Eventually, the Romans minted the coins in the Temple, which is how moneta turned into money via Old French moneie, Middle English monei or moneye2 to the modern word.

With coins we’re in the era of exchange throughout the Roman Empire. By the Middle Ages, the concept of money had become firmly established in European societies. But coins were heavy to transport and difficult to protect from robbers.

Alongside coins, bills of exchange and promissory notes were born to facilitate naval commerce. Also because of the Church, which condemned usury3—the lending of funds at a high interest—though it found ways around it for itself.

As the form of money changed, so did our relationship with it.

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If money and religion were closely related since Roman times, in Renaissance Florence, it was the case for money and commerce. In fact, the Medici family bankrolled the Renaissance with their activities (and put their faces and symbols in art and architecture, a form of self-promotion to guarantee eternal life.)

For more than 300 years, four generations of the Florentine family were the most influential dynasty in Europe: the bank’s founder Giovanni di Bicci, mastermind Cosimo di Giovanni, Cosimo’s son Piero and, Lorenzo il Magnifico (who was actually terrible according to Tim Parks.)

“It seemed a new sort of personality was in the making: that of the man who does not find it too much of a problem to be liberal and virtuous in private while toeing an authoritarian line in public. And perhaps this had come about in response to a new kind of society where public life would always involve a surrender of honest, if only because the basis of power would always be suspect, always require a constant effort of propaganda to assert its legitimacy.”

The Medici family achieved success and upward mobility precisely because of their banks—and the genius idea of promissory notes and letters of credit, though predicting cargoes travel time-frames and currency exchanges got complicated rather soon.4

Giovanni di Bicci created the holding company organizational structure for the Medici banking system, which for many years was the cornerstone to the bank’s growth and success.5 Tim Parks:

“Each branch was to be a separate company. The shareholders were: the branch director, to the tune of something between 10 and 40 percent, and then the Medici bank for the rest. Not the Medici family personally, and not the Florence branch, which had the same status as the other branches, but rather a separate holding company located in a separate office in Florence. In this way, a large number of capital-bearing partners could be brought in – one or two in each branch and one or two more important figures in the holding – without the Medici themselves ever losing control of either the parts or the whole.”

The first two chapters of Medici Money are dense, but worth a close reading because Parks outlines the interconnection of economics with commerce and politics.6 As for the Church, well, they did get their dues.7

For most of a century, despite the constant flux of people in and out of power in Florence (the council in charge was ‘randomly’ selected, changed every two months), the Medici family managed to control a vast amount of the goings-on in Florence.

The ready access to banks in towns and cities led to citizens' wealth becoming detached from their communities, as they would deposit large sums of cash and the firms would use the funds to supply kings and princes with enormous loans, finance overseas ventures, or else they would be paid out against other clients' letters of credit.

Wealth would travel, and could end up in an entirely different place within a very short amount of time. Without the Medici money, Florence would have lost its prominence. Money financed the Catholic Church and Italy’s territorial wars as much as it made commerce flourish. Money sponsored frescoes, paintings, and sculptures.

Money, Money, money… it’s the rich man’s world.

I work all night I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay
Ain’t it sad?
And still, there never seems to be a single penny left for me
That’s too bad

Alas, hard work doesn’t do it anymore in nearly all parts of the world. Though I draw a distinction between subscribing—as in buying a product—and supporting a meaningful contribution.8

Vulgarity in greed

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To get a sense of local culture, I look at the history and children books shelves. I did that years before little nieces and nephews for whom to buy gifts (children would rather learn than do many other things, and books are multi-sensory and connective.)

History tomes tend to be grouped by countries or eras, often contextual to a place, anniversary, or hot topic. The subjects of famous children books, the classics, tend to reflect a specific culture and its customs more closely.

I spoke elsewhere about how to read fiction, one of my favorite series. In this essay, I want to zoom into three books—one Italian, much more familiar to me but I wager to many, then a German, and finally an English book that is known all over the world.

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To become real

Like many stories of the nineteenth century, this one was born as a serial. ‘The story of a puppet’ was published in the Italian weekly for children (Giornale per bambini) from July 1881 to January 1883. It became a novel in February of that same year with illustrations from engineer/cartoonist Enrico Mazzanti (we don’t always see those two qualifications go together.)

— Once upon a time...

— A king! — my little readers will immediately say.

— No, kids, you’re wrong. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.

It wasn’t a luxurious piece of wood, but a simple log, the kind you put in stoves and fireplaces in winter to light the fire and heat the rooms.

I don’t know how it happened, but the fact is that one fine day this piece of wood ended up in the shop of an old carpenter, whose name was Master Antonio, except that everyone called him Master Cherry, because of the tip of his nose, which was always shiny and purple, like a ripe cherry.

As soon as Master Cherry saw that piece of wood, he was overjoyed; and rubbing his hands together in delight, he muttered under his breath:

“This wood came just in time; I want to use it to make a table leg.”

No sooner said than done, he immediately took the sharpened axe to begin removing the bark and roughing it out; but when he was about to deliver the first blow, he remained with his arm suspended in the air, because he heard a very thin voice, which said imploringly:

“Don’t hit me so hard!”1

When he wrote the book, Carlo Lorenzini,2 in art Collodi, couldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams that his book would be the first work of Italian children’s literature3 to achieve international fame— translated,4 published (printed in more than 300 languages), and read the world over.

Originally from Florence (in the Papal State), Collodi had joined the seminary young. But the cause of Italian national unification became his calling—he worked as a journalist to support the Risorgimento in Italy’s struggle with occupying Austria. In 1848, as the first Italian War of Independence was gearing up and Garibaldi enrolling volunteers, Collodi began publishing a newspaper of political satire: Il Lampione.

With the founding of the Kingdom of Italy in 18615— a Constitutional monarchy6— Collodi shifted from journalism and military activities to children book writing. Giannettino was published in 1876 and Minuzzolo in 1878. The first chapter of Pinocchio in 1881 and was an immediate success.

At this point it’s interesting to note how all Collodi’s works portray children in a realistic light, mischievous—something with which children found easy to identify. Pinocchio in particular makes many mistakes, then lies about them, and runs away.

Can you imagine liars turning into donkeys? If only… with one major difference: Pinocchio knows why bad things keep happening to him, he understands where he goes wrong, and yet, yet he keeps making the same mistakes over and over again.

The tale is both dark and funny, a challenge to convey from Italian into English. The novel’s original title was Le avventure di Pinocchio: storia di un burattino (Pinocchio’s adventures: story of a marionette), its main character a marionette who learns to become a real boy.

A rascal, a scamp, and all the other things they call him, but Geppetto, the woodworker who made him out of the talking piece of wood given to him by Master Cherry, wanted a son as much as a marionette. The piece of wood was already crying and laughing like a child when Geppetto got it into his hands.

This is a moving part of the novel that few discuss. As a young reader, my heart went out to this poor man who gives it all, including his only coat, to the (ungrateful) marionette. And what does Pinocchio do? As soon as its feet are made, he runs away. When finally Geppetto manages to grabs his creature, he’s arrested.

Pinocchio then returns to Geppetto’s home alone, and after the Talking Cricket (conscience) admonishes him, Pinocchio flattens it against the wall with a mallet. The marionette goes his own way, and ignores all advice. Soon, it/he falls in with various bad characters.

Disguised as assassins, the Fox and the Cat hang Pinocchio in order to get his gold coins intended for Geppetto. But they fail and Pinocchio is left to die. At the last moment, the magical fairy, a strange deus ex machina with blue hair and an even bluer temperament, saves him.

Then Pinocchio lies to the Fairy about the gold pieces, and his nose grows very long. The Fairy explains that his nose grows with lies and calls a flock of woodpeckers to cut it down to size. The Fairy sends for Geppetto to come and live with them in the forest cottage.

But on the way to meet Geppetto, Pinocchio meets the Fox and the Cat again. They trick him out of his gold pieces. He finds his way to multiple detours, including as a marionette with the terrible theater manageer Mangiafuoco (fire-eater), and the lands of Catchfools with a cartfull of children. Things are rarely what they seem…

Twice Pinocchio goes to school, twice he allows himself to be led astray—the second time is when he becomes a donkey.

“Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to cipher. Then with my acquirements I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat. But what am I saying? Cloth, indeed! It shall be all made of gold and silver, and it shall have diamond buttons. That poor man really deserves it; for to buy me books and to have me taught he has remained in his shirt sleeves... And in this cold! It is only fathers who are capable of such sacrifices!...”

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Unknown at the time, the son of an accomplished musician, he upset the world and its order from there on. But he didn’t pull his concepts out of thin air—they were the fruit of developments in science by others before him, and his own observations.

I’ve read quite a bit about him over the years both about his discoveries and the controversies that surrounded them. His namesake museum in Florence is filled with tools that were part his invention.

Born in the period we now call the late Renaissance, Galileo Galilei1 followed illustrious scientists with his work. But his most remarkable quality was to be a skilled communicator—and that strength both condemned and saved him.

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Galileo has long fascinated me. First off, as a scientists, he published in Italian, not Latin—and that was already innovative. He was also a voracious reader—a fan of poets Ludovico d’Ariosto’s Orlando furioso2—and could recite Dante’s Commedia.

He also got his hands on two books that would change humanity’s views of macrocosm and microcosm, both published in 1543: Nicolas Copernicus’ On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, and Flemish anatomist Andrea Vesalius’ On the Fabric of the Human Body.

A new understanding of the universe was possible in the sky and in our bodies. Their work went against prevailing beliefs that had dominated common scientific discourse since antiquity.

While Greek philosophers viewed people as members of a larger community, individualism was an emerging socio-psychological element of the late sixteenth, early seventeenth centuries—a person could achieve self-fulfillment, irrespective of circumstance.

Plato’s The Republic3 spoke of a better society, the council of wise men led to the Catholic Church and the Protestant movement’s rebellion and René Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am.’4

Printing was the new technology that helped create the standardization of knowledge. It also helped mathematics as diagrams were easier to reproduce—from Euclidean geometry to Archimedes, who was Galileo’s role model for his experimental method.

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Mathematician Luca Pacioni wrote and published The Collected Knowledge of Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality,5 documenting double-entry bookkeeping for the first time.

Explorers Christopher Columbus6 and Vasco da Gama7 stoked tremendous curiosity about new worlds. By the 1520s, humans had already circulated the globe and opened up new horizons for European exploration (and colonization.)

Against this very brief historical background is Galileo’s key chronology:

- 1583 he dropped out of medical school and began the study of mathematics

- 1590, at 26, he criticized Aristotle’s teachings on motion (a built-in impetus)

- 1603 experiments with inclined planes and pendulum and formulated his first ‘law of motion’ regarding free-fall (published subsequently in 1638)

- 1610 first discoveries with the telescope

- 1615 the letter to the Grand Duchess Christina where he interpreted biblical language based on science

- 1630, on May 15, he’s received in Rome as honored guest of Pope Urban VIII (post-reformation); the politics are delicate: “facts, which at first seem improbable, will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak, which. has hidden them, and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.”

- 1632, on February 21 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems8 went to press

- 1633 he’s tried by The Inquisition, pronounced a suspect heretic, forced to recant Copernican ideas, and is put under house arrest

- 1634 sister Maria Celeste, his daughter, dies; Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences is published in Nederlands; John Milton visited

- 1642 died at Villa Arcetri, near Florence, blind

But a mere list of dates and major events does not make a life, nor its legacy. For a more comprehensive reading of those events and milestones, we need to backtrack to a simple 45-page illustrated book that relates the story, what preceded it and what came after.

Return to the beginning

In many ways, seventeenth century religious, social, economic, and cultural problems are similar to today’s. There are conflicts between religion and science, creationism issues, attacks on intellectualism and expertise…

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A story that deserves to be told, also because of its surprising ending...

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It’s said that, after the construction of the Sanssouci Palace (from the French sans souci, ‘without worries’) in Potsdam, King Frederick II of Prussia,1 historically known for his ‘enlightened’ despotism (tongue firmly planted in cheek) ordered the demolition of a mill that was obstructing his view.

According to another version of the story, the king was annoyed by the noise of the blades. However, the mill manager didn’t want his mill destroyed, it had been in the family for generations. A dispute arose between the two,2 and Arnold pronounced the phrase…

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All too often, the irony of the past escapes us due to a lack of context. So in order to understand the cartoons that popped up in Britain during the early nineteenth-century and became known beyond England, it’s useful to take a look at what was happening during that time.

History calls the period that went roughly between the years 1795 and 1837 Britain’s Regency era, though the regency proper spanned just a shorter time—from 1811 to 1820, which marks the year of George III’s death.

The late king was not doing so well—he first suffered debilitating illness in the late 1780s, and relapsed into his final mental illness in 1810. In his stead, the socialite Prince of Wales was appointed Prince Regent,1 and later named George IV.

It was a time of great change—advancements in technology and distributed wars created economic difficulties, mass population relocations and growth presaged large shifts in society. Here, I explore a cultural phenomenon that captured the moment.

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I’ve recently discovered that before the events that precipitated a broader use of cartoons to poke fun at the noble, there was a book. The coronation of George III coincided almost to a ‘T’ with the publication (1762) of the first English book about caricature.2

That itself is significant, as phenomena rarely come out of thin air. And they take hold on fertile terrain.

Regency England was a time of refinement and culture among the wealthy. Celebrity writers included Romantics like Jane Austen, William Blake, Lord Byron (the original teen heartthrob), John Constable, John Keats, John Nash, Ann Radcliffe, Walter Scott, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, J. M. W. Turner and William Wordsworth.

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Many of these authors and their stories continue to fire contemporary imagination3—Bridgerton and the gossip of the ‘ton’ complete with ornate ballroom parties and budding romances a-la-Austen are contemporary television hits.

But it was not all roses, picnics, and countryside balls—cities were filthy, wars were still raging, and famine was one short ruinous crop away.

The Industrial Revolution, Napoleonic Wars and the aftermath of the French Revolution and American Independence created large scale social strife and political changes. Together with technological advancements, all these factors altered British society permanently.4

While urban population density was rising due to industrial labor migration, the many had to contend with the impact of war, mass unemployment, and economic collapse. People were forced to live in slums; a single bad harvest in 1816 was devastating against a boom in births.5

Free expression was encouraged in the Age of Enlightenment. And the Georgian Era spun what they called the ‘Golden Age’ of caricature—satirical prints with risqué illustrations of scandalous affairs and humorous digs at London’s elite.

I first came across the phenomenon in a period fiction book. Author Andrea Penrose spins a yarn that sees the enigmatic and science-friendly Earl of Wrexford and London’s most popular satirical cartoonist, A.J. Quill, eventually face each other.6

However much we’d like to imagine these to be some precursor to the anti-authoritarianism of underground comics, the bite-sized prints were priced beyond the pockets of regular folk, though they could see them posted on print shop windows.

The novelty was that it was the personal character of the satire embodied in the prints of the Georgian era to give them their edge at the time (a characteristic that makes them often obscure now—we lack the context and ‘temperature’ of the age).

Caricaturists seem to have been more willing and able to cross with impunity a line than writers: that of insult, libel, accusations of bizarre sexual acts, etc. Prints could be bought, sold, and viewed in private; libel prosecutions were rare.

Print satire used humor, irony, or exaggeration to ridicule or criticize at the expense of the powerful and famous. It was used especially as a form of commentary to check social conscience in an attempt to hold political leaders accountable for their actions.

Mockery and prophecy

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It would have been hard to understand Plato fully without considering the philosopher’s unique conception of poetry, and therefore of music, which in Greek culture was intimately connected to poetry.

Far from being a spiritual entertainment of a predominantly aesthetic nature, in the ancient world, the function of poetry was formative. But, Plato believed that because poetry and music appeal to and influence the non-rational part of the human soul, their power must be protected from abuse.1

Before Plato, Pythagoras2 said that music can cure illnesses. Pico della Mirandola,3 Giordano Bruno,4 Marsiglio Ficino,5 Vincenzo Galilei,6 some of the most prominent thinkers of the Renaissance, all dealt with music and the effects it has on us.

I was very young when I discovered symphonic music and The Beatles, more mature when I explored international music, Gregorian Chants, and jazz. Like all my best encounters, I came across Stefano Bollani by chance.7

The artist’s multifaceted conception of the world and life offers a welcome respite through his work and thought. In particular, two things he said prompted me to want to explore further:

1. Humanity in the future is more spiritually evolved, which means they’ve given it more thought. I like his definition of ‘evolved.’

2. From the past, what has come down to us is dusty, gray, fictionalized dramas. The irony escapes us due to a lack of context. It must have been there, too. It’s human.

I didn’t know Leonardo da Vinci’s official job: court musician. The drawings and inventions for which the polymath is known were side gigs that got him noticed. But he began with music. Who would Leonardo have been without music? What would everyone else have done without Leonardo?

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Music is authentically beautiful only when it pursues what is best for humanity—truth—said Plato. For Bollani “in music, the goal is extremely vague; one enjoys doing his best,” and knows when he plays poorly. In both, humankind seems to be out of tune.

If only we could listen

To Bollani, the concept of mental freedom resonates a bit like harmonics, which linger in the air after the last note.

Music is the least conventional language of all, emotive by design, untethered to the ‘signifier-signified’ system that characterizes speech. Its basic rules vary from culture to culture, but it can speak without the mediation of study to people of diverse cultures, provided they’re open and sensitive.

The barriers, labels, and boundaries—mostly commercial—within which attempts have been made to confine music for two centuries are the limits of humanity itself, not of its language as such.

Bollani’s knowledge and practice of music is vast, and so his passion for it. Take for example this short introduction to variations on the theme of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ which I’ve seen as a show many, many years ago. After he fell in love with the atmosphere of the film, his approach became one of curiosity.

The forbidden love he describes breathes fresh air on a story known the world over, but perhaps not entirely felt. Like the insight about Leonardo da Vinci, it’s these unexpected connections that make his creative work valuable.

When he says that “Jazz and Brazilian music often meet because they are two great, hybrid musics that are hungry: and they are omnivorous, they find something they like and want to eat it, internalize it,” my mind goes to Antônio Carlos Jobim.8

If the music is hungry like our belly, the ability to listen is how we metabolize. There’s not much intellectual deconstruction that goes on when we eat, our senses are involved directly—vision, taste, smell. Through them we detect colors, texture, and flavors. They say chewing is useful to a good digestion. So is savoring with music.

Chewing in musical terms involves more of the body. Listening and being present are part of jazz—improvisation at its best is a form of flow we could experience in our everyday lives, if we only let ourselves. That is we could put our practices and knowledge at the service of a collaborative way of being, like the quintet below.

Escape from the walls

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I came across the author, Daniele Rielli, through his podcast about another writer. His book, Il fuoco invisibile, is the story of the ‘massacre of the olive trees’ in a novel (as in new) format, where everything is real and all the characters really exist.

In a recent dialogue (in the Bohmian sense) with Rielli, actor Francesco Montanari2 talked about having a ‘book dealer,’ which sounds infinitely more interesting in Italian than in English for some reason. Without such recommendations, I’d fail to discover important work, which is rarely one and the same with the popular stuff.

This is one such book and many things at once—the story of a great collective illusion, a family novel, the narration of the lives of the protagonists, for better or for worse, and an example of how humankind chooses belief over reality.

In that regard, the story is not just urgent, but timeless.

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The novel format of the Xylella3 story integrates different perspectives—the journalistic investigation, plant diseases and agriculture, and narrative of places and people, with tremendous affinity for the scientists implicated in legal cases unjustly.

Though they were introduced in the 18th century for the production of lamp oil,4 olive trees are a symbol of identity in Puglia. The scale of the collective tragedy is thus such that the efforts of the National Research Council in Bari—which aimed at containing the epidemic—are the ones that end up investigated.

“It’s a question that goes beyond olive trees; it has to do with the human way of relating to reality, of trying to extract a shared truth from it. Seeing a centuries-old olive tree makes one cry; an entire society believing things that are clearly false is terrifying (...)”

A soul-stirring story for anyone who’s ever seen olive trees; a must-read for anyone who studies how humans think because it shines a light on the tribalism of society, with its shield of self-deception and finer-pointing in defense of unfounded truths.

The result is a journey into one of the most serious ecological disasters of our time—the bacterium has transformed the Apulian countryside into a cemetery of centuries-old olive trees—made even more devastating by institutional inertia and the spread of conspiracy theories that have thwarted the only possible containment strategy.

From earthly paradise to a desolate plant cemetery

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David Bohm1 was a brilliant physicist, and because of that he was one of the twentieth century’s most original thinkers. His work extended to the fields of philosophy, psychology, language, and education. An open mind.

I first read the collection of essays that originated from his talks two decades ago.2 And re-read it about every five years since. The edition prefaced by Mr. Peter Senge includes a first-person account of a dialogue with the physicist and his wife in 1989.

Both Senge’s remarks and Bohm’s words posses a lucidity and coherence we seem to have misplaced. Salience without echos, nor the need of likes to prop arguments. A refreshing respite from the everyday assault on reality.

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According to Bohm, dialogue is not just a more productive way to have a conversation. Though having a conversation is a positive experience. Nor it is a mere technique to encourage reflectiveness, which he also supported. It isn’t just a method to improve organizational communications.3

From Latin dialogus, Greek dialogos (διάλογος) ‘conversation, dialogue,’ from dia ‘across, between’ and legein ‘to speak,’ dialogue is ‘a conversation between two or more persons.’ Literary examples include Plato’s 34 works, and Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.4

The physicist maintained that what holds society together is a coherent, ‘tacit ground.’

“Shared meaning is really the cement that holds society together, and you could say that the present society has very poor quality cement… The society at large has a very incoherent set of meanings. In fact, this set of ‘shared meanings’ is so incoherent that it is hard to say they have any meaning at all.”

‘Incoherent’ to a physicist is the light bulb that stands in contrast to the coherence in the extraordinary energy of the light generated by a laser. Applied to a social world, it could signal that the source of incoherence is the tendency to judge and defend embedded in the human self-defense mechanism. The incoherence increases with the fixed nature of past meaning, which turns into dogma.

When this happens to societies, he said, “societies become governed by shadows, hollowed out myths from the past applied as inviolate truths for the present.” This mechanism leads to incoherence at scale, separating people from each other and from reality. Unchecked incoherence becomes absurdity.

A simple personal example to illustrate. In our teenage years, my sister and I shared a room. We were at different phases of ‘messy.’ And we both had this funny way of addressing when something was out-of-order or messy: “someone did, etc.” Until one day we came to and realized that it was one of us who did the doing—and we laughed at the absurdity of trying to make it ‘someone.’ After that initial awareness, we both became more organized.

Two people or a smaller group can see things like this. It’s much harder to spot in broader culture that businesses cannot grow forever, things cannot accelerate exponentially,5 etc. before something or someone breaks. The latter is most painful, if ever, to fix.

We don’t know how to live together

Bohm spotted the phenomenon that has gained more prominence and relevance in the last fifteen to twenty years: that we don’t know how to live together in a changing world. And yet change is only accelerating.

Hence the (sometimes desperate) nostalgia for a past that never was, or that might have held in its context, but cannot work today. Bohm figured out that defending core beliefs and the resulting incoherence was becoming endemic.

Coherence in thought and action emerges when there’s a true flow of many views; it’s a way of living, not a fixed state. This is very hard to do for the many reasons Bohm outlined—assumptions, opinions, fragmentation, etc. He also decried what he came to see as intellectual fundamentalism in science, which has become embedded in culture.

Scientists should be the ultimate curious types, welcoming a variety of points of view and open to new ideas. Yet, “science has become the religion of the modern age. It plays the role that religion used to play on giving us truth.” That’s because dialogue has become divorced from the current scientific method.

Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana says, “when one human being tells another what is ‘real,’ what they’re actually doing is making a demand for obedience. They’re asserting that they have a privileged view of reality.”

The notion of truth

“Truth does not emerge from opinions, it must emerge from something else—perhaps from a freer movement of this tacit mind.”

“We have to get meanings coherent if we are to perceive truth, or to take part in truth.”

I dedicated an entire essay to the question of what is truth? The idea that ‘the’ truth exists vs. ‘a’ truth is particularly sticky in science, which has come to believe it can get truth, regardless of the evidence that anyone can never know everything there’s to know.

“Dialogue may not be concerned directly with truth—it may arrive at truth, but it is concerned with meaning. If the meaning is incoherent you will never arrive at truth. You may think, ‘My meaning is coherent and somebody else isn’t,’ but then we’ll never have meaning shared. You will have the ‘truth’ for yourself or for your own group, whatever consolation that is. But we will continue to have conflict.”

Bohm also addresses the cultural differences between Western focus on the individual and Eastern value of the collective in society—differences that influence the notion of truth.

The physicist understood that the problem with science was the inability to address wholes, the interdependence of context. Science can deal with isolated things, create new technologies from their application. But it cannot deal with multidimensional variables. So we have tech advances and social regression.

“the whole is too much. There is no way by which thought can hold the whole, because thought only abstracts; it limits and defines.”

And often enough it doesn’t even do that very well, I’d add.

Since thought limits and defines, it can only focus on the past, on what we know, have experienced and remember. At any one point, we have only a partial view of things. Without the ability to see the whole, thought misses the present.

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A present or an offer are not the same thing. They’re the consumer version of an act that when we extend it makes us human. I hesitate to speak of ‘gift’ because the word doesn’t do justice to the opportunity.

From Latin donum, dono is a concrete act—we use the word in this meaning when we talk about health or a special talent someone has. Time is a valued form of something given. Forgiveness is the highest and most difficult form of giving.

A concrete act that comes with no conditions and frees us from limits—and limitations. In this first essay of the new year, I’d like to explore the freedom of something given and its value to humanity.

“I am what I’ve given,” said poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. Perhaps literature is the easiest entry point to see how something given is a breath of life to someone.

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I would like to start with what has become a staple of New Year’s Eve meditations—Les Misérables,1 a story of how everyday people can build a more just society through small acts of courage and hope despite difficult circumstances and the past.

In Victor Hugo’s2 1862 opus—1,200 to more than 1,300 pages, depending on the translation—the lives and struggles of Valjean, Cosette, Eponine, Fantine, and Marius intersect as they deal with the politics of 19th-century France.

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But Friedrich Schiller may have had something else in mind. His ‘Ode to Joy’ (1785)—best known as Ludwig van Beethoven’s final movement of his Ninth Symphony (1824), with a few new sections1—could have been first conceived as an ‘Ode to Freedom.’

If that were the case, it would be apt to turn the word into ‘joy.’

Myth or not, the German poet might have been onto something. Because up close, what idea of human being do we hold within? I dare say a life different from that of animals. Though social media has accentuated a certain herd behavior.

In this second-to-last essay of the year, I’d like to peel back some layers of illusion and celebrate our spiritual selves with the help of a few thinkers and artists throughout the ages.

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Immanuel Kant, the Enlightenment’s core thinker, criticized pure reason. He talked about humanity as ‘crooked timber,’ from which ‘nothing entirely straight could be made.’2 He meant to address the moral law within that reveals human greatness, in all its difficulty—usually, there’s no direct gaze that is not upon us.

But, as he said in the previous Proposition of his work, “The greatest problem for the human species, to the solution of which it is compelled by nature, is the attainment of a civil society administering justice universally.”3 How can humans do that?

Herein is the contradiction, both the best and the worst are part of humanity.

Leonardo da Vinci spoke about the ancient gaze on the human being as a microcosm. His and their point of view on our ability to gather and process information, and not the contradictions of dark—the prison of fear and the banal evil—and light—spirit.

How can my and your actions be such to become the criterion of universal action?

I know only of one person who was able to do that—Jesus, not one and the same with Christ, which was a concept that came later to manufacture Christian culture.4 I mean the historical person whose birth in Nazareth we celebrate every year.

But back to the idea of ‘joy’ as distinct from happiness. And why it’s not just a semantics issue, but a life issue—whether or not that life is spiritual, though most likely it is…

I first came across this idea in a conference by Vito Mancuso.5 A lay theologian and philosopher, Mancuso says with his mentor Albert Schweitzer, “sincerity is the foundation of a spiritual life.”

So joy of life, and there are five main obstacles to achieving it:

1. The interior obstacle in a superficial awareness

2. What ‘joy of life’ is not

3. What ‘joy of life’ is

4. Why should we cultivate it

5. How to cultivate it

1.

Knowledge is the main obstacle to our mental well-being. But how can that be, if knowledge is deemed such a noble pursuit6 across various philosophies and spiritual practices? If love of learning is the gateway to a fulfilling life?

Well, think for example about news, illnesses, and what awaits us—namely death, which no one can dodge, despite the protestations and efforts. Hence the need for fiction, escape, entertainment, unreality, and religion as an alternative form of reality.

However, profound joy cannot be outside human thought, nor evade it.

The climate of hatred has always existed. Cain and Abel. Hell is the imposition of hatred. What this means is that we must face pain, reject false observations, and step out of the herd (from Latin egregius: e, outside, and grex, herd) to true awareness.7

In other words, we need to keep the baby with the (dirty) bathwater, look at reality in the face and walk away from sugar-coated stories (too much sugar is bad for our health). It’ll be better for the body, with no need for pills.

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2.

‘Joy of life’ is not happiness.

If we want to understand what’s at play here, the state of joy is a reward that conscience gives to the entire person—body, psyche, and spirit. A complex and comprehensive concept that differs from emotion, which is where happiness belongs.

The human body is made for pleasure—voluptas in Latin, Voluptas or Volupta is the daughter born from the union of Cupid and Psyche; ἡδονή in Greek, Hedone born from the union of Eros and Psyche being the goddess of pleasure, hence hedonism.

Psyche is where emotions reside, which nourish it. In his work, Antonio Damasio8 lists six main emotions: fear, anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise. Emotions are fast and change if we’re unable to have control over external events. Each emotion has layers—for example, fear goes from restlessness to terror and panic.

Spirit from Latin spiritus is immaterial intelligence, but its literal meaning is wind, air that moves.

Plato had already located the place where ideas are, spirit, outside of this world. Saint Augustine, under pressure to perform and offer something new introduced the idea of soul, taking it from this idea of the spirit. I like spirit better, because it’s stronger.

3.

What joy is—the accord of oneself with self. Thus not something that occurs on the outside, exterior. But the harmony of the corporeal and spiritual dimensions with the psyche. The outcome of spiritual work is a free and human being.

Spirit in the Bible is a very strong wind “that hovered over the waters.” πνεῦμα in Greek, the ancient word for wind breath—hence pneumonia, inflammation of the lungs where breath occurs. Many medical terms have their roots in ancient Greek.

Spirit is what we have inside once we cultivate it. In this condition, there’s the possibility for creative, original thought. Remember Plato’s ideas floating outside this world.

In the third dialogue of Plato’s Phaedrus, Daimonion forces Socrates to discover the beauty of love. Love is a delirium, a beneficent fury inspired by the gods. But before analyzing this aspect, Socrates defines the nature and immortality of the human soul.

The soul can be represented as the winged chariot of a charioteer drawn by two horses of different breeds: one noble, representing the irascible part of the soul, and the other evil, the concupiscence part—the charioteer represents the rational part.

Human beings are complex; whenever there’s harmony the irascible horse is driven, not obstructed. To balance the psychic dimension, which is made of emotions, passions, and feelings, spiritual work is dynamic.

Emotions and feelings have a different rhythm and velocity. For example, from happiness that comes and goes to sympathy; the opposite from a negative emotion. Passion is a dominant feeling—when we’re in its grip, there’s nothing else that matters. When sympathy becomes passion, we call that love.

When the spiritual dimension—made of ideals, values, virtues, spirituality—sees the psychic dimension and is in accord with emotions, feelings, passions and vice versa, when the psyche sees the spiritual dimension as sustaining and nourishing, that’s when we have joy. We need both the psychic and the spiritual dimensions.

In Freudian terms, joy is the harmony of ego and superego.

Today we feel bad because desire has no obstacles any more. “Subjective desire, narcissism, and everything else will be called power. And power is will, desire. And the universal wolf desire, doubly supported by will and power, will make the entire universe its prey, only to ultimately devour itself.” (Troilus and Cressida)

William Shakespeare, 400 years ago, provided a perfect photograph of our times.

Before I get into why cultivate joy and how to do it, I wanted to share this version of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ conducted by André Rieu.9 I promise it will bring tears of joy and fill your heart. When was the last time that happened to you?

Did you spot the various reactions in the Maastricht square? Joy is the accord of oneself with self.

4.

Why pursue and cultivate joy?

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Children would rather learn than do anything else. They ask questions, not to annoy, but to figure how the world works. Just like scientists, researchers, and poets, they play with boundaries to see how reality unfolds.

Every child at birth has the potential of Leonardo da Vinci. What happens afterwards is the product of context. I wish school teachers had to take the Socratic Oath, like doctors the Hippocratic Oath:1 ‘first do no harm.’

Mine did alright. Though no one stood out as particularly inspiring or memorable, at least they didn’t beat my desire to learn out of me. The same cannot be said for the experience of many who go through the school system.

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In Italian ‘to teach’ is insegnare, from the Latin insignare—‘in’ combined with the verb ‘signare’ means to mark, to impress; the noun signum translates into brand or seal. The teacher therefore leaves an impression on the student’s mind.

Transmission of knowledge is not an end in itself, but the tip of the iceberg that has as a foundation the imprint of a method to approach reality. This goes far beyond academic subjects in the culture we inherited from the Romans and the Greeks.

As I discovered a couple of decades into my education in Italy, not every school system was based on the same principles and ideas. This essay is an exploration of the origins of the Anglo-Saxon ways and methods.

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Today’s school system was not designed to develop the potential of every individual, and for that matter, it isn’t even the product of scientific knowledge of how children learn, but rather of the past—history.

Schools were created to serve religious and political purposes. The school system of today was designed deliberately between the 18th and 19th centuries, with the specific intent of indoctrinating children and raising them to obey.

The history of public schools in America offers a very clear overview of what has—alas—happened all over the world…

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Is it still possible to tell apart what’s true from what’s false? When reality has become too complex to interpret, who holds the power to say what’s true? And finally, to put it with Friedrich Nietzsche, how much truth can a person bear, or dare?1

These are important questions for humanity at a time when technology is a world and we live inside it. Questions only philosophy can put forth.

Because philosophy forces us to discover whether what’s in our minds—which includes lichens, weeds, encrustations, scripts, mental habits—is true. It teaches us the exercise of criticizing our own thoughts.

Under scrutiny, do our most deeply held beliefs hold?

Philosopher Umberto Galimberti2 has explored these themes over the years—from the Greek alétheia3 to the Hebrew ‘emet,4 from Plato to modern science, from the Christian faith to contemporary technology.

He says the West redefined the meaning of truth, transforming it into what it is today: effectiveness. But if truth is only what works, what room is left for critical thinking?

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We live in a society of persuasion and performance, where people are attracted more by actors than they are by thinkers. Truth is no longer sought but produced. However, in so doing, truth’s lost.

Faith won’t help us much because it’s not a product of intellect but of belief. And we can find facts in our collective past where belief was coupled with obedience and eventually combat.

The only antidote to this state of affairs is culture.

What’s truth today?

When reality is complex, definitions are valuable only when nuanced. So I’ll attempt a multidimensional set of parameters (including the copious notes at the bottom) we need to take into account.

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With the atrocities of the war not yet in the rear view mirror, as a strong economic crisis and austerity gripped Italy, Einaudi1 published a novel that would soon be the talk of the country.

It was June 1974, six month earlier a complete ban on the circulation of private vehicles had been imposed, with the exception of doctors on duty, under penalty of heavy fines of up to one million lire. Austerity had begun.

This is part of my story, even as La Storia is part of my parents’ and grandparents’. To me the beauty and depth of Elsa Morante’s2 work begins with the title. In Italian it can mean both ‘story’ and ‘history.’

I like Italian better. Because English appropriates the meaning of an otherwise universal word and thus makes it ‘his-story,’ with the consequences to culture and society still felt today.

Morante’s ability to synthesize emotional current and rational mental structure in her work is rare. But even rarer was the ability to make space and give voice to the world of the humble and give access to the everyday person to her work.

A single mother and teacher is the protagonist; Morante insisted that the first edition be a paperback so more people could afford the book.

“For the first time3 since anyone can remember, people in railroad compartments and espresso bars discuss the book—the Morante novel—rather than the soccer championship or latest scandal. The critics write endlessly about the meaning of La Storia, and the reasons for the exceptional stir it is causing.” The New York Times

100,000 copies sold in a few weeks. The critics went to town—some praised the work, others trashed it. As copies sold reached 275,000, Linus,4 an Italian monthly comics magazine, asked readers for their take.

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Morante’s novel takes place during the period 1941-1947, the most atrocious years of fascism, but the discussion revolves around present-day-Italy (1971-1974). A petrol crisis, the country half-paralyzed, was also a perfect opportunity to sit down and take stock.

A novel that arrived at the right time

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What happened to salesman Gregor Samsa2 is a mystery. And likely doesn’t matter—because the real transformation in the story isn’t the concrete, physical change of the protagonist, but the change in how others regard him.

His own family finds ways to isolate Gregor; they suddenly find him repulsive. That’s where the metamorphosis takes place. Its sudden nature—in the story involuntary—is a shock. Gregor, after all, was the breadwinner with his banking job.

When transformation is something we seek, our pursuit is an active desire to change, in that we look forward. But when the change is thrust upon us and sudden, we might be tempted to resist, react in some ways, and finally adapt.

Instead, we should pause, take stock, and evaluate what’s going on. That’s a more valuable course of action. Language is our first ally in this process, literature the neutral territory to examine.

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A metamorphosis is a noticeable change in character, appearance, function or condition. Though not everyone has witnessed it, we know that caterpillars turn into butterflies and tadpoles into frogs. They change form and often habits.

Metamorphosis is a change that leaves a mark. Always. Because it’s almost always painful, never completely under control, often forced.

Stuck on his back in his bed, Gregor thinks about his job as a traveling salesman and cloth merchant, where he has “always changing, never enduring human exchanges that don’t ever become intimate.”

His boss is a despot; he’d love to quit were it not for his father and his debts he’s committed to repaying. He also hears the chief clerk who’s come to check on him; he’s late. He tries to communicate, but only inarticulate sounds come out of him.

The change has left a mark and precisely for this reason, it’s revealing—it tells him something he didn’t see before. When he can finally drag himself to the door and opens it, the clerk flees and Gregor’s family is horrified. His father even pushes him back into t he room.

Metamorphosis is a situation in which we learn something about ourselves, but also about our relationships with others, about how they look at us, about what we become in their eyes as we change.

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Ovid was among the first to remind us that as we change, our relationship with others also changes. Daphne is transformed into a tree to escape desire. Arachne into a spider as punishment for her pride, for having defied Athena.

And of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection, not even his beautiful body remains, only a flower bearing his name.

We like these stories because they reflect us, in the sense that we too are the result of a long series of transformations. Physical, of course: the color of our skin, our features, the look of our faces reflect environments, blends, and adaptations.

But also internal: every step in life changes us. Every wound, every encounter, every sacrifice we make.

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It seems fairly simple to think that the desire for a specific person or a new car we want to buy, the ambition to succeed at work are all products of free choice. We’re in charge of our desire.

Except…

… this linear subject-to-object vision of desire gets complicated when we try to explain envy or jealousy.

To think about it carefully (though we rarely admit it), the envy of the person who possesses an object is stronger that our independent desire for it. Satisfaction comes not from possessing the object itself, but from the other’s failure to possess it.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” the memorable line in Harry Met Sally,1 is a handy reminder that we want what others seem to enjoy. Without this mechanism advertising and the entire ‘influencer’ industry wouldn’t work.

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Which explains how everything connects. When the whole world is globalized, you’ll be able to set everything on fire with a match, said René Girard.2 The philosopher3 conceived what became the ‘theory of mimetic desire’ analyzing Western literature.

In a nutshell, mimetic desire is the human tendency to copy not just actions but the desires of other people. These borrowed desires lead to competition and violence. Human conflict is thus not caused by our differences, but rather by our similarities.

From the triangle of mediated desires comes the chain reaction that transforms into general antagonism. The only way to limit this violence and its effects is to identify a determined culprit, a victim, to be destroyed in order to restore peace.

Individuals and societies thus shift responsibility and blame onto outsiders, scapegoats. Their elimination reconciles the antagonists and restores unity. This is Girard’s scapegoat theory: the crowd arbitrarily chooses a single individual deemed responsible and annihilates him.4

According to Girard, the scapegoat mechanism is the foundation of cultural life.

Desire is contagious

From a literary perspective, this ‘we don’t know what we want’ means that the motives and motivation of characters need careful consideration. Nowhere this is more poignant that in William Shakespeare’s plays where rivalry, competition, and conflict drive interactions.

Erotic mimicry, jealousy and unconscious competition are apparent, sometimes intense in the English Bard’s works.

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As early as the fifth century BC, one of religion’s aims has been to contain humanity’s (self)destructive forces. A hypothesis in Sysiphus’ fragment attributed to Greek Sophist Critias stipulates that the gods were intended to curb human proclivities and enforce moral behavior.1

What do the promise of eternal life, central to Christianity, and the threat of eternal punishment represent for us today?

Before we get into the mechanisms we use to restrain antisocial tendencies in individuals and groups, I want to talk about how art played a crucial propagandist role for the Church, with an Italian twist during the Counter-reformation.

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The first time I saw a painting of the Last Judgment was in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome. Michelangelo’s mastery, restored to its quasi original form and intent, transmitted the sense of confusion and reflected the insecurities of a new era.

It depicted the end of an era, a watershed moment in the history of art and human thought. The strong and confident man of Humanism and the early Renaissance (Michelangelo himself had exalted in the Ignudi2 of the vault) was replaced by a chaotic and anguished vision that affected both the damned and the blessed. A total lack of certainties.

I was familiar with the story from the Bible,3 which was required reading at CCD class4 when I was too young to tackle the book of Revelation.

However, it was Dante’s Inferno that reflected the drift and chaos of the coming era. I read him in my late teens—the fervor and the power of his words resonated. Virgil makes the point that on the Day of Judgment, each soul will return to its body and hear what echoes throughout eternity: its final sentence of condemnation.

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In the union of body and soul every feeling is amplified, says Virgil. In fact, according to Aristotelian science, this union creates the perfect form. Therefore souls will feel more good or more pain, based on the judgment they receive.

Another painting I saw only recently struck a chord with me for a different reason. In a small church next to the Augustinian monastery in Padua, the Scrovegni Chapel, is Giotto’s version of the Last Judgment.

Enrico Scrovegni had inherited an immense fortune but also a terrible reputation. His father Rinaldo was a ‘moneylender,’ a loan shark, in Dante’s Inferno. The construction of the chapel, a small and precious town church, served to restore his family image and present himself as a noble, and above all, devout, benefactor knight.

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Culture drives everything we believe, say, and do (often not in this order). At the tune of ‘likes’ and ‘hearts’ digital culture accelerated the process of individual and group dislike and fragmentation.

However, our reference points, like the seagull in the image above, remain rooted in physical culture. The gull hopes a passenger will throw a sardine. We have similar behaviors—we stay with what we think might work for us.

Instinct tells the seagull what to do. We rely on other guideposts—information, knowledge, experience of others, institutions, etc. As the narrative is changing rapidly everywhere in the world it’s rewriting culture.

Trying to understand and give it meaning is the only strategy we can use to confront the harsh realities and revolution(s) we face. But to do that, we need the ability to read, interpret, connect, and put into context.

For that we have excellent keys—history, literature, philosophy. In the absence of a robust repertoire in those, the close study and observation of language(s) can still give us clues on how different cultures react and respond to change.

I’ll be sending fewer in depth essays like this one to explore theses and knowledge on the value of culture—free to all email subscribers.

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Some cultures are (up)tight, and some are l o o s e. Fourteen years ago, in a quest to explain human behavior’s variance, psychologist Michele Gelfand studied the ways of 33 countries.

“Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high population density, resource scarcity, a history of territorial conflict, and disease and environmental threats), broad versus narrow socialization in societal institutions (e.g., autocracy, media regulations), the strength of everyday recurring situations, and micro-level psychological affordances (e.g., prevention self-guides, high regulatory strength, need for structure).”

Gelfand’s definition of ‘tight’ amounts to many strong norms and low tolerance of deviant behavior. Loose culture goes in the opposite direction—weak social norms, and high tolerance of deviant behavior.

The first are reliable, but resist change; the second are less disciplined, but have greater appetite for risk. Anyone who’s tried to merge two groups with such different risk and norm profiles soon realizes the difficulty of the task.

Most of us sit somewhere along the spectrum between tight and loose. We gravitate toward one or the other based on circumstances and our stress levels.

A word on words

Words are not always what they mean. They need context.

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He knew he wanted to become a writer early in his life, a poet. An apprenticeship at a bookshop in Tübingen gave him the opportunity to discover the classics of the German Romantics. Spirituality, aesthetic harmony, and transcendence became the themes that influenced his work.

Well-read on Francis of Assisi, Buddha, Nietzsche, and Dostoyevsky, a mature Hesse would zero into the individual’s quest for authenticity, spirituality, and balance. Narciss and Goldmund in his omonimous novel are two halves of the same whole.

In the tale, there’s tension between two types of death embodied by each protagonist. The duality and comparison is between Goldmund’s feminine and Narcissus’ male energies, artistic inclinations and religious fervor.

Set in medieval Germany, the story has that sense of timelessness as it explores duality, the human longing for purpose, aging and mortality, the nature of art, and the conflict between flesh and spirit.

We’re made of contradictions.

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“All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person-no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other.”

One day, a new student, Goldmund, arrives at the Mariabronn Abbey. His father wants him to complete his studies there and stay there, dedicating his life to God to atone for a mysterious sin linked to his birth.

Among the ancient cloisters and the large halls of the monastery, the blond Goldmund, sensual and dreamy, forms a deep friendship with the young teacher Narcissus, the scholar, the prodigy of science and literature.

Narcissus is all spirit, destined for a brilliant religious career sheltered from the dangers of the world and history; Boccadoro on the other hand is a ‘Wanderer’, a wayfarer, a homeless person. Tempted by the infinite richness of life and secretly in love with its transience, he will become a brilliant artist without ever ceasing to wander the world in search of answers to his anxieties.

The life of the mind and the life of the flesh.

It will be Narcissus, the thinker, so close to sublimation, to speak openly to his friend, and reveal to him what not even he had yet understood of his own destiny. He expresses his thoughts with solicitude, sincerity, and true generosity towards his friend.

“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.”

By setting Narcissus and Goldmund in the legendary Middle Ages of monastic Catholicism, Hesse had the opportunity to reflect on the central theme of his work: the contrast between nature and spirit, eros and logos, art and asceticism, in search of their possible integration.

The dialectic between spirit and matter

In the novel, Narcissus’s monastic life represents a spiritual refuge from the complexity and temptations of the outside world. A Plato of reason and mind has the strongest influence on the treacher’s character, but a Plato fully aware of the power of art and the senses.

“The thinker tries to determine and to represent the nature of the world through logic. He knows that reason and its tool, logic, are incomplete—the way an intelligent artist knows full well that his brushes or chisels will never be able to express perfectly the radiant nature of an angel or a saint. Still they both try, the thinker as well as the artist, each in his own way. They cannot and may not do otherwise. because when a man tries to realize himself through the gifts with which nature has endowed him, he does the best and only meaningful thing he can do. That’s why, in former days, I often said to you: don’t try to imitate the thinker or the ascetic man, but be yourself, try to realize yourself.”

Today, this search for refuge in isolation and purity can be compared to the contemporary trend towards minimalism and digital detox.

In an age where we are constantly bombarded by digital stimuli and overabundant information, many people seek refuge in practices that promote simplicity and mindfulness, similar to Narcissus’s ascetic life.

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Part 1 was an overall review of the innovations that cities brought to the 12th and 13th century, creating the context that led to the Renaissance.

Part 2 was a travel through time in a place that exists outside time, an ‘ideal city’ built to measure a man with his own mortality.

In part 3 we take a tour of a few ‘ghost towns,’ places where once humanity thrived and now sit empty and are slowly corroding away, but only if we let them go forgotten.

In this third and final installment of this miniseries, I wanted to talk about ghost towns.1 As I looked into various options—Pompeii being top of mind for Italy—I noticed that the faith of cities without people fell into broad categories.

Humanity’s broader narrative includes places where immense tragedies have occurred—floods, prolonged droughts, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, unemployment, war, pollution or nuclear disasters. Cities that gave up the ghost.

In other cases, however, these towns have a second life and are starting to be revalued by international tourism, while remaining mysterious and, at times, disturbing phenomena.

Why did people abandon settlements? What made them decide to leave their homes and lives to move elsewhere?

These cities have the charm of the history in which they are immersed, of silent, deserted buildings and sometimes submerged streets. What remains visible tells only part of the story. How recently these settlements were abandoned is part of it.

Through the traces of what they once were, ghost towns are silent witnesses to human affairs—hopes, dreams, plans. They exist in the past to remind us that they were once centers full of life.

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Ghost towns are not only images in films. Throughout the world, there are mysterious abandoned cities that stand like menacing time capsules that capture the imagination and vacation days of thousands of tourists.

From the incredible city of Kolmanskop, almost completely buried under the Namibian desert, to the Italian city of Craco, where ‘The Passion of the Christ’ was filmed. From the Ukrainian city of Pripyat, abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster, to the English city of Tyneham—in Italy and around the world, there are numerous uninhabited cities.

Since we’ve been visiting Italy so far, let’s take a few more stops in our itinerary before we zoom out into the wider world.

Frozen in time

Come with me all the way to the southern region of Basilicata—to Craco. The oft-forgotten small region is home to a pictures-famous ‘ghost town.’ Though 700 people live in Craco, the original center was evacuated in the 1960s.

A series of destructive landslides left the town’s historic center completely uninhabited. Things worsened in 1972 after a flood prevented any repopulation. The earthquake of 1980 was the coup de grâce.

After that, old Craco was abandoned definitively.

Since then, its perched houses and alleys have become mysterious and silent. But this was perhaps its greatest fortune. Craco’s inhabitants have preserved the beauty of the original center with great care. They’ve never forgotten their native land.

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The city, which can be visited, has become a set for many film productions over the years. Scenes from ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ directed by Mel Gibson and 007 Bond franchise’s ‘Quantum of Solace’ were shot there.

As many Italian towns perched on mountains, Craco’s origins are ancient. It was a primitive settlement in the 8th century BC. The great urban development came in the Middle Ages under the influence of the Byzantines, then the Normans.

Byzantium brought agriculture in the area, and a monastic order settled here. The name Craco probably originates from Graculum, ‘small ploughed field.’

Under Norman rule, the center developed into a village. It became an important strategic center during Frederick II’s reign. The Craco Tower, which allows to dominate the Cavone and Agri rivers was built at that time.

The population kept growing, and reached 2,590 in the year 1561. Then the Black Death arrived in the mid-1600s, and took out hundreds of residents. In the centuries that followed, the town saw the construction of numerous noble palaces, such as Palazzo Maronna and Palazzo Grossi.

When the turbulence of the post-unification period (twentieth century) was over, Craco continued peacefully its life as a small rural center. Although affected until a few years before its ‘end’ by intense land ownership, the agricultural production of Craco was among the most flourishing in the entire region.

Before it became a ‘ghost town’, Craco was a ‘Wheat Town.’ By the 1960s, so much wheat was being produced that the approximately 2,000 inhabitants were unable to cope with the cultivation needs of the immense lands of the noble families of the place, having to request the contribution of laborers even from Salento (Puglia).

Symbol of resilience and belonging

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A mini-series for supporters. If you’re interested in the topic of culture and cities, consider becoming a supporter. This 3-part mini-series will run in the next couple of weeks.

Part 1 is an overall review of the innovations that cities brought to the 12th and 13th century, creating the context that led to the Renaissance.

Part 2 will be a travel through time in a place that exists outside time, an ‘ideal city’ built to measure a man with his own mortality.

In part 3 we take a tour of a few ‘ghost towns,’ places where once humanity thrived and now sit empty and are slowly corroding away.

Like many other places in Italy, the city started life as a 13th-century convent—this one associated with St. Francis of Assisi. Abandoned in the 19th century, it became a multi-faceted architectural complex in 1957.

La Scarzuola is a surreal architectural complex in Umbria (Italy) created by Tomaso Buzzi1 in the 20th century. It features seven amphitheaters, a miniature city, and esoteric symbols inspired by St. Francis of Assisi and alchemy.

The place feels unreal, but it’s there for the curious to see. (If you intend to visit, don’t arrive late.)

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Nestled in the virtuous wild Umbrian countryside province of Montegabbione (Terni) is a private property that needs booking in advance. Tomaso Buzzi’s ideal city is a compact masterpiece hidden to most.

You’d need to be determined to find it amidst the dense woods and uncontaminated hills.

To reach this special place you’ll have to travel along the rough stretches of dirt road that separate the Buzzian city from the rest of the world, enduring the jostling caused by the potholes and rocks that jut out from the road like not at all random obstacles placed to protect what has all the appearance of a sacred, almost mystical place.

The name of the place derives from the Scarza, a marsh plant2 that Saint Francis used to build a modest hut in 1218, when he came here seeking shelter. According to tradition, he planted a laurel and a rose bush—a combination which, together with the cypresses, can bee seen throughout the place.

In memory of the saint’s passage, a church and a convent were built and entrusted to the Friars Minor who remained there until the eighteenth century.

It was 1957 when Buzzi, a famous architect of the 20th century in Milan, began to build his ‘unpublished folly,’ and continued to do so until his death in 1981. What we can see today is the result of studies on the ‘ideal city’ according to the architect.

The citadel recreated here, also known as Città Buzziana, is a theatrical machine left intentionally unfinished. Visiting it you will discover seven theaters, indoors and outdoors, with natural and artificial sets, often overlapping each other creating countless perspectives and points of view.

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The numerous symbols, references and quotes that you will find at Scarzuola connect the sacred city, represented by the ancient convent, with the profane city, represented by the theater factories.

Buzzi’s literary and philosophical references were the Hypnerotomachia Pophilii by Francesco Colonna and the ‘Sforzinda’ by Filarete on one hand, the Park of Monsters of Bomarzo and the ‘Vittoriale’ by Gabriele D’Annunzio on the other.

The result is the hermetic-initiatory garden that was meant to be for Buzzi a sort of autobiography in stone—a deliberately unfinished legacy to posterity where the freest, most intimate and primordial Tomaso Buzzi was meant to shine through, finally freed from the limits and constraints that had characterized his career as an architect and artist in the world of aristocratic and bourgeois clients.

Buzzi himself tried to explain his work at Scarzuola, considered by many to be excessively eccentric, to those who had until then been his clients in the ‘real world’ and who now no longer recognized him.

“When I am with you I am dressed, and in a tie; when I am here, at the Scarzuola, I am naked, and you cannot bear this... Although I live among the people of the Bel Mondo almost like one of them, and work for clients in a serious and professional way, in truth I live a dream life, secret, among my papers, my drawings and my paintings, my sculptures. And even the Scarzuola becomes more and more, in living stone, my daydream, more and more vast, and complex, and rich in hidden meanings, allusions, metaphors, ‘concepts,’ inventions, large and small, secrets, allusions, echoes, fantasies, crystallizations, encrustations, memories.”3

The visit to the Buzzian city is a true Neo-Enlightenment initiation path, studded with complex and disorienting esoteric and Masonic symbols that have the explicit purpose of upsetting the consciences of visitors.

Buzzi explains in his notes that the Scarzuola “must be read and understood only by the unhappy few, that is, by the rare spirits who are congenial to me, the few unhappy elect.”

For this reason, the architect has never provided a univocal explanation of the work, which is open and unfinished by choice.

A journey within the journey

The Franciscan order owner the convent, known as the convent of the Santissima Annunziata della Scarzuola of the Reformed Observant Minors. Along with it is the church—an atrium with portico and a large square in front, surrounded by a stone wall with terracotta aedicules for the Via Crucis.

In the apse of the church, there’s a fresco from the first half of the 13th century, depicting Saint Francis in levitation. This is one of the first depictions of the saint, still outside the canons of official iconography.

From here, visitors must prepare for the physical and psychological immersion in the labyrinthine ‘ideal city.’

Marco Solari’s opening salvo is but a taste of what’s to come (in Italian only):

“At first, you won’t understand a thing. You come from another world which is different from this world. You come from a world where you are expected to do certain things in certain ways. But I’m about to bring you into a world where you’ll do very different things. Don’t worry, it grows on you!”

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