Grafica e comunicazione

Let No One Feel Excluded

On a Sunday in late April we read, contrary to our usual habit, the front page of Il Sole 24 Ore before discarding it immediately after purchase: an action only apparently reckless, the fleeting purchase being entirely functional to the reading of the always estimable cultural supplement enclosed within.

The two main stories had immediately seized our attention. The first highlighted how the wars unleashed across strategic zones of the globe were enriching — so to speak — the principal stock exchanges, that is to say, the triumphant speculative finance held in the hands of the planet's most rarefied élite, and how they were instead impoverishing, or rather devastating, the so-called "real economy" with which the immense masses of the world's populations must reckon every single day amid precarity, inflation, degrowth and scarcity. The other was a fine photo-story that placed in poetic relief the heartfelt invocation of our Head of State in favour of peace («Pace, pace, pace»).

More than the two stories themselves — all things considered rather banal — it was the tone adopted to describe them that aroused our curiosity.

The collapse of the real economy and the simultaneous triumph of financial markets, presented dishonestly as an "American paradox" (not, as would be accurate, as the effect of the catastrophic neoliberal drift of the so-called West as a whole), were described almost as a natural event — an earthquake, a tsunami — to which, however, no one evidently feels any obligation to in some way support the victims for the damage sustained. Nothing more than inescapable reality, therefore. The marvellous world of "catallaxy", of the market as spontaneous order: everything will sort itself out, and everyone must fend for themselves. Such is the implicit synthesis.

Mattarella, on the other hand, and as always, was treated as prophet among prophets, infallible agent of universal good. A pity that it is never clarified on what basis — at least in relation to the subject illustrated — given that in order to lower tensions and favour the diplomatic reconciliation of peoples he saw fit, in these recent years: to call Putin Hitler; to liken the government of the Russian Federation to the Third Reich; to encourage the uncivil discrimination of artists, athletes and plain, peaceful Russian citizens; to allow our government to support politically and logistically a genocide; to allow our industries (including those with state shareholdings) to arm a genocide — and one could go on.

Shortly thereafter, on page IX of the storied supplement, we were captivated by yet another masterly piece by Claudio Giunta, entitled "Se l'egemonia ce l'ha l'imbecillità" ("If Imbecility Holds Hegemony") — a commentary on Andrea Minuz's latest book — closed with these words:

"Yes, the theme is ancient, but those old enough to make comparisons genuinely feel that for some twenty years now the wind of imbecility has become a hurricane, and that imbeciles are thick as grass. The fault of smartphones? Of social networks? Of democracy? Or is it simply that one grows old? Who knows. But it is consoling to find allies, kindred souls who, like us, stand aghast, and who know better than us how to describe the colour of the times. Let us close ranks, Andrea, with what follows!"

We too have long been ready for what follows, ready for death — but precisely for that reason we would like to approach it with dignity, and also with a certain taste for revolt. Above all, revolt against the all-too-flaunted, all-too-cruel imbecility of those set above us (we being those below). Because, it is true, we are all kneaded of imbecility — but beyond certain thresholds of cruel and flaunted imbecility it becomes indispensable to ask "what is to be done?", beginning by opposing whoever governs us today, regardless of the presumed colour of their jersey (we having long been steered by the so-called "autopilot") — whilst knowing full well that we can never prevail against those who govern those who govern us, the overlords of our overlords.

For this, we believe, is the vulnus: the enormous distance that has opened up between those who govern us and those who govern those who govern us — one further degree of separation between (true) power and the populations. Far beyond, therefore, the absolutism of power as we have known it throughout History: an absolute king nonetheless showed his face, as well as his body, with all the attendant risks; an absolute king, confronted with dramatic crises, was ultimately forced to genuinely contend with some authoritative counterpart — the example of Louis XVI and the bankruptcy of the kingdom, which finally compelled him to convene the Estates-General, which had the faculty to draft the cahiers des doléances in which the three estates could express their grievances and desires, stands there to prove it. The oligarchies that today govern that opaque conglomerate we define with double contradiction as "liberal democracies" are instead faceless, and without credible counterparts, from the heights of an altogether senseless and unprecedented economic-financial supremacy; without any representative assembly of the three social orders (which in practice no longer exist) to which they might answer. A management of power that is moreover increasingly depersonalised, founded on artificial intelligence as a geopolitical lever and instrument of social control.

We arrive thus, as ever by tortuous routes, at the matter in question: the impact of artificial intelligence on the population, on us. Update after update we are reaching the breaking point of the system (of the market, as we know it). If no one will any longer be necessary from a productive standpoint, will a poverty income be invented, or will those billions of unemployed be left to rot adrift in the peripheries of the world? And in any case: will the masters of steam (those who govern us and the very few who govern those who govern us, the holders of economic-financial power and of the machines) suffice to keep alive any form of market economy? Obviously not. And then?

Perhaps then it is true that a great war will be the resolution ("War alone is the world's hygiene", Marinetti), both in quantitative terms (a drastic thinning of the numbers) and qualitative ones (a drastic scaling back of individual and collective ambitions). A war that the West does indeed seem to be planning with all its residual forces and their relative diabolical contrivances. A path altogether easy to trace in its future stages, yet silenced, forbidden from debate — at least with regard to its extreme consequences. One speaks of absolute enemies, existential threats to be annihilated, of massive rearmament, of a war economy — but not of what this will entail, inescapably, in practical terms. Very shortly.

And if instead, for pure diversion, we were to try imagining rulers (our direct overlords, that is, the Presidents and Heads of State of individual nations) better than the current ones — at least in good part, therefore somewhat less beholden to their own overlords and above all less imbecile than the present lot — and thus capable of earning (at the risk of their own lives, it goes without saying) a certain degree of direct governability over peoples, a space of autonomy in defence and care of the wellbeing of the populations they are meant to represent? What could they do, on a practical level, to begin countering the devastating drift?

First of all they might seek to establish a double global moratorium:

— one, entirely new, on the limitation of the use of artificial intelligence; — one that restores the rules on nuclear proliferation.

And thereafter all the rest: the return to the field of diplomacy and international law; a fair universal taxation of multinationals; a decent wealth tax and a sound package of restrictive reforms on speculative finance. With the triumphant return of the welfare state as absolute priority.

One will say: chimeras, dreams, illusions, fantasies…

Returning, feet on the ground, to the first two points. It comes naturally to bring together nuclear energy and artificial intelligence. Nuclear energy, the outcome of a finite chain of operations, can at a certain point take two directions:

— productive energy on one side; — destructive energy on the other.

Artificial intelligence is instead a potentially infinite process (and this alone should inspire dread) which can take two similarly divergent directions:

— productive intelligence (with managerial, medical, infrastructural, recreational innovations, etc.); — destructive intelligence (with weapons systems, and their kin).

However, as regards artificial intelligence and unlike nuclear energy, both trajectories (productive and destructive) can only lead to the annihilation of our civilisations, with a single difference: the time required for annihilation. Because even the artificial intelligence that appears at first glance to be in our favour (productive) is in reality destined to negate our form of sustenance — labour — as guarantor of at least a limited degree of individual liberty. And no one may console themselves with illusions. The phrase "my work will always be indispensable", applied to whatever occupation one cares to name, presupposes a failure of imagination, or of foresight.*

26/05/2026 Filippo Maglione