In the Faculties of Engineering (but not only) the word "earth" has always been synonymous with soil: soil to build on, soil to work on, soil to extract unlimited resources from (fossils, first and foremost), in any case soil to exploit. This ideological (the separation between mind and nature which was born with the scientific revolution) and productivist vision (increasingly ferocious and extractive capitalism) has produced, and continues to produce, enormous damage to the planet, desertifying it, reducing its biodiversity, impoverishing it. The mythology underlying engineering studies is based on the demolition of every limit or barrier (the longest bridge, the fastest car, the most accelerated production) and constitutes the most efficient ally of unlimited growth (at the basis of the Odysseus’ myth who goes beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the limits of the divine).

It has been said that all of this is dominated by the silence culture, a culture that is silent on everything that should instead be listened to, debated on, compared with: the silence of the poor, of the damned of the earth, of the exploited and, now, of the many dead in wars fought for hunger for land, water, for resources that this land wisely disposes for our survival, for a dignity now wounded forever.

Who cries in the night of the rubble?

We didn't believe it would return

Rationality would defend us

Playing God was not a good deal

Hubris has devastated us

Packs of demigods wander rabidly

We who came from an animal past

From the heart of darkness

We dreamed a nightmare

The return to the animal.

It is time to change paradigms and words that are now worn out: earth means "mother-earth" or Gaia, Biosphere, planetary ecosystem, a place that hosts us, that produces life and everything we need. Defined with a neologism, the earth is Matrie, a physical and metaphorical place of welcome as opposed to Patria, a useless, irrecoverable word. Patria as "Homeland is still the male nation (or rather - in a semantic reversal - the female nation whose inviolability is guaranteed by males), it is the precipitate of the worst warmongering and excluding, rejecting and classist rhetoric."

Thinking in terms of Matria, says Micaela Murgia, allows us to eradicate the perspective of Nation, since it means mother of all that in each of us’ experience is not an imperative subject, but she is the first living seen, the first loved, the one always desired. Men are 100% culture and 100% nature, says Edgar Morin. Impossible to separate; the mind is not more noble than the body as Descartes thought, both products of a biological evolution that binds us to the earth, we are not occasional inhabitants, we belong to it like animals and plants. We are part of a planetary ecosystem moved and fed by solar energy. The wind, the tides, the rain and all atmospheric events are born from this energy that we are little able to use, unlike nature that is animated by it and from which it draws its beauty and abundance.

In 1957, a man-made object was launched into the universe and for a few weeks it circled the earth following the same laws of gravity that determine the movement of celestial bodies. But, Hannah Arendt states, due to a rather curious phenomenon, joy was not the dominant feeling, but rather relief for "the first step towards the liberation of men from the earthly prison". In commenting on this event, Arendt argued that the earth is the quintessence of the human condition and terrestrial nature, as far as we know, it is the only one in the universe that can provide human beings with a habitat in which to move and breathe without effort and without artifice. Therefore, this feeling of "liberation" expresses the effort to make life artificial too, to sever the last bond by which man is still among the children of nature.

The new paradigm, instead, focuses on a new culture that is up to the times, a culture that requires a profound rethinking of the relationship linking human beings to the rest of life on earth, a culture that allows us to exit the Anthropocene, a culture that requires an even stronger radicality than that at the origin of the practices and struggles having characterized the past century to which many are still anchored. The climate crisis and with it, inequalities, migrations, will tend to worsen: this is confirmed by the communities of scientists who at the same time warn us that we are approaching a point of no return.

Fighting the climate crisis requires not only mitigation efforts, but also an attitude of adaptation that involves relationships between people, especially the most fragile, the poor, the exploited, the most oppressed. The ecological transition, or better yet, ecological conversion, as Viale argues, must be a transition that moves above all from below, where the most virtuous experiences already underway today can be replicated by other communities. The new perspective is one that overcomes division between culture and nature, spirit and matter, mind and body, and that calls into question unlimited growth and development. Growth is nothing more than the accumulation of capital and requires the exploitation of the earth and human beings. Development in the form of “sustainable”, “human”, “ecological”, is its presentable face. This semantic shift leads to devastating practices, such as nuclear power (considered “sustainable” by the European community), the production of CO2 and its burial (to continue producing without changing anything), the exploitation of entire countries and the seabed, in search of rare minerals for the construction of batteries for electric cars. But world governments, while advertising such remedies as necessary for the transition, none of them say that we should consume less, travel less. Eating a cake and then having it back exactly as it was, as the definition of sustainability claims, is a physically unattainable goal, as Georgescu-Roegen already explained to us on the basis of the second principle of thermodynamics.

Giorgio Nebbia already proposed in 1999 to abolish the word sustainability and all its adjectives. Sustainability is the trick that governments use to make people believe that it is possible to continue in the same direction with a few patches. Gregory Bateson, referring to his knowledge of the Bible, taught us that the ecological god cannot be mocked and that there are no shortcuts in ecology. Ecological conversion instead indicates a U-turn on the development direction and means first of all taking care of the earth and its living beings.

The new perspective requires renouncing the centrality of man in the universe, renouncing patriarchy, imperialism and all narrow-minded nationalisms, wars, all of them. And it is the one based on welcoming communities and on the valorisation of care work, activities linked to the production and reproduction of life, including social ones that keep communities together and strengthen their bonds. True “sustainable development”, the one hindered by strong powers, is the one linked to the improvement of the living conditions of any generation, the abolition of every type of human beings’ exploitation and life-support ecosystems, the one linked to the welcome of those fleeing from wars or desertification, the abolition of armaments in every country and, therefore, a newfound harmony with the earth.

In history there is never continuity; when powers, however strong they may be, assert themselves, it is equally probable that they will quickly fall following revolts. Virtuous communities, different lifestyles, even if they remain silent for years, can burst onto the scene giving rise to new and unexpected reversals, like karst rivers that forcefully resurface after long stretches crossed underground, silent. It has already happened. It will not happen spontaneously; every change determines mourning and joy; it is likely to happen as a result of non-peaceful revolts, certainly not with resignation to consumerism and single thought, at least until there is nothing left to consume on this earth.

There are those among us who believe that the only conflict is between men for the possession of power or for the maintenance of dominance. I believe that the current era has highlighted that this same conflict now affects those same men against mother earth, the dispenser of goods. There are not two separate conflicts: the dominance of men over their fellow men includes the broader one of dominance over nature. Harmony with nature needs peace, it is peace. As Universities, as scholars, devotees and custodians of disinterested critical thought, we have the duty to contribute to erecting these casemates of resistance in the universities and in the territories; silent sentinels that will be useful when humanity, hopefully, rediscovers the Reason.

See, Fate riposare la Terra

Photo. Author: Jim Veneman/ Women of the ELCA © 2017 Women of the ELCA

Note: The title is taken from a book by Giovanni Franzoni from 1999