To be a Lady, to be a Lord

While reactions and events accumulate after the demonstrations in favor of women dignity and everyone future (the current one is the confirm mr.Berlusconi will be processed with immediate rite for concussion and exploitment of juvenile prostitution (!) ), I get a bit of time to post a reflection for the present and future.

My starting point is the official flag of the Milan municipality - you find it in the small figure of this article.

If glanced at superficially, its cross may resemble a Christian symbol. But interestingly, it isn't.

The symbol has, in fact, a deep meaning. The four white rectangle represent the old Milan \"quartieri\", the four district the town was built from in Middle Ages and the Renaissance. These \"quartieri\" were not only physical places, but also, and more importantly, people.

The red cross extending in between the white rectangles symbolizes the nobility, whose contribution was to join the diverging interest of the four \"quartieri\".

Old times, and old symbols.

But also, a meanings useful to us.

Sure to date there is not a \"nobility\", an aristocracy as it was during the Ducato times. And maybe, the most appropriate color today could be more magenta-pink than plainly red.

Yet we are in a deep need of some force able to unite an otherwise disgregating population.

In the last twenty years, the division forces operated without restriction. In fact, one of the key of mr.Berlusconi success was in reviving old divisions, inventing new ones, and exploiting them as a way to create enemies everywhere. The consequences are still evident: a society much weaker and less cohese than it was just thirty years ago.

Creating divisions daily demands a huge effort, and fosters the need of long-term healing.

But, as it exist a technology of fear and social disintegration, the same is true for union.

A way to re-build bridges might be to shift attention from identity and ideology (arguments inevitably conductive to confrontation) to real-world choices, of problematic nature, whose \"best\" solution naturally requires peaceful comparison of ideas and policybuilding.

In Italy we have many of these choices, which the current political class has not addressed visible, and whose definition/solution would contribute visibly and immediately to the well being, safety and worth of everyone.

Among them, for example:

• Build a National Energy Plan, and devise means to enforce it.




• Finding an area (just one, to begin) in which Italy as a whole can reach excellence; I'm imagining some technological field, in which it is possible to develop and sell new products worldwide, thus providing a positive contribution to the global economy.




• Imagine, and deploy, a new social \"order\", with a ranking and rewarding system more able to encourage creativity, innovation and competence.




• Devising new forms of beauty, of a practical type, which may be incorporated in goods, services, ideas not yet existing - while bridging the crazy gap among \"human activities\" and science the Italian culture owes to fascist era, and still existing.

Just examples. On the first (energy planning) I began posting to my Facebook page, informing my close friends. The next step will be to ask them to give them their contribution.

This requires, I'm well aware, time to study problems, and some kind of skill. In short, we should change ourselves (and the way we self-perceive) from simple observers to ladies and lords, in the specific sense of members of a sort of nobility.

The final aim would be twice: uniting, as I said, a disintegrated population is the most immediately useful. The other, of no less importance, is to show our politicians we can devise plans for the future, using just a bit of skill, study, quiet reflection and common good sense. In the hope they will feel threatened in the substance, to lose completely a leadership role they are not exerting in these days.

A third objective would be, allowing people to be more aware - and vote accordingly, whatever their orientation. The stake is competence, not identity, nor political \"collocation\". A final, hopeful aim would be the magenta-pink cross to expand, occupying all white squares. All \"common\" people evolving into lords and ladies.

That is, citizens. No less.

With love,

Mauri