To guarantee the survival of the human race, this ‘suspended’ time forced us to a compulsory isolation and social-distancing, gifting us with a precious element: time to reflect. Man was given the opportunity to ponder on what he really wanted for himself and for the environment that has been hosting him.

It is necessary, and indispensable, to investigate the relationship between man and Nature. What do we mean, today, by the words ‘Nature’ and ‘natural’? Are these notions now empty and fossilized or, on the contrary, still endowed with a meaning that we need to investigate further? To what extent can man understand and experience Nature as a preliminary condition for his existence?

Through planning and technical operations, man overrides his rootedness to the earth. Technology is the way in which man interacts with the natural order and builds the human one upon it.
the limit of this view is that technology dominates nature or even tends to replace it.

How can we react to this tendency that dehumanizes our lives without fulfilling us?

The individual and the community will have to rethink and deeply redefine society and professions. This will be an increasingly urgent necessity, possibly satisfied through a micro-economic model -‘economy of proximity’- , where individual abilities could be elevated.

It will become more and more important to know who physically produced a raw material , on which ‘terroir’ it has been planted, whether its production has safeguarded the environment and resulted in limed waste.

Surely, the most immediate progress will be visible within the large-scale retail chain stores. that may even become, in the not too far future, places for research.

large-scale retail chain stores should be redesigned as places of aesthetic research reflecting manual skills and craftsmanship that identify a specific territory and become themselves micro circular economies.

I hope Zarathustra words will become, an invitation for reflection to a new mankind:
“I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!”