Some years ago, one Sunday morning on an island in the Indian Ocean, I left my friends and I went for a walk along the shore. I went past some great palm trees that spread out along the beach following voices. Joyous ones. They came from a tiny village. The inhabitants were dressed in next to nothing. The odd blouse, some shorts, straw hats. They were singing. Someone laughed displaying whiter than white teeth. The homes were huts, tiny but comfortable. There was a stream with transparent water with fish and mudskippers, the fish that walk, that I’ve only seen there. They looked at me unperturbed, just as the local people did. They’ll have been thinking that I was a miserable wretch. They had everything and I had to earn everything for myself with the slavery of work. A young lad came to me and offered me a coconut. And then I felt poor like never before. It wasn’t a great feeling. What was I doing with my life?
The fear of becoming poverty-stricken is palpable today, in the air. People are terrorised by the idea of losing their job and that big or small amount that they have saved up. The Italian word “miseria” is defined in the dictionary as "capace di pregiudicare seriamente la dignità morale e sociale di un individuo" {able to seriously prejudice the moral and social dignity of an individual}, but “miserable” means above all “to feel miserable”. No one can make you feel miserable without your permission. The civilisation of consumption has created the new set of miserable people, the ones that cannot get access to consumption. The more you consume, the less you are miserable, the more you are envied. Some call it evolution, others progress. The GDP guides the decisions of the governments, not the search for happiness. Renouncing a useless product is a revolutionary act. If the masses were to become aware of that, the world would change without a single rifle shot.
In the 1950s, our rivers were clear and full of fish. The air was clean. Meadows surrounded the city. You lived with little, but with simplicity. You went on holiday to your relatives by train, perhaps in third class with wooden benches. But the train was on time, clean and the passengers were courteous. The crisis can become a return to the past, a moment of rethinking our priorities and our needs. A deconstruction and reconstruction of a new world where no one can feel miserable. If for Napoleon the revolution was an opinion supported by bayonets, today the revolution is an opinion supported by shopping. Is there anyone who can lend me 20 euro? They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.