Città Nuova

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    [title] => Against gradualism
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Rebirth requires learning/2 - Big changes do not always happen in small steps; and the need to proceed step by step must not become an obstacle to taking urgent initiatives

by Luigino Bruni

published in Città Nuova on 24/01/2024 - From the Città Nuova magazine, n. 10/2023

We recently commemorated sixty years since Martin Luther King's great prophetic speech, I Have a Dream, delivered in Washington on 28 August 1963. Looking back on that speech, there was one passage that struck me: “This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism”. He was very critical of gradualism, of the deeply ingrained idea that big changes cannot happen immediately because the great complexity of the reality to be changed requires a gradual process and a policy of small steps. Gradualism receives much consensus because it emphasises a true value, that of inclusion, of the need to involve the various players who have a role in the creation of problems and thus also in their solution. Hence the great processes of grass root consultation, questionnaires, and the many commissions to ensure the synodality of the entire process of change.

[fulltext] =>

I do not want to claim that the gradualist method should never be adopted or that it is always wrong. The question is a different one: why was Martin Luther King so opposed to gradualism? Because, quite simply, in those who invoked the politics of small steps he saw an alibi for continuing to postpone urgent and obvious reforms and changes (apartheid, for example), and because it acted as a ‘tranquilliser’ of conscience for those in power. Appealing to a value, even if it was a valid one in itself, only became a justification for the status quo - those who oppose a necessary process almost always do so in the name of some good reason.

Not all changes happen in small steps. In physics, water turns from liquid to solid in an instant. Revolutions do not happen gradually either, because certain processes explode when a critical threshold is passed. Today, for example, those who continue to advocate gradualist policy in the area of climate change and ecological transition (the very word transition incorporates the idea of small steps) almost always use this fine word to slow down a change that was ever so urgent already twenty years ago. The inclusion of all governments and various economic stakeholders is an essential part of the environmental problem; it is the prime cause of why we are watching motionlessly as the climate declines rapidly and inexorably. When the ship is sinking, or when a house is burning, no one thinks of calling together an assembly to decide what to do through complex procedures: there would have to be a captain to take responsibility for the choices and to make those choices. The world does not have a captain (and that is just as well) and in fact we are sinking; but this ‘captain’ can and must emerge from below, from the world's population, from civil processes that can lead to quick and effective decisions to replace the lack of ‘captains’ - and let's just hope they are peaceful and non-violent.

But what is astonishing is that gradualism takes hold even in ideal driven communities and movements which do have ‘captains’, where there is a government that could and should take urgent decisions. And instead, all too often, even in these, when faced with general and serious crises that would require rapid change, the gradualist method is preferred, and with it the creation of commissions that will one day report on the needs that have emerged with the (somewhat naive) hope that in the end a synthesis will be made of all the information that will have been gathered. And so the years pass, and the governments with them, the disease worsens, and while the doctors are discussing what to do, the patient is nearing death.

Furthermore, a typical error of these gradualist methods concerns economics. The economic aspects are the first to emerge during a crisis, but they are the last to be addressed, because the economy is an indicator of much broader and deeper phenomena than just the economy. Economic indicators are the red light in a car that signals an engine failure: it tells you to fix the engine and after that, once it is repaired, the light will go out on its own. Instead, they start fixing the economy first without understanding the structural illnesses that generated the economic crisis, and the more they fix the economy, the more the illness grows in the depths.

The quality of a government in times of crisis depends a lot on the ability of those in charge to sense, by instinct, where the problems are in the ‘engine’, and to start from there. They will receive criticism, accusations of authoritarianism, but perhaps they will save the body that is suffering.

Credits foto: © Unseen Histories su Unsplash

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Rebirth requires learning/2 - Big changes do not always happen in small steps; and the need to proceed step by step must not become an obstacle to taking urgent initiatives

by Luigino Bruni

published in Città Nuova on 24/01/2024 - From the Città Nuova magazine, n. 10/2023

We recently commemorated sixty years since Martin Luther King's great prophetic speech, I Have a Dream, delivered in Washington on 28 August 1963. Looking back on that speech, there was one passage that struck me: “This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism”. He was very critical of gradualism, of the deeply ingrained idea that big changes cannot happen immediately because the great complexity of the reality to be changed requires a gradual process and a policy of small steps. Gradualism receives much consensus because it emphasises a true value, that of inclusion, of the need to involve the various players who have a role in the creation of problems and thus also in their solution. Hence the great processes of grass root consultation, questionnaires, and the many commissions to ensure the synodality of the entire process of change.

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Against gradualism

Against gradualism

Rebirth requires learning/2 - Big changes do not always happen in small steps; and the need to proceed step by step must not become an obstacle to taking urgent initiatives by Luigino Bruni published in Città Nuova on 24/01/2024 - From the Città Nuova magazine, n. 10/2023 We recently comme...
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    [title] => The new rainbow that is there
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Rebirth requires learning/1 - Why do many community reforms start out auspiciously and then stall?

by Luigino Bruni

published on Città Nuova ion 20/12/2023 - From the magazine Città Nuova n. 9/2023

The most precious and rare art to learn when starting a community reform is to be able to get to the depths of the process. The first phase of a reform is almost always accompanied by acclaim, encouragement and applause, because, as a rule, movements and communities start reforms too late, when it is already evident to (almost) everyone that a lot of things need to change in order not to perish; and so the new government that sets about this reform work is greeted as one greets a saviour. Only a few of the members are aware that this necessary reform would have had to be done many years earlier, when the symptoms of the collective disease were still almost invisible and everything spoke of health and success.

[fulltext] =>

For this reason, the early days of a renewal process, of any renewal of a suffering body, flow smoothly, quickly, accompanied by satisfaction and the great relief typical of any beginning of a necessary cure. The reformers feel supported by the entire community and everything is surrounded by a climate of optimism and new spring. It is thus understood that the most important and decisive moment in a reform is always the second, not the first moment, that ‘second half’ when the almost endless opening of that initial credit is reduced and then exhausted.

Many reforms get stuck, bogged down in this second phase and fail to reach the third, the essential one for the real and concrete implementation of the reform, when the announcements should have turned into major changes in governance. This is what happens to those young people who dive with only their mask on because they know that after 10 metres they will arrive in a beautifully coloured, emerged cave – but then, after the first few metres they feel their oxygen depleting, they get scared, turn back and resurface. If they had held on for a few more seconds they would have reached the air of the beautiful cave, but instead they stopped halfway there.

Why do we stop? What happens in the intermediate phase that blocks the necessary reforms that are sought by (almost) everyone? A clue to the reasons for the failure of the second phase is suggested to us by French philosopher De Tocqueville (Democracy in America), with his famous “paradox”. By studying revolutions and the social transformations of peoples, Tocqueville had realised something important: as soon as the members of a community begin to see the longed-for first signs of change, new participation and democracy, they begin to demand more and more, much more than the reformers can concretely do in that first phase.

The appetite for reform grows much faster than its first results. And so, those reformers who were appreciated, praised and encouraged at the time of the announcement of the reform, as soon as they begin to carry out their first reforming acts, see the original esteem turn to criticism and dissatisfaction, because those first changes appear too timid, slow and insufficient. At the same time, the dissatisfaction expressed today by the enthusiasts of yesterday generates disappointment and discouragement in the reformers because they see the criticism as unfair and ungrateful. This ‘pincer effect’ - criticism from the community and discouragement in government - can stop the exploration running out of breath and cause a quick turnaround.

A whole lot of failed reforms are those ‘aborted’ in the second phase, not those never started. However, a reform begun and not completed is worse than a failed reform. Because while a community that has never attempted a necessary reform can always initiate one, for a community that has failed a first reform, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to initiate a second one, because the management of that first failure has consumed much of the available energy, and that first collective enthusiasm which is necessary to begin will be very reduced if not non-existent in the second eventual reform. Of the reforms of charismatic communities only ‘the first one is the good one’, the second possibility, which is always there, is (easily) ineffective.

So when a community government decides to undertake a reform, it must be aware that the second phase of criticism and discouragement will come. It must take this into account, not be surprised by its arrival. This way, even when we run out of breath we will confidently continue the dive, in search of the new rainbow.

 

Credits foto: © 14578371 da Pixabay

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Rebirth requires learning/1 - Why do many community reforms start out auspiciously and then stall?

by Luigino Bruni

published on Città Nuova ion 20/12/2023 - From the magazine Città Nuova n. 9/2023

The most precious and rare art to learn when starting a community reform is to be able to get to the depths of the process. The first phase of a reform is almost always accompanied by acclaim, encouragement and applause, because, as a rule, movements and communities start reforms too late, when it is already evident to (almost) everyone that a lot of things need to change in order not to perish; and so the new government that sets about this reform work is greeted as one greets a saviour. Only a few of the members are aware that this necessary reform would have had to be done many years earlier, when the symptoms of the collective disease were still almost invisible and everything spoke of health and success.

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The new rainbow that is there

The new rainbow that is there

Rebirth requires learning/1 - Why do many community reforms start out auspiciously and then stall? by Luigino Bruni published on Città Nuova ion 20/12/2023 - From the magazine Città Nuova n. 9/2023 The most precious and rare art to learn when starting a community reform is to be able to get to th...
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    [title] => The EoC Today: Challenges and Opportunities
    [alias] => the-eoc-today-challenges-and-opportunities
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By now, the Economy of Communion is nearing its twentieth anniversary. A “place of resistence”.

By Luigino Bruni

Published on Citta Nuova n.21/2010 on 10/11/2010

At the end of May, 2011, everyone in the EoC will meet again in Sao Paulo to rediscover the roots of this experience and outline new prospects. The EoC is alive and growing in today’s history, through the crises and the hopes of our time. Chiara Lubich’s proposal to begin businesses and industrial parks, and then (in May of 1989) to start a cultural movement that would give “scientific dignity” to the praxis of the businesses, did not fall into an empty abyss. It was embraced by thousands of people, mostly within the Focolare Movement but recently even outside of it. They are people and institutions who are trying to make that seed produce fruit.

[fulltext] =>

At the same time, I believe that the entire EoC today is called to face a new step.

I was recently in Brazil and, together with some of the Brazilian protagonists of the project, we went back through some of the first moments of the project. It made me remember a not very well-known episode from those days, and this memory struck me in a particular way. Chiara, returning from that trip to Brazil, had noticed a detail in a painting of Mary Desolate which was in her office and which Igino Giordani had given her many years earlier. In that painting, Mary had a crown of thorns tightly pressed to her chest. For her, it was an immediate connection with the “crown of thorns of poverty” that she had seen in the favelas of Sao Paulo and which had been the inspiration of the newly born EoC. 

This episode made us reflect on the nature of the originating inspiration and on the prospects that await us now and in the years to come. The crown of thorns – the suffering of the poor that Chiara invited us to love and redeem – it was the crown of thorns of Sao Paulo, of all cities. It was the crown of thorns of the world and of capitalism. Obviously, that crown was not made only of the poor in the Focolare. For Chiara, the poor in the Movement were only a first step for then going well beyond that. 

The prospect that opened wide to the EoC was one of great scope: that of contributing to give life to a new economic-social order, to a new model of development, rethinking and connecting the two central realities of capitalism which are still opposites today: business (the motor of economic development) and poverty (of those who are excluded from that development). 

An assessment of the EoC today should then refer more than anything and primarily to this dimension of the project: the relationship between businesses and the excluded.  Only then should there be further assessment on the cultural or theoretical impact that the EoC had or has in the Church, in society and in academia (obviously all important aspects), beyond its capacity to make entrepreneurs more ethical or generous. 

From this perspective, we must admit that we´re still far from having fulfilled the vocation of the EoC. The success of such a project, in fact, is not measured on the number of the businesses that have become more ethical over these years and neither on the profits gathered and given (still too little). Neither is it measured by the development of the industrial parks. The EoC will be fully in line with its mission when it will become an economic and social model which is characterized by communion, and therefore, with a truly human face. To reach this goal, questioned everyday by our freedom and responsibility, there is need to know and want to face at least three demanding challenges.  

First of all, as both praxis and as culture, the EoC needs to put itself always more in network with the other experiences of social and civil economy that, in their way, try to humanize economy. It is a challenge that Chiara foreshadowed in her lectio magistralis in 1999 on the occasion of her honorary degree from Sacred Heart Catholic University in Piacenza. In the ten years that have followed that degree, some steps have been taken, but there is need to do more and to do so on a larger national and international scale. 

Secondly, poverty (which we prefer to call misery or exclusion, in way that is more appropriate and more in line with the Gospel) must be understood today in various ways. It can no longer be just the material poverty of the 1991 Brazilian favelas (although this dimension will always be central and important, as it is also often at the basis of other forms of poverty).   

Exclusion, solitude, lack of meaning in life, of true values, of ability, of rights and freedoms, of relationships – always more, these are the typical twenty-first century forms of poverty which are accompanied by the traditional ones. In particular, starting from the charism of unity of which the EoC expresses, it is urgent today to love and care for these forms of need which arise from broken relationships, from famine of relational goods, from various forms of disunity (private, civil and political), and for which the charism of unity, through its vocation, has eyes capable of seeing in order to transform these wound into blessings.

Therefore, it is necessary to launch a new phase of creativity and innovation, where various enterpreneurs and actors of the EoC, current and future, feel the freedom and responsibility to look at the old and new forms of poverty to find new solutions, always remembering that the first way of fighting exclusion and indigence is the work of creating and offering

Finally, it’s necessary to make a cultural and theoretical effort. Starting from the experience of these first years of the EoC and always in dialogue with many others, there is need to create a proposal of a new economic model that does not limit itself to the reflections on individual actions and on businesses. I’m convinced that economists, enterpreneurs and EoC workers have the potential to propose new models of development and institutional dynamics, which they offer as a contribution to that new economic order – environmentally, socially and spiritually sustainable, which so many are searching for today, and which is always more urgent to find. 

If the EoC is capable of reading and facing these challenges with “charismatic” courage, the prophecy of Chiara will become salt for history, and will therefore be able to give its contribution to the well living of the women and men of today, within and outside of markets. It is not by chance that this year, besides the Brazil 2011 event, the worldwide EoC launched a “youth project”, which will have two significant international schools: the first in Latin American and the second in Africa, both in January of 2011.

In the culture of consumption, the EoC can and must be a “resistence place”, not made of islands but of oases of communion and gratuitousness, as the abbeys were during Medieval times. In fact, we can remember that Chiara intuited the reality that would later become the EoC (the “chimneys”) for the first time while contemplating a Benedictan abbey from high upon the Swiss hills. Hers was a message of communion and gratuitousness that has great value today as, in a world where money tends to become everything because one can buy (almost) everything with it, the EoC is a reminder that the greatest wealth is that which is given and shared. This goes for people and for nations.

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By now, the Economy of Communion is nearing its twentieth anniversary. A “place of resistence”.

By Luigino Bruni

Published on Citta Nuova n.21/2010 on 10/11/2010

At the end of May, 2011, everyone in the EoC will meet again in Sao Paulo to rediscover the roots of this experience and outline new prospects. The EoC is alive and growing in today’s history, through the crises and the hopes of our time. Chiara Lubich’s proposal to begin businesses and industrial parks, and then (in May of 1989) to start a cultural movement that would give “scientific dignity” to the praxis of the businesses, did not fall into an empty abyss. It was embraced by thousands of people, mostly within the Focolare Movement but recently even outside of it. They are people and institutions who are trying to make that seed produce fruit.

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The EoC Today: Challenges and Opportunities

The EoC Today: Challenges and Opportunities

By now, the Economy of Communion is nearing its twentieth anniversary. A “place of resistence”. By Luigino Bruni Published on Citta Nuova n.21/2010 on 10/11/2010 At the end of May, 2011, everyone in the EoC will meet again in Sao Paulo to rediscover the roots of this experience and outline new prosp...
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    [title] => The paradox of "thank-you"
    [alias] => the-paradox-of-qthank-youq
    [introtext] => 

Even a simple thank-you at the counter hides moral and economic values.

By Luigino Bruni

Published in Cittá Nuova, n.23/2010 on 10/12/2010

I’m invited to dinner; I bring a tray of  pastries, and my host says “thanks”. I drink a coffee at the train station, and after I’ve paid a price, I say, “thanks” to the waiter. These are two thank-yous said in seemingly very different contexts: gift and friendship in the first, contract and anonymity in the second. Still, we use the same word, “thanks”. What do these two facts have in common? They are free meetings between human beings. The thank-you which we say not only to our friends but also to waiters, bakers or cashiers at the supermarket, is not only good manners or habits. That thank-you expresses recognition that, even when we’re doing nothing more than our duty, by working, there is always something more involved. Besides, we could say that work truly begins when we go beyond our duty and put all of ourselves into making lunch, tightening a screw, or giving a lesson at school.

[fulltext] =>

One truly works when you begin to add “Mario” when addressing Mr. Rossi or “Luigino” when addressing Professor Bruni. Instead, when one stops before crossing this threshold, work remains too similar to what that automatic coffee machine does. This is where we find a paradox: workers and directors of every business know that work is truly work and brings the fruits of efficiency and effectiveness when it expresses an excess to what is laid out in one’s contract or duty – when it is a gift (as N. Alter’s most recent book Donner et prendre reminds us).

Today, business is not able to recognize that “something more” which is the gift present in human work. If businesses use classical incentives (like money) to recognize the gift contained in work, that “something more” of gift becomes duty and disappears. Instead, in order to avoid this disappearance of gift, businesses and their directors do nothing, and as time goes by, a worker’s surplus production grows less, producing sadness and cynicism in him, and worse results for the business.

It's this impossibility to compensate the surplus in work which is one of the reasons why, in all jobs (from laborers to university professors), people almost always have a deep crisis after the first few years. They realize that after having given the best of them to that organization without feeling truly recognized for what they have truly given, which is always immensely greater than the value of the wages received. The art of managing organizations today is above all in inventing new ways to give recognition for such gifts.

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Even a simple thank-you at the counter hides moral and economic values.

By Luigino Bruni

Published in Cittá Nuova, n.23/2010 on 10/12/2010

I’m invited to dinner; I bring a tray of  pastries, and my host says “thanks”. I drink a coffee at the train station, and after I’ve paid a price, I say, “thanks” to the waiter. These are two thank-yous said in seemingly very different contexts: gift and friendship in the first, contract and anonymity in the second. Still, we use the same word, “thanks”. What do these two facts have in common? They are free meetings between human beings. The thank-you which we say not only to our friends but also to waiters, bakers or cashiers at the supermarket, is not only good manners or habits. That thank-you expresses recognition that, even when we’re doing nothing more than our duty, by working, there is always something more involved. Besides, we could say that work truly begins when we go beyond our duty and put all of ourselves into making lunch, tightening a screw, or giving a lesson at school.

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The paradox of "thank-you"

The paradox of "thank-you"

Even a simple thank-you at the counter hides moral and economic values. By Luigino Bruni Published in Cittá Nuova, n.23/2010 on 10/12/2010 I’m invited to dinner; I bring a tray of  pastries, and my host says “thanks”. I drink a coffee at the train station, and after I’ve paid a price, I say, “t...
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    [id] => 16627
    [title] => I produce if I am a person
    [alias] => i-produce-if-i-am-a-person
    [introtext] => 

One of the great pillars of the market economy, in particular the labor market, is the idea that the company does not buy people but working hours.

by Luigino Bruni

published on Città Nuova n.10/2011 on 25/05/2011

One of the great pillars of the market economy, in particular the labor market, is the idea that the company does not buy people but working hours. It is because the labor “market” was considered a particular market: on one part work is not merchandise but on the other work performance suffers and is subject to the law of supply and demand. Hence the importance that each country has been attributed to the social mediations (unions) and policies in this market.

[fulltext] =>

Recently, however, we are witnessing a major change: businesses not only will buy working hours but are looking to buy (and often succeed) the person, especially the youth with this line of reasoning: "I will pay you a lot, I promise you a brilliant career, but time does not exist, there are no limits.” 

This change also depends on a deeper transformation of our society and economy, namely the knowledge that if a worker does not put all his passion, creativity and intelligence in his work performance, businesses will not go forward. It is why one thinks that by paying more one can buy the person, including the heart, mind and passion. But in this operation a worm is hidden, a virus of our capitalist system: the illusion that once the boundary between work and life (because work becomes your life) is eliminated, that person can continue to flourish and mature over time.

In reality, the most important quality of a person is nurtured and grows also and mainly outside the company. And if the company buys me, it removes the possibility of cultivating these outside of work dimensions.  In fact, it is drying up wells from which I draw energy, passion and heart, finding myself completely empty after a few years, no longer useful to the company and often submerged on the rubble of familiar and relational. So if a company wants and needs to look for the best that its worker can give, it must make sure that there is always a surplus of life at work, that is, it needs to protect the space outside of work.

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One of the great pillars of the market economy, in particular the labor market, is the idea that the company does not buy people but working hours.

by Luigino Bruni

published on Città Nuova n.10/2011 on 25/05/2011

One of the great pillars of the market economy, in particular the labor market, is the idea that the company does not buy people but working hours. It is because the labor “market” was considered a particular market: on one part work is not merchandise but on the other work performance suffers and is subject to the law of supply and demand. Hence the importance that each country has been attributed to the social mediations (unions) and policies in this market.

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I produce if I am a person

I produce if I am a person

One of the great pillars of the market economy, in particular the labor market, is the idea that the company does not buy people but working hours. by Luigino Bruni published on Città Nuova n.10/2011 on 25/05/2011 One of the great pillars of the market economy, in particular the labor mar...
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    [title] => The elegance of that one and only dress
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We will not be able to create a new development model if we don’t learn to appreciate the wealth and value of the small things in life

By Luigino Bruni

Published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio 16/01/2020

Although our culture, and perhaps every culture, associates its positive values ​​with some form of wealth (material, spiritual, moral, emotional ...), in reality even poverty has its values, its virtues and even its beauty.

[fulltext] =>

The West, and especially capitalism, has built civilization on the idea that having many things is better than having a few, and hence that the sum and accumulation of goods are an essential part of well-being. The East (think Gandhi's kind of wisdom) for a long time had a different line of thought and believed that happiness consisted in educating ones desires, in learning the art of enjoying what you already have without cultivating envy or anger for what you don't.

But it wasn’t the value ​​of the "little" things that became the value ​​of capitalist economy, and even less so in the post-capitalist one, where from a sum we moved on to the multiplication of things, in an insatiability that constitutes the primary engine in our present development model: we are not happy, and we think that this discontent is linked to not yet having enough, and so we feel anxious to increase our number of things and accumulate. However, we then realize that those coveted goods do not make us happy, but we think this depends on not yet possessing enough... an endless carousel that continues to go around, and the GDP grows thanks to our unhappiness and our many illusions. It is a game that has been going on for centuries, but spiritual illiteracy prevents us from recognizing this great illusion today; it presented the game to us as reality, and we believed it.

I remember my maternal grandmother Marietta very well, because she received the gift of a long life, and I the gift of enjoying her company even as an adult. She was poor although not indigent, she was a peasant who had seven daughters. Whenever I attended her village feasts as a child, she used to wear her good dress, the one saved for special days. I remember, because it was always the same, in part because she only used it for a few hours (usually for mass), and then she carefully stored it away and kept it wrapped in cellophane with mothballs to protect it. But that typical elegance of hers, that way of hers to dress with a different kind of dignity, that natural discretion, that combination of reserve and pride to wear something beautiful because it was rare and carefully taken care of, I have never seen them again in the many clothes worn by her daughters or by her granddaughters (although all equally dignified and beautiful, just like her). It is that elegance of the one and only dress, which is very similar to that of the birds in the sky, which beat even that of Solomon and his thousand outfits, that apparently even surpassed those of the Queen of Sheba, and they must have been really beautiful, even in her own wonderful clothes (so much so that she was struck by the clothes of the workers in Solomon's palace).

I have, on the other hand, seen that elegance of the one and only dress many times in my travels to Brazil, to Africa, in Asia. There, in the encounter with countless poor men and especially poor women, once again, I saw my grandmother’s dress and with it, her splendid dignity. It is part of the wealth of poverty to know how to value and preserve the few things you possess, a care that enhances and increases those goods.

There is a special happiness in knowing that what you have is unique, that it’s rare; and instead the great illusion of capitalism is to convince us that nothing is unique, nothing is rare, and everything can be multiplied indefinitely: this is its promise of eternal life, the eternal life of things, and our eternal life as well almost.

If we had kept the values ​​of those peasant women of the last century, we would certainly not have ended up plundering the planet. We will not create a new development model if we do not learn to appreciate the wealth and value of the small things in life.

Photos:  @Giuliano Dinon / Archivio MSA

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We will not be able to create a new development model if we don’t learn to appreciate the wealth and value of the small things in life

By Luigino Bruni

Published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio 16/01/2020

Although our culture, and perhaps every culture, associates its positive values ​​with some form of wealth (material, spiritual, moral, emotional ...), in reality even poverty has its values, its virtues and even its beauty.

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The elegance of that one and only dress

The elegance of that one and only dress

We will not be able to create a new development model if we don’t learn to appreciate the wealth and value of the small things in life By Luigino Bruni Published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio 16/01/2020 Although our culture, and perhaps every culture, associates its positive values ​​with some fo...
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    [title] => Fiscal Purgatory
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Taxes and Justice

By Luigino Bruni

Published on Cittanuova.it on 18/03/2010

Once again, we speak again about fiscal reform and the fight against tax evasion, a disease not only of the fiscal system but of all civil life as it undermines the roots of the "social pact" between citizens. Today, in a modern democracy, we should often remember the logic of taxation. Taxes (and levies) have three goals: they serve to redistribute income and wealth from the rich to the poor; they are an instrument to encourage the consumption of meritorious goods (art, education, culture...); and finally they serve to finance public goods, like streets, security or health.
[fulltext] =>

All three of these functions make sense within a society that feels itself linked by a pact, as it has a collective dimension which is greater than a sum of contracts and individual and private actions. Let´s think, for example, of public goods: if they cost 1000 and there are 100 of us paying our taxes, each one of us contributes 10 on average. But if we are 100 citizens and only 50 of these pay their taxes, whoever contributes pays 20, for themselves and for their "wily" co-citizens. That is why the social pact is undermined when tax evasion exceeds a critical threshold. It breaks the trust that keeps people and any political community together.

When We talk about the scandal of fiscal paradises - "places" where recycled money often travels, oozing with violence and blood - we should remember that fiscal purgatories also exist. They are where people who, even due to the sly person´s paradise, find themselves under too much unjust and unsustainable fiscal pressure. It´s a purgatory that transforms itself into hell when an entrepreneur that lives legally in sectors of high fiscal evasion is forced to close his business. The fiscal culture changes then over the long run, with the fatiguing art of daily virtuous actions, starting in school. It is not easy to answer a child who asks, "why do fiscal paradises exist?" but we can always wish him that his generation be the first to eliminate this collective shame.

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Taxes and Justice

By Luigino Bruni

Published on Cittanuova.it on 18/03/2010

Once again, we speak again about fiscal reform and the fight against tax evasion, a disease not only of the fiscal system but of all civil life as it undermines the roots of the "social pact" between citizens. Today, in a modern democracy, we should often remember the logic of taxation. Taxes (and levies) have three goals: they serve to redistribute income and wealth from the rich to the poor; they are an instrument to encourage the consumption of meritorious goods (art, education, culture...); and finally they serve to finance public goods, like streets, security or health.
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Fiscal Purgatory

Fiscal Purgatory

Taxes and Justice By Luigino Bruni Published on Cittanuova.it on 18/03/2010 Once again, we speak again about fiscal reform and the fight against tax evasion, a disease not only of the fiscal system but of all civil life as it undermines the roots of the "social pact" between citizens. Today, in a mo...
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The entrepreneur from Brescia who paid school taxes for children who could not has been both praised and harshly criticized. What is the value of gratuitousness within a community? Three questions to economist Luigino Bruni. 

By Chiara Andreola

Publishing on cittanuova.it on 16/04/2010

At first, the Strali had arrived at the mayor´s office in Adro (Brescia), who had decided that children whose families had not settled accounts would not be allowed to eat the school lunch. Then, when an (initially) anonymous entrepreneur paid the debt so that these faultless children would not go with an empty stomach, the author of this magnificant gesture fell under a barrage of fire. People said that it is too easy these days for someone who wants to be clever to take advantage of others´generosity. Nearly 200 families had announced that they would not pay the school tax as a sign of protest. Plus, the mayor declared to the Corriera della Sera that Silvano Lancini - the name of the entrepreneur - had made a "political act", made to favor the opposition. Whether authentic generosity or a calculated move, this episode centers on the value and role of gratuitousness in the context of citizenship. We spoke with Luigino Bruni, professor of economy at the university of Milano-Bicocca and author of a book written specifically on this topic (The Price of Gratuitousness, Cittá Nuova).

[fulltext] =>

As soon as the name of the benefactor was revealed, a number of assumptions were formed on which other interests could hide: why do we struggle to understand a gratuitous act?

"Market ethos is so centered around the principle of personal interest, as transpires from textbooks and management schools who form the leader class, that even an altruistic act ends up in this logic and becomes "scrutinized". But we must also say that this is a reaction to the idea of charity that hids relationships of power. The munus, or gift, has been part of common life for millenium, but in some cases it was an expression of control. Even Seneca affirmed that, if he who benefits is not able to respond to the gift of the benefactor, he ends up hating him, because he remembers his dependance every day. Therefore, there is need to create the conditions for the existence of a culture of gratuitousness. Civil economy and the economy of communion go in this direction."

How does gratuitousness distinguish itself from charity? 

"Gratuitousness is rooted in reciprocity. It is a process that begins, as with a donation, but then develops and lasts over time within the community. It´s not only the act of a person. In this sense, European culture is different than American culture, where it is considered normal that an entrepreneur make consistent donations. Not being used to the philanthropic model, but to the communitarian model, we (in Europe) do not have the idea that it´s the individual that provides from his own wallet a task that we attribute to the state or the community. And it is in the community that reciprocity can be fully expressed, because it is not simply charity but a model of relationships. Poverty itself is a relationship, not a status."

One of the reasons why the Brescian entrepreneur was critized is the risk that he took advantage of who, although able, did not pay the lunch fee. Does gratuitousness have limits?

"The act of generosity is fragil by nature and exposed to opportunism. Risk is inevitable, but it is not a good reason to not to take it. Building communities of solidarity for more sustainable dynamics works also as a guarantee in this sense, because once the process of gratuitousness has been inserted into the communitarian dimension there can also be controls for it."

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The entrepreneur from Brescia who paid school taxes for children who could not has been both praised and harshly criticized. What is the value of gratuitousness within a community? Three questions to economist Luigino Bruni. 

By Chiara Andreola

Publishing on cittanuova.it on 16/04/2010

At first, the Strali had arrived at the mayor´s office in Adro (Brescia), who had decided that children whose families had not settled accounts would not be allowed to eat the school lunch. Then, when an (initially) anonymous entrepreneur paid the debt so that these faultless children would not go with an empty stomach, the author of this magnificant gesture fell under a barrage of fire. People said that it is too easy these days for someone who wants to be clever to take advantage of others´generosity. Nearly 200 families had announced that they would not pay the school tax as a sign of protest. Plus, the mayor declared to the Corriera della Sera that Silvano Lancini - the name of the entrepreneur - had made a "political act", made to favor the opposition. Whether authentic generosity or a calculated move, this episode centers on the value and role of gratuitousness in the context of citizenship. We spoke with Luigino Bruni, professor of economy at the university of Milano-Bicocca and author of a book written specifically on this topic (The Price of Gratuitousness, Cittá Nuova).

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Gratuitousness, a communitary process

Gratuitousness, a communitary process

The entrepreneur from Brescia who paid school taxes for children who could not has been both praised and harshly criticized. What is the value of gratuitousness within a community? Three questions to economist Luigino Bruni.  By Chiara Andreola Publishing on cittanuova.it on 16/04/2010 At first...
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    [title] => Peacebuilders for the EoC
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    [introtext] => 

Beyond the market - A surprising encounter with an association that has made one of Chiara Lubich's dreams, the Economy of Communion its own

by Luigino Bruni

published in Città Nuova, August 2018

Costruttori di pace ridFlorence, 28 June, San Lorenzo Church. In the rooms below the church, the Associazione Costruttori di pace (Association of Peacebuilders) presented their nascent enterprise of 'street food’ to an audience of about forty people. I had met them a few months earlier, when they invited me so they could tell me about their interest, or 'passion' (as they like to say), for the Economy of Communion (EoC). An association created by young people to meet the needs of other young migrants who, once they reach 18 years of age, find themselves in a situation of serious vulnerability. They first began to welcome them into the homes of some of them, then they rented an apartment, and now they have created a reception facility in the parish premises.

[fulltext] =>

The members of the association are workers, salespersons, students. The president, Emmanuel, is a young Italian of African parents. "We found the EoC by chance, looking on the internet for different types of economies," says Mauro, a member of the group, "and from there we arrived at Chiara Lubich. We listened to her on video in some training meetings; then, in one night, some of us dreamt of her, simultaneously. One of them was embraced by Chiara, without her saying anything; to another she gave answers to questions about God and faith; and to me,” he continues, a bit moved “she said a sentence that I have not yet fully understood: »always keep Jesus at the centre«".

The meeting with the Peacebuilders is one of the strongest and most authentic events of these past years. It’s a group of young people who put themselves to work concretely to welcome into their homes other young people going through difficulties. They found the EoC on their own and then met Chiara in their dream in the same night, and she said beautiful things to them, the things she said many times to many of us, but we are forgetting them, because we are forgetting the desire to change the world. The economy of communion is being reborn today (I am thinking of the Congo, Latin America and Europe, too) wherever there are people like Emmanuel, Mauro and their friends and families. Wherever there are people who start welcoming the poor into their homes again. The first 'founding myth' of the EoC is set in post-war Trento, when in the first focolare (which means ‘hearth’ or ‘fireside’ in English - the tr.), sitting at the table one would find “a focolarina, a poor man, a focolarino, a poor man” - as Chiara and her first companions told us many times. And on those occasions, they said, they always put the most beautiful tablecloths and cutlery, to express with that simple gesture how much dignity and value they appropriated to those guests.

Today the EoC stays alive and is reborn where people and entrepreneurs continue to welcome people in difficulty 'inside their house', even if the tables set for the feast are workshop counters and company canteens. Community and productive inclusion is still the first step in every new experience of communion, in every part of the world. "I went to live with the young people we had hosted," Emmanuel told me, "because I could not say that we are a family if I did not go to live with them. Life is born again from life, when someone leaves the warmth of meetings and the consumption of spirituality, and starts to walk towards the other waiting for us.”

Hospitality is a virtue that is very much threatened today as the West is going through an era when it has forgotten its founding values, no longer remembering that Isaac, the son of the Promise, was announced by three guests hosted by Abraham and Sara under their nomadic tent.

The new EoC company that is being set up in Florence will create work for these guests who have come from the sea, because until a young man does not work he has not yet been truly welcomed. However, work does not come from the government or bureaucracies but from those who decide to become entrepreneurs to respond to the cries of the people of their city. Only a thousand Emmanuels and Mauros will keep the EoC alive, and if we continue to stay cosy in the comfort of our communities, the angels will be the ones to visit them and call them in a dream.

 

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Beyond the market - A surprising encounter with an association that has made one of Chiara Lubich's dreams, the Economy of Communion its own

by Luigino Bruni

published in Città Nuova, August 2018

Costruttori di pace ridFlorence, 28 June, San Lorenzo Church. In the rooms below the church, the Associazione Costruttori di pace (Association of Peacebuilders) presented their nascent enterprise of 'street food’ to an audience of about forty people. I had met them a few months earlier, when they invited me so they could tell me about their interest, or 'passion' (as they like to say), for the Economy of Communion (EoC). An association created by young people to meet the needs of other young migrants who, once they reach 18 years of age, find themselves in a situation of serious vulnerability. They first began to welcome them into the homes of some of them, then they rented an apartment, and now they have created a reception facility in the parish premises.

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Peacebuilders for the EoC

Peacebuilders for the EoC

Beyond the market - A surprising encounter with an association that has made one of Chiara Lubich's dreams, the Economy of Communion its own by Luigino Bruni published in Città Nuova, August 2018 Florence, 28 June, San Lorenzo Church. In the rooms below the church, the Associazione Costruttori di pa...
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    [title] => Economy and Sharing
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Columns - Beyond the market

by Luigino Bruni

published in pdf Città Nuova n.12/2016 (104 KB) November 2016 issue

Sharing Economy ridIt is not easy to understand what is really happening in the growing phenomenon of the so-called sharing economy. Also because some very different experiences, sometimes too many are incorporated in this expression.

[fulltext] =>

First of all a premise. For those who watch the development process of market economy from a long-term perspective, today's sharing economy is a step that's consistent with the evolution of the relationship between market and society. From the beginnings, the market has grown in synergy with the social sphere. A thousand years ago, in Italy, the beginnings of a market with two operations appeared: we took pieces of communal life that had been governed by community rules and instruments until then and we put them under the control of money. After that we invented new relationships that were born thanks to the new economic and monetary instruments. So, instead of continuing to spin the clothes for self-consumption in the family or clan, we started to sell and purchase them in the square. And we met people and peoples hitherto unknown or even enemies, thanks to the silk and spice trade. The Silk Road was a great way of sharing that connected merchants and distant civilizations for many centuries. Market economy has always lived in this interweaving of social relations and contracts, economic and relational goods, money and gratuitousness. Over the past two centuries, the social spaces intertwined with the markets have grown a lot, and today there are very few places not reached by the monetary exchange. The market grows more and more by giving a price to activities that until then were done for free, and by inventing ever new mutually beneficial relationships to respond to our needs and desires.

It is within this long journey of the West, and especially Europe that we should interpret what is happening today in the 'sharing economy planet'. If we want to try and give a substantial definition of sharing economy, we could call by this name those activities where the following three features are found, in different measures: a) the market coexists with some dimension of gratuitousness (of time, energy, money); b) the contracts are intertwined with relational goods; c) the exchange arises from an explicit and intentional mutual benefit. The novelty lies in keeping these three dimensions together, because experience with one or two of the listed characteristics has always existed. If we look at the concrete experiences, the first dimension (a) is the most difficult to find in practice, because when the market embraces gratuitousness it tends to do it unexpectedly and by surprise, but not always and not necessarily.

On the whole, we must be very happy with the development of sharing economy, which is increasing the opportunities for interaction and reciprocity in our time, increasing the biodiversity of economic and civil forms of society.

There are, however, some hardly visible side effects produced by the development of the growth of sharing economy. Consider, for another example, the so-called 'home restaurants', those families who invite strangers to dinner at lower prices than the restaurants. If this phenomenon keeps growing, the day will come when no one will invite you to dinner unless you leave at least a small donation. And those who do not have the economic means will increasingly be forced to stay at home. Obviously these phenomena become socially revealing when they go beyond 'a critical point'. But, unfortunately, the critical points are passed almost always in an unnoticed way, and once passed they remain behind us and we no longer see them. And we may soon find ourselves in a world where a friend will ask us 20 Euros to listen to us for an hour, giving us a 50% discount compared to the price in the newly formed market of listening to others. And we will have forgotten the ancient truth that listening to a friend has an infinite value precisely because it has no price, because it is priceless.

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Also because some very different experiences, sometimes too many are incorporated in this expression. [access] => 1 [hits] => 3688 [xreference] => [featured] => 0 [language] => en-GB [on_img_default] => 1 [readmore] => 3841 [ordering] => 179 [category_title] => EN - CN [category_route] => economia-civile/it-editoriali-vari/it-cn [category_access] => 1 [category_alias] => en-cn [published] => 1 [parents_published] => 1 [lft] => 81 [author] => Antonella Ferrucci [author_email] => ferrucci.anto@gmail.com [parent_title] => IT - Editoriali vari [parent_id] => 893 [parent_route] => economia-civile/it-editoriali-vari [parent_alias] => it-editoriali-vari [rating] => 0 [rating_count] => 0 [alternative_readmore] => [layout] => [params] => Joomla\Registry\Registry Object ( [data:protected] => stdClass Object ( [article_layout] => _:default [show_title] => 1 [link_titles] => 1 [show_intro] => 1 [info_block_position] => 0 [info_block_show_title] => 1 [show_category] => 1 [link_category] => 1 [show_parent_category] => 1 [link_parent_category] => 1 [show_associations] => 0 [flags] => 1 [show_author] => 0 [link_author] => 0 [show_create_date] => 1 [show_modify_date] => 0 [show_publish_date] => 1 [show_item_navigation] => 1 [show_vote] => 0 [show_readmore] => 0 [show_readmore_title] => 0 [readmore_limit] => 100 [show_tags] => 1 [show_icons] => 1 [show_print_icon] => 1 [show_email_icon] => 1 [show_hits] => 0 [record_hits] => 1 [show_noauth] => 0 [urls_position] => 1 [captcha] => [show_publishing_options] => 1 [show_article_options] => 1 [save_history] => 1 [history_limit] => 10 [show_urls_images_frontend] => 0 [show_urls_images_backend] => 1 [targeta] => 0 [targetb] => 0 [targetc] => 0 [float_intro] => left [float_fulltext] => left [category_layout] => _:blog [show_category_heading_title_text] => 0 [show_category_title] => 0 [show_description] => 0 [show_description_image] => 0 [maxLevel] => 0 [show_empty_categories] => 0 [show_no_articles] => 1 [show_subcat_desc] => 0 [show_cat_num_articles] => 0 [show_cat_tags] => 1 [show_base_description] => 1 [maxLevelcat] => -1 [show_empty_categories_cat] => 0 [show_subcat_desc_cat] => 0 [show_cat_num_articles_cat] => 0 [num_leading_articles] => 0 [num_intro_articles] => 14 [num_columns] => 2 [num_links] => 0 [multi_column_order] => 1 [show_subcategory_content] => -1 [show_pagination_limit] => 1 [filter_field] => hide [show_headings] => 1 [list_show_date] => 0 [date_format] => [list_show_hits] => 1 [list_show_author] => 1 [list_show_votes] => 0 [list_show_ratings] => 0 [orderby_pri] => none [orderby_sec] => rdate [order_date] => published [show_pagination] => 2 [show_pagination_results] => 1 [show_featured] => show [show_feed_link] => 1 [feed_summary] => 0 [feed_show_readmore] => 0 [sef_advanced] => 1 [sef_ids] => 1 [custom_fields_enable] => 1 [show_page_heading] => 0 [layout_type] => blog [menu_text] => 1 [menu_show] => 1 [secure] => 0 [helixultimatemenulayout] => {"width":600,"menualign":"right","megamenu":0,"showtitle":1,"faicon":"","customclass":"","dropdown":"right","badge":"","badge_position":"","badge_bg_color":"","badge_text_color":"","layout":[]} [helixultimate_enable_page_title] => 1 [helixultimate_page_title_alt] => Città Nuova [helixultimate_page_subtitle] => Civil Economy [helixultimate_page_title_heading] => h2 [page_title] => Città Nuova [page_description] => [page_rights] => [robots] => [access-view] => 1 ) [initialized:protected] => 1 [separator] => . ) [displayDate] => 2016-12-21 16:15:00 [tags] => Joomla\CMS\Helper\TagsHelper Object ( [tagsChanged:protected] => [replaceTags:protected] => [typeAlias] => [itemTags] => Array ( ) ) [slug] => 16327:economy-and-sharing [parent_slug] => 893:it-editoriali-vari [catslug] => 890:en-cn [event] => stdClass Object ( [afterDisplayTitle] => [beforeDisplayContent] => [afterDisplayContent] => ) [text] =>

Columns - Beyond the market

by Luigino Bruni

published in pdf Città Nuova n.12/2016 (104 KB) November 2016 issue

Sharing Economy ridIt is not easy to understand what is really happening in the growing phenomenon of the so-called sharing economy. Also because some very different experiences, sometimes too many are incorporated in this expression.

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Economy and Sharing

Economy and Sharing

Columns - Beyond the market by Luigino Bruni published in pdf Città Nuova n.12/2016 (104 KB) November 2016 issue It is not easy to understand what is really happening in the growing phenomenon of the so-called sharing economy. Also because some very different experiences, sometimes to...
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    [title] => The subsidiarity of emotions
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Columns - Beyond the market

by Luigino Bruni

published in pdf Città Nuova n.11/2016 (116 KB) on novembre 2016

Emozioni a Firenze ridIn large enterprises of our day the attention paid to the management of emotions is growing quickly. Economic organizations are beginning to feel instinctively that we are in a profound anthropological transformation, and so they try, as much as they can, to find the solutions. Because of its ability to anticipate the needs and desires, capitalism is now realizing that in our time there is an ocean of loneliness, famine for attention and tenderness, lack of respect and recognition as well as desire to be seen and beloved, in an unprecedented and immense measure. And it is gearing up to meet even this 'demand' for new markets.

[fulltext] =>

On the other side, the protagonists of our economy know that the emotional fragility of workers is an ever greater weak point in it. This fragility is caused by the sudden disappearance of an entire millennial heritage of the cultivation and education of emotions. The past generations had learned to go through suffering, joy and crises together, to share in the act of mourning. Literature, popular religiousness and the poems once taught us how to suffer through the pain of others, even those whom we will not see or ever embrace. Mourning was a total kind of event that in its limited time absorbed everything (in our house, when a neighbour was dying we would not turn on the TV). This management of emotions had taught us how to suffer for people we don't know; but without religions, literature and art we only cry for natural reasons (relatives and close friends), we do not you cry for cultural reasons: for people we don't know but are never so strange or foreign as not to feel that they are our brothers. We have forgotten this management of the emotions, and we are in a kind of 'holy Sabbath of emotions', awaiting a resurrection.

One sign of this emotional disaster of our capitalism is the increasing presence of coaches, counsellors, business psychologists in our companies, the growth of supply in new master's degrees in "Management of emotional resources" or "Development of emotional intelligence." All this says that the emotional crisis is great, and that it is the origin of many new relational conflicts and illnesses of the soul – at work and at home.

As for now, the results are altogether rather disappointing, and could not be otherwise, because the great contradictions of our time are forming an ever-growing presence inside the enterprises. The factory is no longer the 'morphology of capitalism'. Therefore it should not be the company to treat the emotional poverty of its workers, because the disease is much more extensive than that which occurs within its borders.

Consider, for example, the enormous change (also in terms of work) that the evolution of the Internet is generating. Many social relations are now lived and operated in the environments of social media. Interactions without bodies, where we exchange millions of words that are different from those that we say or we would say looking each other in the face and clutching the hand of the other. We do not see the redness of the cheeks, the wet eyes, the trembling of the voice; and so we say new and different things with words and symbols (emoticons) that are almost always less responsible or true.

Given the importance that these new 'places' have for teenagers and young people (and now even children), in the age of the Internet we should invest much more in the education of emotions - and we should think more about the fact that this environment is managed by huge corporations for profit. We should talk more and deepen the trivialization of words and signs. The 'heart' and 'kisses' are serious things, which must be handled carefully and sparingly, to prevent them from becoming empty hearts and kisses which will not be there any more when one day we should really donate them to someone flesh and blood, and only to him/her.

Even in the use of these instruments, which are also a great blessing, the principle of subsidiarity should apply: a word sent on social networks is only good if it helps (subsidizes) the good words that we say we when we meet outside the network. We shall learn how to work again if we learn to be together, with our soul and body.

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La riflessione di Luigino Bruni su Città Nuova di novevmbre. 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Columns - Beyond the market

by Luigino Bruni

published in pdf Città Nuova n.11/2016 (116 KB) on novembre 2016

Emozioni a Firenze ridIn large enterprises of our day the attention paid to the management of emotions is growing quickly. Economic organizations are beginning to feel instinctively that we are in a profound anthropological transformation, and so they try, as much as they can, to find the solutions. Because of its ability to anticipate the needs and desires, capitalism is now realizing that in our time there is an ocean of loneliness, famine for attention and tenderness, lack of respect and recognition as well as desire to be seen and beloved, in an unprecedented and immense measure. And it is gearing up to meet even this 'demand' for new markets.

[jcfields] => Array ( ) [type] => intro [oddeven] => item-odd )
The subsidiarity of emotions

The subsidiarity of emotions

Columns - Beyond the market by Luigino Bruni published in pdf Città Nuova n.11/2016 (116 KB) on novembre 2016 In large enterprises of our day the attention paid to the management of emotions is growing quickly. Economic organizations are beginning to feel instinctively that we are in...
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    [id] => 16348
    [title] => “After the wind came an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.”
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by Luigino Bruni

published in: Città Nuova on 24/08/2016

Amatrice foto Ansa ridThat clock tower on Amatrice church indicating 3.36 is a powerful image for what happened this night. That minute was the last minute for many victims, it will be a minute forever remembered because it is written in the flesh and hearts of their families. And it will be remembered by our country, whose recent history is also a series of clocks stopped forever by the violence of men and of the earth.

[fulltext] =>

I will also remember it forever, because this cry of the earth also reached the house of my parents in Roccafluvione, around twenty kilometres from Arquata del Tronto, where I am visiting them. It was a long night of fear, suffering and thoughts for Amatrice, Arquata, Accumuli, towns of my childhood, close to where my grandparents come from, villages where I would accompany my father as he went about his business selling chickens. And then there were thoughts, thoughts we never have, because you can only have them on these terrible nights.

I thought about all the time that clock had measured right up until 3.36. It stopped there, dead, but it was only one dimension of time which the Greeks called ‘kronos’: the surface, the soil of time.

In the world there is our managed time, domesticated, constructed, which live by. But beneath it there is a another time: the time of the earth. This non-human time, and at times inhuman, and commands the time of men, mothers and children.
And I thought that we are not the masters of this other time, which is deeper, abysmal, primitive, which doesn’t follow our path, and at times is against the paths of those who walk above. On such momentous nights we become aware of this different time, on which we walk and build our homes, and that we are ‘grass of the field’, watered and nourished by the sky, but also swallowed up by the earth.
The earth, the real one and not the romantic and naive one of ideologies, is both mother and stepmother. The hummus generates man but also turns him back into dust, sometimes in a good way at the right time, but other times it is bad, and too soon, with a so much suffering.

Biblical humanism knows this very well, but for this has fought a lot with the pagan cults of local peoples who wanted to make a divinity of the earth and its nature: the power of the earth has always fascinated men who have tried to ‘buy’ it with magic and sacrifices.

Whilst I tried in vain to go back to sleep, I thought about the tremendous books of Job and Qohelet, which you can understand on such nights. Those books tell us that no God, not even the real one, can control the earth, because He too, once he entered into human history, became a victim of the mysterious freedom of his creation.

God cannot even explain to us why children die squashed beneath the ancient pillars of our towns. He can’t explain it to us because if he knew why he would be a monstrous idol. God, who today looks on the land of the three As – Arquata, Accumuli and Amatrice, can only ask himself the same questions as us: he can cry out, remain silent, cry together with us.

He can perhaps remind us with the words of the Bible that all is vanity of vanities: everything is breath, wind, mist, waste, nothing, ephemeral. Vanity in Hebrew is written Habel, the same word as Abel, the brother killed by Kane. Everything is vanity, everything is an infinite Abel: the world is full of victims. This we know. We know it, we forget it too often. These terrible nights and days make us remember it.

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Un contributo sul tempo della Terra e il senso della vita dall'economista Luigino Bruni che si trova sui luoghi, per lui familiari, del terremoto. 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by Luigino Bruni

published in: Città Nuova on 24/08/2016

Amatrice foto Ansa ridThat clock tower on Amatrice church indicating 3.36 is a powerful image for what happened this night. That minute was the last minute for many victims, it will be a minute forever remembered because it is written in the flesh and hearts of their families. And it will be remembered by our country, whose recent history is also a series of clocks stopped forever by the violence of men and of the earth.

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“After the wind came an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.”

“After the wind came an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.”

by Luigino Bruni published in: Città Nuova on 24/08/2016 That clock tower on Amatrice church indicating 3.36 is a powerful image for what happened this night. That minute was the last minute for many victims, it will be a minute forever remembered because it is written in the flesh and hearts o...
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    [title] => The Uncivil Economy of Gamble
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We should not descend to compromise when the poor's skin is at stake.  We should not help them with money wrought out of their weakness.

by Luigino Bruni

published in Città Nuova n.21 on 10/11/2014

Slotmob 01I was in London, pursuing economic studies when in the morning of 8th May 1998 Chiara Lubich reached me on my house phone. Even if I had been member of her movement since the age of 15 – this is the great adventure of my life – I had never spoken to her personally. I can still remember how moved and surprised I was, but above all I remember her words: ‘Would you like to help me to attain scientific dignity to the Economy of Communion?’ The she added that on her return from Brazil, seven years after the launch of the EoC she understood that unless there developed an economic thought to accompany the entrepreneurs, the EoC would never really take off. I said yes, I left London for Rome and started working with her and many other fellows – and it all contributed to giving a bit of that scientific dignity to the life we all wanted to live then and now. I understood that life has priority, but thoughts and theory are also life and when they are not there, practice becomes poor and short lived.

[fulltext] =>

Throughout the ten years of working together Chiara often repeated, ‘Study, write, have meetings. That’s all right. But don't forget, I created the EoC for the poor’. For the poor, not so much nor primarily to make more ethical companies or new economic theories.

This mandate of Chiara's grew up with and in me over the years. It matured, has been enriched and it was given expression in many ways. It never died away, rather, it has become brighter and brighter. Those words have been fruitful and generative. And I / we have revealed many things, all of them beautiful, all of them painful (pain has a light).

I have understood that there are many types of poverty and not all are inhumane. There is no doubt that of the ‘favelas’ that Chiara saw from the plane as it was landing in Sao Paulo; it was there yesterday, and it is there today, too – and we must not rest until it disappears tomorrow. This is the poverty-misery of the social suburbs of the earth. Combating these forms of poverty is still a major priority of the EoC: it is also for this that in May we (from all around the world) will go to Africa, notwithstanding Ebola, to say no to a ‘culture of immunity’ that assists passively to the death of millions of people every year and to the wars in the world, but isolates entire African countries because maybe a dozen Westerners were infected (today people are starving to death in Sierra Leone because they are isolated from everyone).

Next to the poverty of the favelas of the earth there are also old and new types of poverty and especially old and new groups of the poor that the EoC looks at differently: it looks at them in order to love them and be loved by them, in reciprocity. Many of these “other” forms of poverty are in constant growth around us today. Work, especially that of young people, is a great poverty of our time that cannot and should not let us be at peace. Depression that is becoming the new plague of the 21st century. Gamble.

The discovery of the seriousness and urgency of gamble has been gradually growing in me. I have always suffered when I walked into a bar, bought a newspaper or when I stopped at a motorway and saw the impressive choice of slot machines and scratch cards. In recent years I have seen more and more of them inside bars and ugly and black gaming-rooms that have been invading our cities. I found slot machines in all the bars of my small hometown (Roccafluvione) and I saw the birth of a gaming-room and a betting parlour last year.

The turning point arrived the day when, two years ago, I refused to do a conference at a social club of a parish because there were slot machines at the back, shiny and hungry like idols. I felt that it was time to act. I remembered the words of Chiara. I decided to start the “coffee strike” (not to consume anything in the slot machine bars, and say it to the bartender). Then I shared this idea first with a dear Sardinian friend (Vittorio), a companion of mine in ideals and profession, and then I talked with other fellow economists (Alessandra, Leonardo) and with a group of young Romans who are keen on critical consumption and ethical mobs (Gabriel and Francis) - and the slotmob campaign was born: we decided to say no to gambling by saying yes to those bars that by an ethical choice removed the slot machines through a group breakfast and a football tournament and games of gratuitousness.

I created the EoC for the poor.’ That is, also for the poor who are victims of gamble, who today are devoured by a gamble empire, a veritable structure of sin, grown virally due to intentional and explicit political choices. Twenty years ago the slots were only in casinos, not in bars. Scratch cards did not exist. Someone in the government decided to start making cash by allying with gamble companies, increasing concessions and inventing increasingly sophisticated systems designed to trap the most fragile.

Those who enter a black room (I do not want to soil the beautiful word “games” by placing it next to gamble), or those women, many of whom are elderly, waiting for the opening of the bar to play, under the stairs, on their favourite machine – they are people in need of help. Behind the clinking of money and the play of colours there hides a harrowing cry for help, if you have the ears to hear it. They all suffer, many of them are fragile, extremely fragile people. Many of them are depressed, many have problems with alcohol and drugs. They should not be left in the hands of for-profit companies designed to make profits out of their despair. In past centuries the pawn shops had been invented and then run by religious orders: whoever pledges their wedding ring or wedding dress should not find themselves facing someone who wants to derive profit from their despair, but a friendly look, full of  pietas. Not someone that earns more if they ruin you more. The more lost you get the more their earnings accumulate, as it happens almost always in the world of the “I-buy-gold”, and as it always happens with gamble. Wise civilizations know this very much, our Italian civilisation has forgotten and denied it.

A government, a parliament and institutions that do nothing, or terribly little to put an end to this scandal is a government that is not taking the side of the poor. Just as those non-profit organizations are not taking the side of the poor (the day that I got to know how many they are I could not sleep) that accept money from our fragile people to treat other fragilities. Is this not mad?! And all those who sign agreements with “industrial associations for gamble” to support legal gambling and combat illegal gambling, accepting and signing the idea that legal gambling is good. I hope it's just naiveté.

There is so much pain in the world, we know it well. Part of this pain can be eliminated or at least reduced. But more is needed in terms of action and in thought. Gamble is a metastasis of a profound illness of our capitalism, particularly of Italian capitalism (Italy is the first European nation to be pro-gamble while there are no slot machines in the bars in Germany and France). Behind the big Italian gamble enterprises (Lottomatica, Sisal, SNAI ...) there are companies that were once producers of geographic atlases and books for our children (and unfortunately they still are), who, after having lost their original mission thought of jumping into a safe market where profits are not lacking – institutions are seriously complicit. In Italy there is not only the beautiful capitalism of small and medium enterprises and family businesses (also larger ones) that is looking to the long run, loving the people and the territories. There is also the “Lottomatica model” based capitalism that has the sole purpose of maximizing profits and returns and is planning go to schools to educate our children about “responsible gambling”, and maybe it will succeed, too, given the precedents. This capitalism is not the economy that Chiara dreamed of, it is not civil but uncivil economy, one that grows and prospers by consuming the poor.

The EoC will only continue its course towards a more fraternal world if it continues to hear the “cry of the poor”, the poor of the favelas and the poor devoured by that utterly wrong part of capitalism in our country. It was listening to the cry of the poor that moved Chiara and made her invent the EoC. It is hearing other cries of other poor people (the cries of the poor are perhaps the same everywhere) that now moves our actions against gambling, and has to induce other similar actions, because we cannot sleep peacefully while structures of sin devour our brothers and sisters. ‘Don't forget, the EoC was born for the poor.’ Let's keep that in mind, together.

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We should not descend to compromise when the poor's skin is at stake.  We should not help them with money wrought out of their weakness.

by Luigino Bruni

published in Città Nuova n.21 on 10/11/2014

Slotmob 01I was in London, pursuing economic studies when in the morning of 8th May 1998 Chiara Lubich reached me on my house phone. Even if I had been member of her movement since the age of 15 – this is the great adventure of my life – I had never spoken to her personally. I can still remember how moved and surprised I was, but above all I remember her words: ‘Would you like to help me to attain scientific dignity to the Economy of Communion?’ The she added that on her return from Brazil, seven years after the launch of the EoC she understood that unless there developed an economic thought to accompany the entrepreneurs, the EoC would never really take off. I said yes, I left London for Rome and started working with her and many other fellows – and it all contributed to giving a bit of that scientific dignity to the life we all wanted to live then and now. I understood that life has priority, but thoughts and theory are also life and when they are not there, practice becomes poor and short lived.

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The Uncivil Economy of Gamble

The Uncivil Economy of Gamble

We should not descend to compromise when the poor's skin is at stake.  We should not help them with money wrought out of their weakness. by Luigino Bruni published in Città Nuova n.21 on 10/11/2014 I was in London, pursuing economic studies when in the morning of 8th May 1998 Chiara Lubich...
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    [title] => On Capitalism During the Flight
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Returning home, dreaming of communion also for that good half of the world that will never set foot in an airplane

by Luigino Bruni

published in Città Nuova n.17/2014 on 10/09/2014

Capitalismo in volo ridReturning from Paris, from a summer school on the Economy of Communion, flying up in the sky above Europe I am thinking about our capitalism. Perhaps because in France there is a newly appointed minister of economics, perhaps because I have just greeted fifty young people who are fascinated by a more fraternal and inclusive economy. Or perhaps because my heart goes out to too many aircrafts that are in the wrong, flying over many war-ravaged lands; I cannot help thinking of our market economy, our crises, the many Africans and North Africans I've seen in the subways of Paris and its existential, economic and cultural peripheries. 

[fulltext] =>

The first thing I ponder is what is happening in this plane between me (the other passengers) and the airline that is taking me home. I purchased a ticket, and in doing so I have completely moved into the logic of our capitalism. I made ​​a contract with a major airline, a major player in the global economy (which buys, like other major airlines, many highly speculative financial stocks [hedge funds] to insure itself against the fluctuations of oil prices). To buy my ticket I used a credit card issued by one of the leading global financial circuits. Apart from me, this contract was closed also with a top manager normally travelling in business class, an Italian family (parents and three boys) who spent a few days of holiday in Paris and the young activist of an NGO who is returning from a conference where our economic system was criticised. The flight attendant smiles at me and treats me with much kindness, without actually knowing me, but that’s what her contract prescribes for her. And I am writing comfortably, using my PC produced by a large multinational.

And from this plane my thoughts also go to my predecessor at the University of Rome, who, two hundred years ago, in order to make the same trip to Paris took on perhaps a week's journey, had to cross mountain passes, running the risk of being trapped in the mountains, spending a fortune on the trip, and arriving physically destroyed. And I also think that there were very few people who had the means to go to Paris or to other European cities, their number must have been much lower than today.

So if we stopped at this point of the argument I would not feel too uncomfortable povertaabout this flight as I remember the young people from different countries of the world that I have just left, with some nostalgia.

In fact, there is much more to my ticket than that: hidden in it there is such 'a lot' that is hard to see, also because we have stopped asking ourselves some deep questions about the kind of world we have built around us. At the same time it is good to remember that I am travelling on a machine that is one of the main factors of pollution for our planet. It is true that among the programmes it offers aboard there is also the opportunity to make a donation to plant trees that would reproduce exactly the amount of CO2 that we are emitting, but by doing so it is asking us, private citizens to take responsibility for a social cost that this company generates and does not cover (or only in a small part). But then I think of all those citizens whom I have just come across in the metro, and who will probably never get on one of these planes, or just very rarely. In fact, there are less people travelling by air today than yesterday, because even if tickets cost relatively less today than ten years ago, the inequalities have increased, and today the life conditions of the poorest 10% in Europe have deteriorated, and it continues to worsen. Not to mention the billions of people in Africa, Asia and in many parts of South America, who not only do not fly, but they see the conditions of their environment worsen because of the flights of the richer 20% of the planet. Yet even these, and especially these people, would need to fly, to see the world, they need to take flights more than us, more than me, they need to fly and dream. But – and this is something that you do not speak about –if only 50% of those who today are excluded and trapped in the existential peripheries of the world began to fly in the sky, the planet would not be able to provide for our subsistence, and we would all have to get down to the ground. The sad message that lurks beneath this flight is very simple and should not let us travel in peace: the exclusion of one-half of the inhabitants of the planet from this wealth is the condition for us to be able to fly. That's why the real systemic risk of our time is that the many people who are forced to remain on the ground one day cease to peacefully watch the sky where only the others are flying.

And so, as we are landing now, my heart and mind return to the Economy of Communion, to those young people full of hope, and I feel convinced again that if there is a post-capitalist socio-economic system in which all can dream and fly, then this new system will have something to do with the word communion. But we won't ever realize it, unless we – whether we are flying or not – keep looking for it, thinking about it, loving it and believing it today.

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Returning home, dreaming of communion also for that good half of the world that will never set foot in an airplane

by Luigino Bruni

published in Città Nuova n.17/2014 on 10/09/2014

Capitalismo in volo ridReturning from Paris, from a summer school on the Economy of Communion, flying up in the sky above Europe I am thinking about our capitalism. Perhaps because in France there is a newly appointed minister of economics, perhaps because I have just greeted fifty young people who are fascinated by a more fraternal and inclusive economy. Or perhaps because my heart goes out to too many aircrafts that are in the wrong, flying over many war-ravaged lands; I cannot help thinking of our market economy, our crises, the many Africans and North Africans I've seen in the subways of Paris and its existential, economic and cultural peripheries. 

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On Capitalism During the Flight

On Capitalism During the Flight

Returning home, dreaming of communion also for that good half of the world that will never set foot in an airplane by Luigino Bruni published in Città Nuova n.17/2014 on 10/09/2014 Returning from Paris, from a summer school on the Economy of Communion, flying up in the sky above Europe I am thi...