I'm sitting here in my apartment, wheelchair positioned by the window where the autumn light filters through. On my laptop, X Factor plays on mute. I can't hear the dramatic music swells or the judges' rehearsed reactions, but I don't need to. The formula's transparent: manufactured drama, instant gratification, talent reduced to entertainment commodity. Meanwhile, through my headphones, Fabrizio De André's "Disamistade" plays. The contrast isn't just striking — it's devastating.
Let me throw three ideas at you that people often believe: First, that conflict and feuds are somehow natural expressions of human territory, that we're just wired for tribal warfare. Second, that institutions like the church should remain neutral observers, that taking sides compromises their authority. Third, that suffering gives life meaning, that without pain we'd have nothing to write songs about.
I'm here to tell you these are comfortable lies we tell ourselves to avoid harder truths.
Here's the real story, told through one song, with one devastating observation: "e per tutti il dolore degli altri è dolore a metà" — for everyone, the pain of others is half pain . That single line dismantles everything. Not a theory. Not a philosophy. Just five Italian words that capture why we can scroll past suffering, why we can turn feuds into entertainment, why X Factor feels empty.
The Geography of Hatred
"Disamistade" — the Sardinian word for feud — opens with a question that still echoes: "Che ci fanno queste anime davanti alla chiesa?" What are these souls doing in front of the church?
I can almost smell the stone of that church entrance, feel the Mediterranean sun beating down on divided families. De André places us in a confined space where "la corsa del tempo spariglia destini e fortune" — time's race shuffles destinies and fortunes . This isn't abstract. When you're forced to share limited space with someone you've wronged or who's wronged you, every encounter becomes magnified.
The feud becomes a microscope. In larger societies, we can avoid our enemies. We can curate our feeds, block users, change neighborhoods. But in that Sardinian village De André describes, there's nowhere to hide. The violence isn't just physical. It's in "un'assenza apparecchiata per cena" — an absence set for dinner .
Can you hear the clatter of plates being set for someone who'll never come home?
The Arithmetic of Empathy
Here's where De André gets brutal. He writes that these two families stand "disarmate di sangue" — disarmed of blood . Think about that phrase. They've killed so many of each other's members that they're running out of targets. The feud has consumed itself.
But here's the twist: the community watches this carnage and feels it only halfway. The pain of others registers at fifty percent capacity . This isn't sociopathy. It's something more insidious — it's the mathematics of tribal belonging. Your tribe's suffering counts as full pain. The other tribe's? That's just background noise.
Now think about X Factor. Think about how we watch contestants' dreams shatter in real-time, how we consume their vulnerability as entertainment. We feel it halfway, if that. The show's producers know this. They're banking on it. They've industrialized that same dynamic De André was condemning.
The song continues: "Si accontenta di cause leggere la guerra del cuore" — the war of the heart settles for light causes . A dog killed by a passing shadow. Brief agonies on the road home. These aren't grand injustices. They're excuses, pretexts for violence that was always waiting to happen anyway.
The Women Who Embroider Mourning
There's a verse that makes my hands tighten on my wheelchair's armrests every time: "Che ci fanno queste figlie a ricamare a cucire queste macchie di lutto rinunciate all'amore" .
What are these daughters doing, embroidering and sewing these mourning stains, having renounced love?
The texture of black fabric. The repetitive motion of needle through cloth. These women prepare for deaths th at haven't happened yet but inevitably will. They've given up on love because love requires a future, and feuds devour futures. They're caught in what critic Doriano Fasoli calls the "paradox of killing the last assassin" — justice becomes impossible because every act of revenge creates a new legitimate target .
The song describes "una speranza smarrita" — a lost hope — hidden among them . Even the enemy wants to return it. There's a moment of hands reaching toward hands, a recognition that "dev'esserci un modo di vivere senza dolore" — there must be a way to live without pain .
But it's an illusion. Just "un riposo del vento" — a rest in the wind . The breeze pauses, and for a second, you think the storm has passed. Then it returns, stronger.
What Authority Does (and Doesn't Do)
De André saves his sharpest criticism for institutions. These souls gather in front of the church seeking comfort, but the church remains "chiusa nel suo immobilismo" — closed in its immobility . The institution that should bridge divides instead watches from the sidelines.
And the civil authority? "E alla parte che manca si dedica l'autorità" — and to the missing part, authority dedicates itself . They don't prevent the violence. They don't heal the wounds. They arrive after, documenting what's absent, judging "frettolosamente in base a testimonianze equivoche" — hastily based on equivocal testimonies .
Innocents get penalized. They serve unjust sentences. Then they emerge as "i nuovi luttuosi protagonisti della carneficina" — the new mournful protagonists of the carnage . The system doesn't break the cycle. It feeds it.
Now toggle back to X Factor on that screen. Different context, sure, but watch the pattern: Authority figures (judges) positioning themselves as arbiters of talent. Contestants performing not for art but for approval. A system that rewards conformity while pretending to celebrate uniqueness. And when someone's eliminated, when their dream dies on stage, where's the support? Where's the healing?
There's none. Just "better luck next time" and cue the next contestant.
The Miniature and the Mirror
Here's what hit me hardest in researching this piece: Fasoli's observation that the small Sardinian village "non rappresenta che il vetrino, la miniatura di più popolose società" — represents nothing but the microscope slide, the miniature of more populous societies .
That village is us. Those feuding families are nations, political parties, online tribes. The confined space that breeds envy and violence? That's social media, where everyone's forced into proximity, where time accelerates and comparisons become inescapable.
De André understood that "la disamistade nasce dal desiderio irrealizzabile di fermare il tempo" — the feud is born from the unrealizable desire to stop time . We want to freeze everything at the moment we were ahead, when we were winning, when our tribe was on top. But time refuses to stop. It keeps shuffling destinies and fortunes.
The feud is our rage against that truth.
What X Factor Can't Teach You
I keep X Factor playing on mute because I need the contrast. I need to see what happens when we take human aspiration and package it for consumption. When we reduce music — this profound human expression of meaning — to a competition format with ad breaks.
X Factor promises transformation. So does "Disamistade," but honestly. The show says: "You could be a star." The song says: "You're trapped in cycles of violence and half-felt empathy, and the institutions you trust won't save you, and this miniature hell is actually a mirror of larger hells, and there might be no escape."
Which one's more useful? Which one actually prepares you for the world?
De André's genius wasn't optimism. It was clarity. He looked at that Sardinian feud and saw everything: our capacity for sustained hatred, our institutional failures, our inability to feel others' pain fully, our desperation for connection even as we sharpen knives.
And he made it beautiful. Not beautiful like "pretty" — beautiful like "true."
The Aha Moment (Mine, Anyway)
I've been writing about science and culture for years through Free Astroscience, always trying to make complex ideas accessible. But sitting with "Disamistade" today, watching X Factor's hollow spectacle continue, I realized something.
We don't lack information. We lack permission to feel fully.
That's what De André gives us. Permission to acknowledge that the pain of others often registers at half-intensity. Permission to admit that feuds start over "cause leggere" — light causes — not grand principles. Permission to see that hope can be "smarrita" — lost — and that recognizing its absence is the first step toward maybe, possibly finding it again.
X Factor wants you to believe talent is rare, that stars are made, that success is a competition. It's entertainment built on scarcity and judgment. "Disamistade" suggests something harder but truer: We're all trapped in variations of that village square, all embroidering mourning clothes for deaths that haven't happened yet, all waiting for institutions to save us while they document our absences.
The difference? De André doesn't promise easy answers. He promises witness. He says, "I see you, I see us, I see how this works." And somehow, that's more comforting than any judge's golden buzzer.
Living Without Pain (or At Least Trying)
The song asks its central question near the end: "che dev'esserci un modo di vivere senza dolore" — there must be a way to live without pain .
Must there?
I don't know. From my wheelchair, from my Bologna window, from my position as someone who's experienced physical limitation and social marginalization, I genuinely don't know if pain-free living is possible. But I know this: De André's song does something more valuable than promise absence of pain. It offers presence of understanding.
When you listen to "Disamistade" — really listen, not as background music but as a complete thought — you're not being entertained. You're being recognized. Someone's saying: "I know the feuds feel permanent. I know institutions fail. I know hope gets lost. I know you're tired."
That's the opposite of X Factor's message, which is essentially: "Keep performing, keep competing, keep believing your worth depends on judges' approval, keep mistaking visibility for value."
De André from 1996 understood social media dynamics better than most digital natives do today. He saw how confined spaces breed comparison, how comparison breeds envy, how envy breeds violence — symbolic and literal. He saw how "time's race shuffles destinies" and how we rage against the shuffle by creating feuds, by dividing into tribes, by cutting others' pain in half so we can bear our own.
What I'm Taking From This
I started this article because the contrast bothered me: profound art versus manufactured drama. But I'm ending it realizing they're not opposite points on a spectrum. They're different universes entirely.
One universe says: "Reduce yourself to marketability. Make your talent digestible. Win approval." The other says: "Life is complicated, institutions fail, we hurt each other, hope gets lost, but we can at least be honest about it."
I know which universe I'm choosing. I know which one FreeAstroScience exists to explore — the one where we take complex truths and make them accessible without making them simple, where we respect your intelligence enough to say hard things clearly.
De André's "Disamistade" isn't an easy listen. It won't make you feel better. But it might make you feel more, which is different and possibly more valuable. It's a song that refuses to let you hide in comfortable narratives about human nature, about conflict, about institutions, about hope.
And right now, as I finally close X Factor and let "Disamistade" play at full volume, I'm grateful for artists who don't give us what we want but what we need. Who look at feuding families in a village square and see all of human society. Who write about half-felt pain and lost hope and still somehow create beauty from the wreckage.
That's the kind of talent show I want to watch. The one where someone's brave enough to say: This is what we are. Now what are we going to do about it?
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