The human mind is keen on simplifying reality in order to grasp it more easily. The best way to do so is to portray reality as made of dichotomies (i.e. of two opposing entities with opposing features).
   This is not a bad strategy if we are fully aware of the limitations intrinsic to this approach. The limitations concern:
   - the practical appropriateness. The use of dichotomies is appropriate only when reality itself is of a very simple nature and can be represented by the use of few simple categories.
   - the historical suitability. Dichotomies that are quite suitable for a certain period can become, later on, totally inadequate because the situation has totally changed, making their use pretty meaningless if not farcical.
   This is, quite likely, the case for the political and cultural dichotomy Left-Right.

   The left-right divide is one of the many (obtrusive and obsolete) remnants of the time of the French Revolution of 1789. When the French Estates General convened, in order to facilitate the counting of votes concerning the opportunity of a royal veto, the nobility (favouring the veto) regrouped on the right of the Speaker while the Third Estate (opposing the veto) took place on the left. As usual, the winners were those in the centre, proposing the compromise of upholding the veto for two more years.
   From that time and from such humble beginning (i.e. the counting of votes), the left-right divide has stuck in politics as a quick terminological way for differentiating conservative and reactionaries on one side (right) and progressive and revolutionaries on the other (left).

   The success of this pair of terms was due also to the existence, in some European societies (e.g. France during the XIX century) of clashes between ideas and groups (e.g. Monarchists vs. Republicans) in which one side represented (or was made to represent) tradition and conservation (the past) while the other personified innovation and progress (the future).
   Besides this contrast, concerning the institutional form of the state, a new contraposition was making its mark on the scene, namely that of bourgeoisie or industrial entrepreneurs vs. proletariat or manual workers. In the political arena, the interests of these two social groups were represented by parties that defined themselves as of the right or of the left from the position of the seats of their members elected to the Parliament. In this updated version, the right would stress the values of freedom and nation while the left would champion those of equality and internationalism.

   Throughout the XX century, the use of the left-right categories, with these contrasting qualifications, that is
   - freedom vs. equality
   - nationalism vs. internationalism
has proved untenable in reality.
   In fact, the pretended freedom of the right could very well include state totalitarianism and, in economic matters, its alleged laissez-faire could easily accommodate the most stringent protectionism.
   As for the left, egalitarianism was branded by Stalin as a "petty-bourgeois deviation" and so a sharp inequality of pay became, in the very land of "real socialism," a fundamental aspect of working life.

   With regard to the nationalism-internationalism contrast, this was just a mythical invention. During the first half of the XX century almost everybody engaged in politics was a nationalist; the mask of vaunted internationalism eventually fell when most socialist parties of Europe embraced war and nationalistic policies, and the communist parties started theorizing socialism in one country and promoting national versions of communism.

   It is then clear from what has been said so far that the left-right divide is, especially now, only a sort of political game of role-playing, devoid of serious and consistent substance.
   As a matter of principle and as far as the most important aspects of life are concerned, the characterization left-right does not mean anything. This is especially true for attitudes and actions towards nature and freedom; neither freedom nor nature has any left or right qualification.
   Furthermore, real current processes and social actors (e.g. globalization, migrations, non governmental organizations, etc.) cannot be confined/dealt within the straitjacket of the right-left divide.
   Finally, what is most striking in all this nonsense of right and left, is the fact that on many aspects of contemporary life, people and politicians who profess to be on opposite sides present the same (fake) remedies, using the same (fallacious) arguments with even the same (phony) words. Sometimes, some of them change their political allegiances, put another mask, and the game (or joke) goes on as usual.

   All this was and is made possible by a state of affairs in which it is permitted to some figures (called people's representatives) to convene in a room (called parliament) and it is given them the authorization of meddling in the lives of everybody and taking decisions binding for everybody. This leads to the formation of two competing factions, vying for the electorate's favours, differentiated only by external labels (left and right) but, to a closer and careful examination, indistinguishable in all the rest (values, ideas, projects, actions, etc.) except in their attempt to drain resources towards their own faction.

   As for now, these categories are becoming more and more out of touch with reality; hopefully, quite soon, a point will be reached when the absurdities generated by the use of these categories will be so evident to even the most naive journalist/commentator that these two terms will be suddenly dropped as a dead body.
   We should accelerate this dismissal.

   Left and right are and must remain as simple terms for qualifying physical position or direction. In the political or ethical discourse we need to use terms that produce more precise and robust statements, portraying decisions and actions, that is, what somebody has decided/would decide and what has done/would do with respect to a specific problem.
   In this case, if there are differences between two positions they would be real and not fictitious.
   At that point we could assess decisions and actions on the basis of meaningful essential values and not according to manipulated empty words.
   In this way alienation will stop and real decisions and actions with associated real responsibilities and duties will be the substance of everybody's life.

   Ortega y Gasset, already in 1937, in his Prologue to "La rebelión de las masas," gave one of the best clarifications of what actually means to accept the left and right categorization: "Ser de la izquierda es, como ser de la derecha, una de las infinitas maneras que el hombre puede elegir para ser un imbécil: ambas, en efecto, son formas de la hemiplejia moral." ("To be of the Left or to be of the Right is to choose one of the many ways available to people for being an idiot; both are, actually, forms of moral paralysis").