Grafica e comunicazione

A touch of healthy optimism

Owing to our venerable age, we have watched, decade after decade, a certain idea of freedom fade into submission, passed off as necessity by means of the permanent state of exception; step by step, through many junctures, the most important of which were deliberately planned and punctuated by significant events that more or less all of us know only too well, albeit from perspectives that vary with each individual’s degree of imperviousness to propaganda.

In our latitudes (Western, so to speak) we have gone from the rather bastardly consumerist epic of the hedonism of those who feel they are on the right side of History (free-market capitalism, tempered by the welfare state thanks to its competition with the regime beyond the Iron Curtain, that failed state capitalism) to arrive, in our own day, at the vile blackmail of an armed and self-contradictory victimhood; one in which, for example, we create the conditions for conflicts to erupt, only to complain of the wickedness of those who suffered those conditions and allowed themselves the luxury of reacting, thereby earning the privilege of being “annihilated” (in words and not only in words, unfortunately). Meanwhile we have passed from a very imperfect democratic system to an almost perfect oligarchic one, albeit within the geopolitical pattern of the “fall of the empire”. Greatly raising the degree of cruelty, and of bastardry.

All this — the same old tune, admittedly, but a necessary one for understanding the breeding ground for the rise and triumph of the technocratic oligarchy — by means of devices ever more sophisticated and powerful, yet ever more familiar, for now still geared to serving as tools for the expansion of mass individual narcissism, indispensable for the development of the horizontal clash between half-wits ever more bereft of means and of spirit — not to mention class consciousness.

Is AI doing the rest?

And here, with this rhetorical question, the discussion might be considered closed. But this time let us try to be optimistic.

If it is certain that AI will take work away from almost everyone, it is just as certain that it will not be able to take the work of the spirit away from any of us; at least, not from those who have a spirit; and that alone strikes us as no small thing. Incidentally, the work of the spirit is well defined in Massimo Cacciari’s 2020 book of the same name (Il lavoro dello spirito): “Creative, autonomous work, human work considered in all its active potency [...] means the liberation of every activity from the condition of commanded, dependent, and thus alienated labour.”

The next question, perhaps all too simplistic but necessary on a practical level, is this: taking for granted that the work of the spirit will be able to replace work as we have conceived it until now, will it be enough for those who produce it to survive decently?
And then, if it really is enough: in what way? By means of what? Still with money? As a structured salary, on the basis of what principle, or even merit? (we are still reasoning with the old categories, evidently). Or will we proceed by donations of consumer goods? On specific request, or as donations imposed from above? Continuous and regulated donations, or spontaneous and improvised, and therefore precarious, ones?
If someone wants that particular racing bicycle and those particular books, will they see them delivered to their door two days later? Or will a certain bicycle and certain books be imposed, obtorto collo, or, worse still, other objects, yachts and luxury cars for instance, instead of the bicycle and books desired and requested? Or, more simply and modestly, and therefore more realistically, will a nice ration card be handed out, a personal document of compulsory rationing, perhaps in the handy form of a subcutaneous microchip?
And finally, through whom, with no more paid work, shall we be put in a position to survive materially? Directly by the empire, by the (formally) national States, by the appointed institutions, by welfare agencies, by charitable bodies, by so-called progressive philanthropists in a giving mood?

Taking for granted that the ethic of capitalism, founded on work and therefore on widespread active participation, cannot remotely withstand the impact of what awaits us, with what ethic will it be replaced, and on the basis of what dialectic? We are optimists, so we tend to rule out that the oligarchic ethic might prevail without a blow being struck — an ethic with a single aim: the preservation of power and privilege, through mutual protection among cronies and the blind, mute obedience of subordinates; imposed, if necessary (and it is always necessary), by force.

We therefore hope for an ethic that is, so to speak, participatory, but which, in order to take shape, requires a dialectical process between different parties or positions. And these parties will necessarily exist, because the technocratic oligarchy will in any case have to make use of two other apparatuses potentially capable of confronting it, if not actually opposing it: the scientific apparatus and the political apparatus. So that a constructive dialogue, as yet unimaginable, might truly take place between the oligarchy (which today holds all the economic levers, purloined from the States), science (today in thrall to the oligarchy, which holds the terms on which technological development is carried out) and politics (today in thrall to the oligarchy as its go-between, fed to the masses — who are, moreover, meek beyond words).

To break this chain and restore a dialectical principle that might begin (only begin!) to reason about a world with no more useful and remunerated work, must we then pin our hopes on the heroic revolt of the scientists? Or on the (democratic) awakening of the political class which, guided by philosophy, ought to become a moderating and synthesising body, with the purpose of freeing and guaranteeing the expression of each person’s creativity, no longer geared to direct profit?

Does anyone believe it possible?*
We do not. To nurture well-founded hopes, we fear that what is needed is a cultural, and therefore political, revolution that starts from below, that is, from the hardship, the poverty, the pain and the injustice suffered by the social body — it certainly cannot start from the body politic, that is, from privilege and affluence — and that gradually draws in the masses over no short period of time, given that the starting point of class awareness has fallen back to feudal levels.

All this with the aim of restoring popular movements that are even just reasonably cohesive and angry, in order to unleash chaos. Chaos in the genuine sense of “abyssal void” — into which one is forced to fall or to leap. And leap we shall have to. To break apart and recompose from scratch.

But let us look each other in the eye. Is there any sign of the so-called Western populations becoming a critical mass — populations made up of what we have become, confused monads, ill-educated and ill-advised, prey to propaganda and in perpetual simulated conflict on digital platforms? Is this boundless mass of confused, ill-educated and ill-advised idiots really supposed to represent, in the near future, the vanguard of the work of the spirit? What kind of spirit are we talking about, to be precise?

Does it not seem, on the contrary, that what is taking shape is a progressive entrenchment of an oligarchy ever more restricted, as well as rich and technologically overflowing, represented by politicians (the intermediate body between oligarchy and masses) ever more servile, cowardly, stupid, inept, cruel, ridiculous and corrupt, not to mention atrociously hypocritical? Far worse than the masses they are supposed to represent.
For the scientists, on the other hand, only one dilemma seems to remain: to prosper in the pay of the oligarchs, or to sacrifice themselves trying to restore the dialectical principle, only to vanish individually soon afterwards (individually, because there will always be scientists aplenty attached to money and/or devoid of scruples, ready to replace the few recalcitrant ones, duly silenced in the meantime).

But since we cannot bear to be accused of pessimism, that is, to be taken for “desperate heralds of destiny”, for once we end on a crescendo: we look upon the rest of the world with renewed curiosity, believing nonetheless that our venerable age is a great good fortune.**

07/10/2026 Filippo Maglione