When Stories Become Lessons

A few days ago, while scrolling through the usual stream of news articles, opinion pieces, and social media debates, I found myself watching yet another political argument unfold in real time. It was one of those controversies that seem to emerge almost automatically, gain momentum through reactions and counter-reactions, dominate conversations for a few days, and then quietly disappear as soon as the next topic takes over.

This particular debate revolved around public funding for two potential film productions. One was a movie dedicated to Task Force 45, the Italian Special Forces unit whose first commander was General Roberto Vannacci. The other was a documentary about Giulio Regeni, the young Italian researcher who was abducted and murdered in Egypt in 2016.

As expected, it did not take long for the discussion to split into opposing camps. Some viewed the film about Task Force 45 as a legitimate recognition of professionals who operated in extraordinarily demanding environments. Others believed that Regeni's story represented a chapter of recent history that deserved greater attention and deeper examination.

What I found myself struggling to understand, however, was why a society should feel compelled to choose between one story and another.

A story about Task Force 45 can teach us something. A story about Giulio Regeni can teach us something. A story about Somalia, a police operation, an industrial accident, or a humanitarian crisis can teach us something. Even stories that make us uncomfortable, challenge our assumptions, or contradict our beliefs can help us understand the world a little better.

To me, the value of a story has never been determined by its political usefulness. Its value lies in its ability to generate understanding.

And that was the aspect of the debate that stayed with me long after the political arguments had faded into the background. What caught my attention was not the funding itself, nor the predictable clash between ideological positions. It was the ease with which we manage to transform subjects related to security, risk, institutions, and crisis management into political battlegrounds while simultaneously losing sight of what those stories might actually teach us.

Beyond the Controversy

At first glance, the stories of Giulio Regeni and Task Force 45 appear to belong to entirely different worlds.

One involves a young academic researcher. The other involves highly trained professionals operating in some of the most demanding environments on Earth. One concerns a civilian. The other concerns people whose profession revolves around understanding, managing, and confronting risk. One story is remembered because of a tragedy. The other has become part of a debate about how we choose to represent those who operate in the security field.

Yet the more I reflected on these apparent differences, the more I realised that both stories share something remarkably similar.

Both enter public awareness only after something extraordinary has happened.

In Regeni's case, it was a tragedy that shocked public opinion and generated years of diplomatic, legal, and political discussion. In the case of Task Force 45, it is a controversy about how certain professions should be portrayed and remembered. In both situations, however, the public is exposed almost exclusively to the final chapter of the story, while everything that came before often remains invisible.

We discuss Regeni's death, but much less attention is devoted to what it means to prepare someone to work in an environment characterized by political instability, extensive state control, and risks that may not be immediately obvious to an outsider. We discuss Task Force 45, but much less attention is devoted to the preparation, responsibilities, lessons learned, and accumulated expertise that accompany professionals who operate in high-risk environments.

In both cases, we focus on the outcome. We focus on the event that captures public attention. We focus on the consequence. Much more rarely do we focus on the process that led there.

And it is precisely within that gap that I believe the real issue can be found.

When Security Becomes News

Following Giulio Regeni's death, public discussion understandably focused on intelligence services, diplomatic relations, human rights, and political accountability. Those conversations were legitimate, necessary, and in many ways unavoidable.

What received far less attention was a simpler question that may be just as important.

What kind of preparation should someone receive before being sent abroad to conduct research, study, work, or field activities in an environment marked by political tension, social instability, government control, or elevated levels of risk?

The same question came back to mind some time ago when I read reports about Italian students who found themselves indirectly affected by unrest following elections in Tanzania. The situations are obviously not comparable in terms of severity or consequences, yet the pattern of discussion felt strangely familiar.

Public attention immediately concentrated on the emergency itself. Reassurances were issued. Updates were provided. Statements explained that the situation was under control and that everyone was safe. What received far less attention was everything that had happened before departure.

What information had been provided?

What scenarios had been considered?

What risks had been assessed?

What level of preparation had been expected from those entering that environment?

These are not political questions. They are not accusations. They are simply the kind of questions that should be considered normal whenever people are sent into unfamiliar and potentially complex environments.

Too often, however, our interest in security begins only when security appears to have failed.

Yet effective security rarely begins during an emergency. It exists long before a crisis emerges. It exists before a problem develops and before a risk becomes a headline. It is found in preparation, awareness, planning, training, and the countless decisions that are made before anything goes wrong.

For years, organizations have had access to standards, methodologies, procedures, and training programs designed specifically to prepare people for operating in complex environments. Despite this, preparation is still frequently treated as an optional enhancement rather than a necessary requirement. We have gradually created systems in which demonstrating the existence of a procedure sometimes appears more important than determining whether people are genuinely prepared to deal with the situations those procedures were designed to address.

Policies exist. Guidelines exist. Certifications exist.

Reality, however, has a habit of ignoring paperwork.

The Professions We Are Making Invisible

At the same time that we spend less and less time discussing the preparation required to deal with risk, we also seem to spend less time talking about the people who have built entire careers around understanding and managing it.

This is a curious contradiction.

Modern societies benefit every day from the work of military personnel, police officers, emergency responders, security professionals, analysts, crisis managers, and countless others whose responsibilities often begin where certainty ends. Their work influences our lives far more than most people realize, yet we rarely stop to consider what they actually do, how they make decisions, what lessons they have learned through experience, or how much of what we take for granted depends on knowledge accumulated over years of practice.

When these stories do emerge, something equally interesting tends to happen.

The professional disappears.

In their place we create characters.

The complexity of a profession is reduced to a narrative that is easier to consume and easier to fit into an existing worldview. The individual becomes a hero, a villain, a victim, or an aggressor. These labels may be useful for political debate, social media discussions, and public controversy, but they rarely help us understand what actually happened, why it happened, or what that experience might teach us.

In the process, something important is lost.

Not just the person.

Not just the profession.

But the lesson.

Invisibility Does Not Eliminate Problems

Perhaps this is the point at which security stops being merely a discussion about protection and becomes something much broader.

A society that stops telling certain stories, stops discussing certain risks, and stops paying attention to certain professions does not remove those realities from the world. Problems do not disappear because they receive less attention. Vulnerabilities do not become less dangerous because they are no longer discussed. Risks do not become less real because they have fallen out of public conversation.

What changes is our ability to understand them.

And once understanding begins to fade, learning tends to disappear with it.

The danger of invisibility is not that it hides reality. Reality has a stubborn habit of continuing to exist regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not. The danger is that invisibility gradually erodes our ability to recognize patterns, identify vulnerabilities, and learn from the experiences of others.

Risks continue to exist even when we choose to ignore them. Mistakes continue to produce consequences long after public attention has moved elsewhere. The world does not become safer simply because a subject is no longer being discussed. It merely becomes harder to understand.

That distinction matters more than many people realize.

Throughout my career in the security field, one lesson has appeared again and again in different forms, different countries, and different contexts. Hiding an error does not create safety. It does not create reassurance. It does not protect anyone. More often than not, it creates larger failures because it interrupts the process through which experience becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes improvement.

The Mistakes We Choose to Forget

Of course, there are situations in which information cannot and should not be publicly disclosed.

Certain operations require confidentiality. Certain procedures must remain protected. Certain capabilities cannot be openly discussed without compromising operational effectiveness or national interests. Every serious professional understands this.

But confidentiality and erasure are not the same thing.

An error that cannot be discussed publicly must still be examined somewhere. It must still be studied, analyzed, debated, and understood by the people responsible for preventing it from happening again. The objective is not to identify someone to blame or to create a public spectacle. The objective is to learn.

That distinction is fundamental.

When organizations stop learning from mistakes, mistakes do not disappear. They simply wait.

They return under different names, in different places, and often in front of people who believe they are facing something entirely new. In reality, many of those challenges have been encountered before. They have been analyzed before. Sometimes they have even been solved before. What has disappeared is not the lesson itself but the collective memory of the experience that produced it.

The result is a cycle in which the same vulnerabilities reappear, the same assumptions go unchallenged, and the same preventable errors continue to generate new consequences.

A Society That Stops Learning

Perhaps this is the invisible thread connecting stories that appear completely unrelated at first glance.

The case of Giulio Regeni.

The Italian students affected by unrest in Tanzania.

Task Force 45.

And countless other events that periodically enter public debate before slowly fading from public memory.

What connects them is not politics.

It is not ideology.

It is not controversy.

What connects them is their ability to teach us something.

Each story contains lessons about risk, preparation, decision-making, responsibility, and the way individuals and organisations respond to uncertainty. Each story offers an opportunity to understand a little more about the environments we operate in and the assumptions we often take for granted.

For that reason, I continue to believe that the real issue is not deciding which stories deserve to be told and which do not.

The real issue is whether we are still capable of using those stories as opportunities to learn.

Because a society that stops discussing its mistakes and stops telling the stories of those who manage risk is not simply losing part of its memory. It is gradually losing part of its ability to learn.

And a society that loses its ability to learn does not eliminate its mistakes.

It merely guarantees that they will return.

Perhaps, then, the question is not which stories deserve to be told.

The question is this:

What mistakes are we condemning ourselves to repeat by choosing not to tell them?