature and from our presence on this Earth. Art, literature, poetry and music have grappled with it from an infinity of perspectives.

Every time somebody has decided to confront it by reaching for a rifle, the result has been disastrous. Catastrophic, in fact.

The old NZZ might care to remember that. Its archives should provide ample access to the historical chapters in question.

Unease asks to be listened to. It asks to speak freely, without restraints and without gags. It is not a pathology. It is an alarm bell, a signal.

It tells us, first of all, that we are alive — and that, being alive, we are able to observe what human beings are capable of. Which also means observing what we ourselves are capable of, or would be capable of, given the necessary circumstances.

The turn the world has taken is not the result of an invasion by little creatures with twenty eyes, twelve arms and eight heads arriving from another planet. It is the result of human action. It is what we do.

Unease demands to be met with the fullest intellectual freedom, and with the courage to say that what lies before our eyes, however terrible and harrowing, is something human beings know perfectly well how to produce. We know how to do what is happening in the world — from Iran to Ukraine to Darfur, and beyond.

The unease that grips us carries within it a stunned question: why do we do it?

That question opens the abyss.

Only the less timid dare to look into it.

They seek answers other than the usual reheated gruel, seasoned with the standard ingredients, from sentimental moralism to militarism.

And once we have finally shaken off laziness, the photocopy principle and hypocrisy, we may perhaps be in a position to confront the other immense question as well: how do we stop?

To hand the Swiss army the task of curing our unease and our sense of insecurity deserves the definition once given by Fantozzi to a celebrated film: it is a monumental load of rubbish.

And yet I would do everything to ensure that the journalist at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung remains free to go on expressing his convictions, indefinitely if he wishes.

Without imagining, for a moment, that the NZZ would do the same for me.

Until next time.

(gianluca grossi)