Fester said:
As a thorough "mezcla" I can tell you that latin people tend to look their sins in the face. Latin people watch the bull get slaughtered and appreciate the skill of the matador. Northern Europeans give money to animal rights before stopping of at Macdonalds for a hamburger. Southern Europeans investigate doping through police and are zealous in their anti-doping approach. Not so much in the north. (A) You get where I'm going?
(B) Human beings are basically hideous/beautiful wherever they come from.
(A) That the Northern Europeans are merely more hypocritical?
(B) But of course! Though mine was not meant to be construed as a negative critique of Latinaity. For Heavan's sake! I prefer the Mediterranean people.
However if Southern Europeans investigate doping through the police force, well I can honestly speak only for Italians, which of course is a predominately Catholic country, it is because they have the mafia racket working within it: the Neapolitan cammora, the Calabrian 'ndrangeda and Cosa Nostra in Sicily. And this is connected to a long history of a society that still very much functions within the ancient Mediterranean client/patron system and where
familismo happens as a result. For this reason Italy is a more police driven state, even if, in reality, the culture is less rigorous and "severe" than what one usually finds in the north. It's just one of those paradoxes, like those you have mentioned, that doesn't need further explanation beyond simple acknowledgement.
In Catholic society, moreover, one tends to look at sin in terms of the possibility of divine redemption. By contrast in the Northern European (and American) protestant cultures, the emphasis is on its punishment. This is why a Berlusconi can exist in a place like Italy, but not Germany, England or the US. In a country such as Italy where even the priests have "always" had sex, how can we be too critical of our prime minister? That sort of thing. It's also why, unless you commit murder (practically of course), it's very difficult for the courts to put you in prison.
Whereas from the Italian viewpoint, traditional wasp and southern evangelical Americana is puritanical. American tourists friendly and welcomed, but so
candidi. My American students always point out how the young Italians are always kissing and hugging each other on the streets, and how that sort of public display of affection is frowned upon in the US, because it makes people feel unconfortable when it doesn't downright scandalize them. Whereas Italian men (not homosexuals) often walk arm and arm in public view. And by the way, perhaps this explains why Italy's Catholic clergy, in a society that is generally less prohibitive in sexual matters, has not witnessed the horrible child abuse scandals nearly to the degree that has come to light in places like the US, Ireland and Germany (either that or omertà explains it, but in this case I really doubt it.). But I digress.
While such generalizations can, of course, only go so far, their is a critical validity in the sociological sense to them as I have experienced over the years.
But I was, in any case, not trying to be judgmental in the negative or positive senses. If anything I was trying to be an objective observer of experience, in this case in regards to how the "sin" of doping is percieved in the Mediterranean environment. I think Goethe, quoting some XVIII Neapolitan century Catholic priest, put it most aptly (if we can here take Naples to metaphorically mean Italy in the wider sense): "Naples is a paradise inhabited by devils."