THE WISDOM OF THE REASONS FOR SNAIL 
In brief treatise on the decline serena S. Latouche (ed. Bollati Basic Books 2008) takes the beautiful metaphor of the snail Ivan Illich to indicate an alternative route to that, much like a dead end, where the myth of unlimited growth has slipped.
In this situation, it is urgent to rediscover the wisdom of the snail. In fact, the snail not only teaches us the slowness, but there should be a lesson even more essential.
The snail - explains Ivan Illich - Build the delicate architecture of its shell by adding one after another of the increasingly wide turns, then stops abruptly and begins to create convolutions time decreasing. One loop would give a larger shell size to a sixteen times greater. Instead of contributing to the welfare of the animal, it places an excessive weight. At that point, any increase in its productivity would only serve to remedy the difficulties arising from one dimension of the upper limits set by its purpose. After the cut-off point of magnification of turns, the problems of excessive growth multiply in geometric progression, while the biological capacity of the snail can only follow, at best, an arithmetic progression.
This divorce from the snail geometrical ratio, which for a time she had married, shows us the way to think of a company decrease, possibly calm and friendly.
(S. Latouche, 2008, p.33)
Latouche for the unlimited growth of the economy think in terms of geometric progression, leaning on three pillars:
advertising, the credit
el '
accelerated product obsolescence . Advertising is a necessary tool to stimulate the desire to constantly new consumer goods, credit, however, offers the one hand, the ability to purchase consumer goods to those who otherwise would not have the adequate resources and, secondly, allow entrepreneurs to invest without having the necessary capital; the planned obsolescence of products, then, is the need to continually create new products.
The central problem created by this economic logic is that our higher-growth comes up against the limits of the finiteness of the biosphere. The regenerative capacity of planet earth can no longer follow the question, man transforms resources into waste faster than nature is able to transform this waste into new resources. In this regard, Latouche introduces the concept of ecological footprint.
The ecological footprint
Basically, the ecological footprint is a statistical index used to measure the request against human nature. It relates the human consumption of natural resources with the earth's capacity to regenerate. In other words, the Ecological Footprint measures the area of \u200b\u200bbiologically productive land and sea needed to regenerate the resources consumed by a human population and absorb the corresponding waste. Using the ecological footprint, you can estimate how many planet Earth needed to support humanity if everyone lived according to a certain lifestyle.
The ecological footprint concept was introduced in 1996 by Mathis Wackernagel and Rees Wlliam. Since 1999, WWF regularly update the calculation of the ecological footprint in its Living Planet Report. Studies carried out worldwide and some countries show that the global footprint is larger than the capacity bioproductive world. According to Mathis Wackernagel, in 1961, humanity was using 70% of the overall capacity of the biosphere, but in 1999 had increased to 120%. This means that we are consuming renewable resources more than we, that we are eroding the natural capital and in the future we will have fewer raw materials for our consumption. The following table shows the data for some countries (each country is given the footprint per capita). The figure compares with the world average biological capacity which is 1.78 hectares per capita (these data are drawn the 2006 edition of WWF's Living Planet Report).
IEIE to earth
Austria 09.04 06.09 -7.82 -3.12
USA
Sweden 1.6 Australia 6.6 -4.82 -4.32 -5.82
Canada 6.7 France 5.6 2.4 Italy
-3.82 -2.42 -3.62
Argentina
Spain 4.5 2.3 - 00:52
China 1.6
00:18
Egypt Ethiopia
02.04 -2.42 0.98 0.8
India 0.8 0.98
Mondo1.78
Latouche commented the figures relating to the ecological:
So men have long abandoned the path of a sustainable civilization, which would require limited to 1.8 hectares per person, assuming that the current population remains stable. Furthermore, they are average hides huge disparities ... Although there are considerable differences of bio-productive space available in different countries, we are very far from a global equality. ... In other words, humanity is already consuming 30% more than the regenerative capacity of the biosphere . If everyone lived like the French, it would take three planets if everyone lived and you're like our American friends. How can such a situation? This is due to two phenomena. First, like son Prodigal we are not content to live off our income but we live by exploiting the family fortune. Burn in a few decades than the planet has produced over millions of years ... Second, in the North we receive massive technical assistance from the South Most African countries consume less than 0.2 hectares per capita of bio-productive space , which corresponds to one tenth of the planet, and at the same time provide us with food for our cattle ... (Ibid, pp.35-36)
In practice these data tell us that over-consumption of privileged countries is realized at the expense of future generations and to the detriment of poor countries. So we are walking towards a road that is comparable the growth of the snail shell to another fateful blows that make the unbearable weight of the shell.
The myth of growth and its origins Erich Fromm To Have or be in
(Mondadori 1977) already outlined with vision and clarity of the overall picture of the crisis of values \u200b\u200bassociated with the myth of unlimited growth. This myth is actually the son of what Fromm calls the great promise of unlimited progress:
the great promise of unlimited progress - namely the promise of mastery over nature, abundance of material, the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people and unlimited freedom personnel - has sustained the hopes and faith of generations that have occurred since the beginning of the industrial age ... The grandeur of the Great Promise, the amazing material and intellectual achievements of the industrial age, must be kept in mind if you want to understand the extent of the trauma that is produced today by the finding of his failure. It is undeniable that the industrial era has failed to fulfill the great promise, and a growing number of people are now becoming aware of the following: •
unlimited satisfaction of all desires the good life does not, nor is the way to achieve happiness or only the most pleasure. •
the dream of being the absolute masters of our lives did not end when we began to open their eyes and realize that we all become the gears of bureaucracy, and that our thoughts, our feelings and our tastes are manipulated by governments, industry and the mass media controlled by one or the other. •
economic progress has been limited to rich countries and the gap between rich nations and poor nations has widened more than ever. •
the same technical progress has resulted in the emergence of ecological dangers and risks of nuclear conflict, and both having the others, acting separately or together, can put an end to the entire civilization and perhaps the whole life.
(Fromm 1977, pp.13-15)
The crisis of the idea of \u200b\u200bunlimited progress, typical of modernity, where the future is a promise, has given way to the perception of future
as a threat, a perception that has relapse also in terms of personal experiences.
In the essay "The era of the sad passions Benasayag and Schmit (Feltrinelli 2005), the first philosopher and psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and the second, referring to the lessons contained in Freud's Civilization and its Discontents, suggest that the pathologies of individuals can not be understood except within a general crisis of society and culture. It is the theme of the end of modernity.
It can be said, citing Foucault, that the age of man has passed away. We could also talk about the end of modernity or the breaking of the teleological historicism, namely the weakening of the belief that he was at the foundation of our society and which manifested itself in the hope of a better future and unalterable: a kind of messianism that assured a future scientific bright and happy as a promised land ... Here we are interested in tackling the problem in a very concrete way, trying to understand how something as seemingly external to our existence could have a major impact on our daily lives ... we try to focus on an issue that seems central to understand that you immediately this crisis originated from outside of the interior: the way in which modern man lives and perceives the time, its time. This perception is profoundly influenced by what might be called a change of sign of the future ... are witnessing in contemporary Western civilization, the transition from a trust to a huge extreme distrust as to the future ... We strongly believe that we would be able to "explain the laws of nature, "and then change to what we felt bad. What no one knew about the disease was considered in biology is not yet known ... In this nuance of the "not yet" echoed the hope and promise of future achievement ... The Western culture has been formed from this "not yet" full of promise messianic ... The West has based its dreams for the future on the belief that human history is inevitably a history of progress ... Today there is a climate of pessimism that suggests a future far less bright, dark ... not to mention pollution of any type, social inequality, economic disasters, the emergence of new diseases, the long litany of threats has plunged the future from extremely positive to a dark and equally extreme negativity. The future, the very idea of \u200b\u200bthe future, now bears the opposite sign, positive changes into pure negativity, the promise becomes a threat. (Benasayag, Schmit, 2005, pp.17-20)
These considerations can be better understood if one refers to the two conceptions of time that the philosophy has given us: the concept of linear and circular. The idea of \u200b\u200blinear time that can be represented as a line projected into the infinite, is characterized by a vision in which the past is negative, this is the time of his passing and the future is the promised land. We read about what it says Umberto Galimberti in his column on the charge of the Republic (21/02/2009):
The Christian worldview provides that the past is evil (original sin), the present and the future redemption, salvation. Similarly science conceives the past as evil (ignorance), as this research and the future as progress. But Marxism believes that the past is wrong (injustice), this surrender (revolution), the future paradise on earth. Even psychoanalysis think the past as a disease, the present and the future as a cure as healing. The vision of the Christian world with his optimism has pervaded all cultural expressions of the West, which therefore is Christian not only in its roots, but also in the tree, branches and leaves. But, as Nietzsche warned us today, "God is dead" in the sense that there was a time and created worlds ... and now there is more that the world is as though God were not ... With the death of God is finished in the West ... The Christian optimism optimism that Christianity had gone into Western culture has lapsed, and instead has been replaced nihilism in the horizon ... It deployed the technique, which tends only to its autopotenziamento we speak of "development" which is a quantitative dimension, but not "progress" which refers to the qualitative improvement of the human condition. The result is that today we no longer live the Christian optimism ... and we focus on a present that does not look at the future, because he sees not as a promise, but as a threat, which looks away, as always happens the face of what you can not control and above all, that is no longer able to accommodate our hope of redemption, salvation, progress, health.
no coincidence Galimberti quotes Nietzsche. It is to him that we owe the revival of circular or cyclical conception of time, echoing a view of time thinking not only of its greek, but also of the East (Hinduism and Buddhism). The birth of philosopher Nietzsche was marked by the intuition of circularity of their time, insight had in 1881 during a walk in the Upper Engadine, in Thus Spake Zarathustra says: "Everything goes, everything comes back: turn the wheel of being eternally ". Nietzsche, as to leave behind him not only the vision straight time inaugurated by the Jewish-Christian thought, but also the category of teleology according to which the world has a purpose that gives meaning and to work towards. There is a goal that transcends man. The purpose and meaning are found in humans and present.
Degrowth serena
Degrowth, within the paradigm of growth, is seen only as a disaster by avoiding. In his essay The myths of our time (Feltrinelli, 2009) Galimberti Notes:
children as fathers are, which in turn increased the work of grandparents, we are now the third or fourth generation that is growing at a rate that history does not has ever known .. The category's growth has thus become a mindset, a mood, an anxiety remedy, a guarantee for themselves and their children, a deposit for the future, so if the effect of Maastricht, if tidying up the accounts, if a financial hard, whether for games reckless of international finance in the growth dims hope this happens a paralysis of thought, a feeling of confusion, anxiety for the future, a sense of unease as aircraft when an air pocket and slips, all compounds, shown off denied by the tranquility of our stomach chills, but we feel only.
And so every man for himself feels the thrill of "zero growth" or even the "decline" ...
The theme of peaceful decline, thus, can be considered only if we change the paradigm and we frame this concept in a different frame thought. Thus, Latouche, in the essay cited above, explains the concept of decline serene
The watchword of the decrease was mainly intended to strongly emphasize the necessity of abandoning the objective of unlimited growth, a goal whose engine is essentially the pursuit of profit by the holders of capital, with disastrous consequences for the environment and thus for humanity ... For us, the decrease is not negative growth, oxymoron that reflects perfectly the imaginary domain of growth. We know that a mere slowdown sinks in awe of our society, increasing unemployment rates and falls the abandonment of social programs, health, educational and cultural environment that ensures a minimum quality of life. We can imagine the disaster a negative growth rate! As there is nothing worse than a society of work without work, there's nothing worse than a society of growth in which growth becomes a fugitive. This civil and social decline is exactly what awaits us if we do not change our direction. For all these reasons, the decline is conceivable only within a <
>, that is part of a system based on a different logic ... His goal is a society in which we live better working and consuming less. This is a proposal needed to restore the inventiveness and creativity of imagination captured by totalitarian economy, development and progress.
(Latouche 2008, pp.17-19)
We are faced with the alternative that the economist Kenneth Boulding called the choice between the economy of the cowboy, based on the robbery and plunder of natural resources, and economy of the cosmonaut for which the land is a single spaceship, without a limitless resource, meaning inability to tap the infinite resources and the inability to support a growing body of polluting waste. Boulding concluded by saying that anyone who believes it is possible infinite growth in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. The eight R
degrowth
But what are the proposals of the decline? Latouche effectively sums up the point of view of communication with the eight A:
... the great transformation necessary for the construction of an autonomous society of decrease can be represented as the articulation of eight changes interdependent and mutually reinforcing. You can summarize all of these changes in a virtuous circle of eight A: re-evaluate, reconceptualize, refurbish, redeploy, relocate, reduce, reuse, recycle. These eight interdependent objectives can trigger a process of decline peaceful, friendly and sustainable.
Let's see now reflect on the meaning of these eight R to rebuild the sense of the discourse on the decline of Latouche.
Reassess
We live in societies based on old bourgeois values: honesty, service status, transmitting knowledge, job well done and so on. Yet <<è sotto gli occhi di tutti che questi valori sono diventati vuoti simulacri (…), quel che conta è solo quanto denaro avete intascato, poco importa come, e quante volte siete comparsi in televisione>> (cited in C, Les Castoriadis Carrefour du Labyrinthe vol.4 Le Seuil. Paris 1996, p.68). To put it another way, with Dominique Belpomme, the "garments of the system reveal megalomania individualistic rejection of the moral quest for convenience, selfishness. "You can then immediately see the value of claim, who should now have the better of the dominant values. Altruism should prevail over selfishness, cooperation on unbridled competition, the pleasure of leisure ethos of the game's obsession with work, the importance of social life on unlimited consumption, autonomy sull'eteronomia, the taste of fine work on the efficiency with productivity, on the reasonable rational, relational material and so on.
Reassessment
then as reversal of dominant values, where the alternative of background that seems to echo between having or be referred to Fromm spoke brilliantly in his essay mentioned above. Comparing a haiku by Basho, Japanese poet who lived in the seventeenth century, and a poem by Tennyson, English poet of the nineteenth century, Fromm known as haiku transpire in the joy of just watching carefully the flower (it's a look that leads to identify with and enjoy the flower of his life), while in the poetry of Tennyson, the flower can not simply be covered, must be torn so that it can hold (the cost of living in possession of the flower). Fromm clarifies what it means for him to be: With
"to be" existential I mean that attitude where you do not have anything nor does it aspire to be anything, but it is in a state of joy, will use their power in a creative manner, it is one with the world.
(Fromm 1977, p. 36.)
The joy of being, then, simply comes from self-realization - its bloom - and feel in relation to the world. Having, however, takes on a predatory nature: there simply to look at the flower, you should rip to gain possession.
The second R is proposed by Latouche reconceptualize :
The changing values \u200b\u200bgives rise to a different view of the world and therefore another way of seeing reality. Reconceptualize, or redefine / resize, is essential for example for the concepts of wealth and poverty, but also for the combination of hell, founder of the imaginary economic, rarity / abundance, it is necessary to deconstruct a matter of urgency. How are perfectly suited Ivan Illich and Jean-Pierre Dupuy, the economy transforms the natural abundance in the artificial creation of scarcity and lack of need through the appropriation of nature and its commercialization. Last illustration of the phenomenon after the privatization of water, the ownership of living organisms, in particular with GMOs. In this way the peasants are expropriated the natural fertility of the plants to the business foods.
(Latouche 2008, pp.46-47) The third R is
restructure, this term adaptation of the productive and social relationships to changing values.
The fourth R is redistributed: This redistribution concerns and relations between North and South is the relationship between different generations. As we said, speaking of the ecological footprint, our over-consumption current pay him at the expense of the South and to future generations. The fifth is
R relocate :
relocalization clearly means to produce mostly local products necessary to meet the needs of the population, financed by local businesses in collective savings collected locally. All productions are available on a local scale for local needs should therefore be carried out locally. If the ideas must ignore the border, unlike the movement of goods and capital should be limited to the indispensable. On the other hand, with a view to building a peaceful society of decrease, the leakage is not only economic. They are also the politics, culture, the meaning of life which must find an anchorage area. This implies that any decision on economic, political and cultural may be taken at local level must be taken at that level.
(ibid., pp.49-50) The sixth
R reduce , which means Latouche lessen the impact on the biosphere caused by the over-privileged countries. Bulimia part of the world where the consumption of full hides the emptiness of being, has too high a price for everyone. The seventh-eighth
R are reuse / recycle : the issue of reuse / recycle now also entered the agenda of large companies such as BASF (created a fabric made of nylon fiber recycled indefinitely) or Xerox (photocopiers are conceived as an assembly of components that can be recycled at the end of life of the machine). The political will to move in this direction, however, is still weak.
Latouche, after describing in summary form the eight R's, notes that:
It can be said that the eight Rs are all equally important. However, three have a strategic role: the revaluation, as chair of any changes, the reduction in sums up what all the practical imperatives of decrease, and relocation, as it concerns the daily life and work of millions of people. The relocation will therefore occupies a central place in utopia concrete and can be declined almost immediately on the political agenda. It can be said that the decrease renew the old formula of ecologists: think globally, act locally. In fact, if the utopia implies a decrease of global thinking, its implementation may be initiated only on the field.
(ibid., pp.56-57)
The analysis of the regional vote
The keyword indicates leakage believe a sense of direction now acutely felt in the context of Italian politics. The success of parties like the Northern League, which is strongly rooted in the territory and tend to federalists, witness. I take in this regard some considerations on the recent regional elections taking place in an article titled THE REASONS abstention.
The actual turnout along with blank ballots or no accounts for 40% of the electorate, the first Italian party. What does this mean? Disaffection with the major parties, the establishment of the Northern League and the Movement 5 stars are heterogeneous phenomena? In my opinion, the answer is that these phenomena should be included within the same framework.
vote in the South and the North for the league you can read a need for closeness and local roots, which in itself is a vital thrust to balance the processes of globalization. On the other hand, the affirmation of grillini, in addition to channel popular anger towards the "big politics", responds to the urgent need to talk about concrete issues (eg ripubblicizzazione the water, the collection ...).
We are seeing a crisis ever deeper understanding of the principle of representation, lived as a white bill to politicians once they get power they forget their place in the city, at least for the time of the legislature. They will return later to knock on the door after five years at the end of the mandate.
If you really want to find a political sense, must be rooted in the territories, listen to the needs and try to give answers ...
The need for roots in the territory, proximity to the national policy should be engaged to bring it to other outcomes than the snarling Racism in the league.
If one aims to build the alternative is to cultivate an alternative political vision: it is not longer than tactics or prudent navigation view.
