The International Day of Solidarity, celebrated today by the UN, is an occasion to reflect on a striking feature of our societies. On the one hand, they are marked by a worrying weakening of social bonds - as seen in the proliferation of ghettos and the increase in xenophobic and gender-based violence. On the other hand, they are marked by exciting currents of solidarity, which, on the occasion of natural disasters and human tragedies of any kind, move the most heterogeneous people to cross social, political or cultural borders, summoned by the sense of our common humanity, often joined by a deep sense of solidarity with nature.

It is as if in order to become aware of our common nature, to feel it and to develop it fully, we have to do without the institutional frameworks and ordinary bonds that structure our lives; as if the normal family and social relationships were an obstacle and not a channel, a concealment and not a means for the deployment of our solidarity energies; as if the true meeting with the other, which we also feel as true meeting with ourselves, could only take place outside society, and not in the midst of it. 

Could it be that solidarity, strictly speaking, moves on a different plane, prior and more basic to that of ordinary social bonds? Do we perhaps have a reservation of "solidarity energy", which does not manage to express itself in ordinary circumstances? I would like to think not. But, at the same time, the tension between those reactions of extraordinary solidarity and our experience of the fragility of ordinary social bonds calls for some explanation subject .

Since its emergence, sociological theory has been devoted to explaining "paradoxes" of this kind subject. In fact, for Durkheim, the two phenomena are not as disconnected as it might at first appear, but rather an effect structurally linked to the process of modernization: modern societies, highly differentiated by the division of the work, simultaneously favor functional interdependence - we all depend on each other, some professions on others - and the individualization of lifestyles.

While functional interdependence favors the rationalization of behavior, according to the imperative of efficiency, the individualization of lifestyles follows another imperative, typically romantic, as an opportunity to experience "our authentic self", leaving the usual, awakening the spirit of adventure, eventually feeling what we have in common with other human beings, beyond the diversity of roles to which our place in society obliges us.

According to this, the everyday spaces of work, the family, institutionalized relationships, would appear to us as rational, constrictive spaces, where the individual would have no choice but to submit to external norms, and the only expansive spaces, where the self could find itself, that which is singular, would be the spaces of free time. At this point, however, the options may be multiple: from those who find their authentic self by giving themselves to a cause of solidarity, to those who, on the contrary, do so by giving themselves to consumer practices; or perhaps alternatively to one or the other.

What is missing in this analysis, however, is an emphasis on the possibilities of solidarity that ordinary life offers us, insofar as we are moral agents. It is not by chance, in fact, that functional interdependence, which the globalization of Economics and communications has made more transparent, was described by Durkheim himself in terms of "organic solidarity". Certainly, as is clear to all, this functional interdependence does not in itself guarantee an increase in moral solidarity, based on the commitment staff to the other. However, it should be noted that neither does it constitute a refractory place for its development.

Quite the contrary: it may be precisely by confronting the limitations imposed by institutional frameworks that we can best ensure a genuine meeting with the other. For, as Bauman observes, when the contact with the other is established and interrupted at will - we connect or disconnect, as dictated by our impulses, which may otherwise be very noble - the rhythm of the meeting is set by us, and no one can ensure that the other appears on his own, with his own voice, his own rhythm, his own needs and habits, which may differ from our own.

Now then: this discrepancy constitutes the most obvious sample of the otherness of the other, and, for that very reason, the clearest opportunity offered to us to transcend our particularities, and to meet on a higher level, overcoming the level of spectators and becoming interlocutors, on an equal footing. At that moment, and not before, we begin to speak the language of moral solidarity, respectful of differences and, at the same time, conscious of our common humanity.

The internship of this moral solidarity is no longer a structural product: it depends on people with names and surname, committed to the task of recreating safe social bonds and healing alienating social bonds, so that their families and cities become welcoming places for all. It also depends on people like these to ensure that solidarity action beyond our usual circles does not remain a one-off action, but becomes sustainable over time.