Postcards From Paradise

With Postcards from paradise I want to reflect on the condition of man with respect to the nature at his disposal. Cities, in the westernized world, were seen, until just over a year ago, as places of opportunity, work, leisure, privileges. The pandemic radically changed this perception: what appeared to be privileges quickly became restrictions and in some cases even prisons. A paradigm reversal therefore took place, something that man had already experienced before the Industrial Revolution and the centralization of communities in urban centers (with relative displacement from rural areas). This almost anthropological reflection led me to visit - through Google Streetview - marginal areas, where nature should still predominate today. Yet, I realized that living in the city or in the countryside makes no difference for those who live in a poor country or in war, and above all I realized that this is the condition of most of the people who populate this planet. In Kenya there is no drinking water for fifty percent of the population, the same percentage of unemployed and millions of people living in poverty. In some districts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, life expectancy does not exceed fifty years. In 2020 there was a war in Armenia, in Afghanistan women are stoned and flogged daily and now, with the US leaving the country, things will get even worse. In Nigeria, drinking water is a luxury. And I could go on indefinitely. And so I return to our need for freedom, to our nostalgia for lost privileges. Then, I see a woman navigating in streetview walking on a dirt road, with nothing to carry: not a bag, nothing at all. And then I think that there are many more paradigm shifts than we imagine, that our point of view on things is dominant not only in our individual life, but in the perception of the world itself. And then perhaps these postcards can timidly rewrite a story that we all must find the courage to read.