For Pandemic Alphabet, the project carried out by Lo Stato dei Luoghi – a national network of activators of culturally based regenerated places and spaces – Federico Bomba wrote the contribution for letter C: Contamination.
A word that has taken on a negative meaning in these last months of segregation. If contamination carries within it the risk of death, which, of course, we do not like to deal with, we must not forget that the exchange of matter and energy is the basis of life.
Thermodynamics makes it clear that a system isolated from the outside world is subject to an increase in entropy that causes the system to collapse. This means that we cannot imagine that we are immune from exchange and, therefore, contamination. Indeed, there is no safety procedure that guarantees total protection from any external agent, whether useful or harmful: in short, if we choose to live we must be willing to contaminate ourselves and, in the worst case, even die.
What we can do, as a good daily practice, is to create the conditions that preserve, or even better strengthen, the health of our system. If our system is strong we can more easily get rid of unwelcome contamination. Never before, however, are we aware of how taking care of ourselves is not enough, because we are immersed in an ecosystem for which we are equally responsible. My well-being depends on the well-being of the ecosystem, so looking to one’s own little garden and cultivating one’s own fenced-in certainties has never been so obviously useless.
The near future of humanity, once out, will have to be marked by the courage to mix, with care, backgrounds and skills, to increase diversity and be able to respond to global challenges, whether health, economic or ethical. Only if we are able to return to contamination without fear, with respect for nature and other human beings, will we change and become better: otherwise we will collapse.
