Introduction

We have been raised in societies where it has become customary to delegate knowledge to others. The cultural and religious foundations of the West point to a constant and increasing distancing from nature, and thus we have lost the direct and immediate capacity to understand the environment in which we live, a capacity that was at the basis of our evolution over millions of years.

Our ancestors, living in hunting-gathering tribes, knew hundreds of plant species and a myriad of uses for each of them. Recent research has shown that when a New Guinean aborigine, whose lifestyle has not changed very much over millennia, is placed in a new environment, he immediately begins to become conscious of it, gathering and classifying plants, and achieving in just a few days a much deeper knowledge of his surroundings than people born and raised there.

The accelerating technological development of the last two centuries has only exacerbated this trend, which by merging technological evolution and bureaucratisation of decisions has relegated individuals into a completely passive and acquiescent role with respect to the choices made by others, most often by experts given the task to analyse and resolve problems that are by now remote to most people.
We have reached a point where extreme specialisation seems not a means but an end in itself, leading to the paradoxical need to create problems in order to resolve them – thanks of course to the contributions of ever- ready experts!

This became ridiculously clear during last year: in 2009, countless people refused to take the vaccine for the alleged swine flu pandemic distributed by their governments; and the patent manipulation and failure of the Copenhagen Summit couldn't stop the inexorable environmental movement that no longer expects anything to come from above but is rather working from the ground up, on the level of each individual's personal choices and within the same parameters that it purports to change.
The full significance of these profound transformations emerges clearly: in an increasingly globalised and technological world, we need to re-conquer a dimension that is within our reach, overcoming the barriers of specialisation and making room for understanding rather than knowledge.

Early in the last century, the revolution of quantum physics opened the way, demolishing what we thought were absolutes; we thus learned not to trust the experts. We must not forget this lesson and must continue to look within ourselves and around us, always confiding on that sense of wonder that is, for man, the beginning and the end of all things.

Massimo Mercati