The Big Formula – and a “look between the windows”  – or a Pre-Christmas Story

I walked back from the library where I had been working during the day – a few days before Christmas 2014 – elaborating a formula that makes it possible to formulate (of course, no formula can calculate) schemes of (dis-)integration of societies – I left my scooter near to the office, so I have to walk down the Via dei Condotti, one of the most luxurious shopping malls in Rome, at this time of the year probably also one of the busiest places in town although many are here just for window shopping, the displays full of surprises showing that the world is a stage, and lost its sense.

It is not often that one sees it, that I see it (may be that I am not often enough walking through the city): a more or less young man, a man in “his best years”, obviously foreigner, migrant, being dragged by another man – “private security” is written on his jacket. That he has to look after his bike while dragging the other along the street does not make things better. A few people turn around … – few people turn around, watching the scene. – What could one do, what we see is most likely legal, according to the letters of the law.

A few meter further: one policeman, one policewomen, their car standing in the way, but still leaving enough space for a large Merc to pass and turn from one of the side streets into the narrow mall; enough space for the not smaller BMW that follows. I am not aware of a sign that limits traffic here but even of their would be –

Wound for a wound, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth

Leviticus 24:20

But here it about something else:

sign for a sign

And of course it is telling – it is also part of the formula on which I had been working – that we find this division of labour between private security service and police, executing sovereign tasks.

Via dei Condotti, one of the most luxurious shopping malls in Rome, at this time of the year probably also one of the busiest places in town although many are here just for getting absorbed by the window dressing of our societies.

Yes, plural as it is only by accident that I see it here; there are so many other places like it, and many more…