Sep 4, 2022
Mediterranean humanism. Territory, participation, and care.
Twenty-first-century humanism is often associated with a radical transition. A humanism that is increasingly hyper-connected, a humanism aimed at progress, a humanism increasingly able to contaminate itself with innovation and the digital. A trans-humanism or post-humanism thatrisks, if unmoderated, weakening and suffocating what makes the sense of humanity unique.
From the words we speak, too often used to divide rather than unite, to complain rather than appreciate, to deceive rather than reveal truth.
From the lives we lead, distracted and hectic, dangerously fraying the threads of the social and human fabric.
From the choices we make, superficial and too often individual-centric, that detach us from those ancestral and natural rhythms that instead remind us how incredibly interconnected everything is.
In order to break that vicious cycle of collective degradation, which reverberates in the human dimension as much as in the economic and social dimension, we need to rediscover the path of presence, the “here and now,” a path that leads us to experience and enjoy deeply (even before sharing) places, people, relationships, territory, and food. We must re-educate ourselves to look for and see the beauty that is present in every corner of the world, but increasingly hidden from our eyes. The beauty of simple gestures, such as a caress or a hug, the beauty of a sunrise or a sunset, the beauty of thoughtful and kind words, all fundamental ingredients for integral regeneration.
Inland Italy, with its immense artistic, landscape, food and wine and cultural heritage, is an immense resource if only we would choose to explore and get to know, rather than abandon, those many small villages that enliven the village with their rituals, knowledge, and traditions. What if we decided to rediscover, not forget, our roots and the essential values of the way of life that belongs to us, the Mediterranean way of life, which is now a World Heritage Site. What if we reawakened admiration for art understood in its broadest sense, as care and ability to ennoble the beauty that surrounds us.
This certainly includes poetry, an art form that in its most ancient meaning — poiein, to make — is capable of speaking directly to people’s hearts, of moving (both internally and externally), to the point of being conceived as a powerful tool for reuniting individuals, communities and territories. And it is precisely in territories such as Cilento, starting from integral ecological regeneration laboratories such as the Paideia Campus in Pollica, that the generative power of beauty can be experienced by measuring daily, and in every relationship.
A constant experimentation that also this year involved the poet and paesologist, Franco Arminio in a special performance at the Velia Archaeological Park. In a place that has millenary roots, capable of releasing a powerful energy, under the same starry sky that in the past inspired the origins of Western philosophical thought, Arminio’s voice was able to create a magical alchemy. The community was carried away by the contemporary nature of Livio and Michele’s music and words, and then captivated by his poetry, a true exploration of unease, love, gratitude, essential values and sacredness. A poem almost whispered in the moonlight, capable of capturing the attention and care for “Mediterranean living” in all its aspects: colors, flavors and moments, including evening and night ones and capable of showing us the unusual side of places, thus enhancing their potential by making them unique.
If the evening at the Archaeological Park of Velia, promoted by the Campania Region and Scabec in the schedule of Campania by Night events, was intended to make the vast public rediscover the territory’s Unesco World Heritage Sites and Mediterranean dormant beauties even in the evening hours; then the Municipality (and the community of Pollica) with the Future Food Institute and Legambiente, instead hosted two intimate, reflective, acoustic moments, sitting in the sand, accompanied by the rhythm of the waves of the sea breaking on the shoreline, late at night and at the first light of dawn; two simple and essential moments, because as Franco Arminio says “in my poetic pharmacy we are cured by words and looks.”
“The world is tender and clean
at five in the morning,
Little mute saints stand
In the treetops,
the rising sun reveals
that every face
Is moving,
in the voice of the speaker returns
the plumage of birds
That are no longer there.
The sea is lightly stretched
on the back, the land
Is an orange on a white tablecloth.
One must withdraw immediately
from actuality, the world after eight o’clock in the morning kills the tiny butterflies that give light to blood,
hangs from its ribs
the imperial boredom of commerce,
the fatuous drudgery of cunning
and gains.”
- Franco Arminio
This is precisely what we need most today, for the world and for our communities: to start from a regeneration of daily life, to cultivate those small virtues mentioned in Carlo Ossola’s “Breviary of Civilization,” such as calmness, thoughtfulness, kindness or urbanity, and that beauty of the dawn that sweeps over you, the purity of the air you breathe, to return to the essential values we have inherited from the Mediterranean style in order to restore communities, the environment and territories, to build countries where collective well-being starts from processes of awareness creation and confidence gyms.
We need to be together with all those farmers, fishermen, grandmothers and grandfathers, young people, poets, artists, entrepreneurs who invest in quality instead of quantity, in care that drives development, and in “restanza.”
Living Mediterranean, for us, is also this: building the foundations and giving body to a vision that aims at 2050 starting from Pollica; a village, a community, a far-sighted administration, a territory that become a gymnasium where we can train in a new kind of sociality, a laboratory of integral ecological regeneration that necessarily requires a participatory effort in the political, environmental, human, social, cultural and economic spheres and in which concrete actions are measurable through the positive impacts generated on ecosystems, communities and the local economy.
Cilento is a unique place where not only has this modus vivendi been recognized and experienced, becoming a World Heritage Site, but where the ancient and the traditional constantly collide with openness to the new. It is necessary to bring to the surface the immense potential of this new Mediterranean humanism, so that the current century can truly be a crucial moment for the regeneration of the “Mere Nostrum,” of Italy and Cilento.
“Pollica 2050 — Mediterranean Living” is a strategic vision that focuses on the Mediterranean Diet as a framework of Integral Ecological Regeneration to enhance dormant resources and build a model of inclusive prosperity to foster an ecosystem that is capable of regenerating itself for future sustainability. The initiative is led by the Mayor of the Municipality of Pollica (Cilento, Italy), Stefano Pisani, and co-designed through a long-term collaboration with the impact-driven entrepreneur Sara Roversi and her global social enterprise, the Future Food Institute.
The Future Food Institute is an international ecosystem that believes climate change is at the end of your fork. By harnessing the power of its global ecosystem of partners, innovators, researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs, FFI aims to sustainably improve life on Earth through transformation of global food systems.
FFI catalyzes progress towards the UN Agenda 2030 of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by training the next generation of changemakers, empowering communities, and engaging government and industry in actionable impact-driven innovation grounded in integral ecological regeneration.
Learn more at futurefoodinsitute.org, join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Or attend a program through the Future Food Academy!
