The War in Europe Recalls the Urgency Of A New Renaissance

On the threshold of the third millennium, it seems that man, despite the progress of technology and discoveries, feels more and more alone and helpless in this world in constant metamorphosis. War in the heart of Europe, climate change, increasingly aggressive viruses, people’s indifference, and man’s ever-increasing loneliness, even though he lives in populous cities, seem to be the triggers of most of his diseases of him.
Starting from the historical matrix of Europe, the multi-versatile cradle of the arts, which from the Renaissance began the glorious path for a cultural and artistic renewal after the medieval period marked by the Romanesque and Gothic, the socio-cultural movement RRM3 – RINASCIMENTO-RENAISSANCE MILLENNIUM III, of which Prof. George Onsy (Egypt) is President and founder – and which sees the Italian Goffredo Palmerini associated with the presidency -, intends to start a second Renaissance.

As we all know, the Renaissance was a true miracle not only artistic but also socio-cultural, whose germ was still in the embryo in the Middle Ages. The rebirth of man, in Leonardo’s vision of the “measure of all things”, brings us back to the ancient Platonic and Aristotelian thought in which man truly represented the yardstick of the space-time environment in which he moved, as can be seen in the architecture of Greek temples, and in philosophy with arguments of high logical rigor in search of the eschatological goal.
But what is the spirit behind George Onsy, Professor of Architecture and Design at the Russian University in Cairo (Egypt)? What is his ambitious project that is involving researchers, poets, artists, writers from all over the world? Stemming from the common Mediterranean cultural roots, Prof. Onsy’s project is trying to tackle the great structural issues of a complex society like ours, especially in these convulsive days in the throes of a war conflict in the heart of Europe itself. The Ukrainian crisis calls upon all of Europe, which appears unprepared to face a new Russian-Ukrainian conflict in a cohesive manner. Europe seems to be wavering between opposing economic interests, thus showing all its weakness.

A brief illustration of the birth of the Manifesto for a Free Europe

The “Ventotene Manifesto” comes to mind, with the original title: “For a free and united Europe”. The promoters of the Project of a Manifesto for the promotion of European unity were Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi in 1941, during the period of confinement on the island of Ventotene. Subsequently published by Eugenio Colorni, to whom the preface is to be ascribed, the Manifesto represents the very roots of Europe, an idea born in a strip of hermit land on the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the prison (political confinement) located on the tiny island of S. Stefano near the island of Ventotene in the archipelago of the Pontine Islands. It is now considered one of the founding texts of the European Union.
Well, how many sacrifices were the basis of the idea of Europe, born on the ashes of the Second World War! It was in Rome (Italy) that the first two treaties were signed on 25 March 1957, which entered into force on 1 January 1958, to regulate respectively: the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom).

Considerations in the light of recent events

On the basis of these latest historical-political quotes to re-establish a relationship between ancient and modern, I am reminded of my recurring reflection on the history of Europe, crossed by very painful moments such as the Shoah and the two Great Wars, but also from moments of glory and wide-ranging artistic and scientific achievements that also marked the twentieth century, despite the war events. Turning back the clock of history, we see how the apex of Italian artistic-cultural beauty which, starting from Florence, then invested all of Europe, is undoubtedly attributable to Humanism and the Renaissance (XV-XVI century).
Therefore, I refer to what was said in the preamble to introduce the guidelines of the RRM3 Movement, not only aimed at the aesthetics of beauty but also with the ethics of goodness, of “Good Government”, such as that depicted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in a cycle of frescoes with the “Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government”, preserved in the Public Building in Siena (1338-1339).

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Here, then, the message of a small group of courageous, constantly growing, represents a sign of hope. Intellectuals, men, and women, certainly not “sloth” of Dante’s memory but thesis, like Ulysses in the Divine Comedy, to the discovery and conquest of a world apparently overwhelmed by ignorance, indolence, oppression, hunger, and misery.
Here the voice of the new Renaissance seems to vibrate among the out-of-tune strings of a story written by a few powerful people in the world.
The human being re-appropriates, in a collective and democratically universal momentum, his central position, as the measure of all things, rising from the ruins of the past to rediscover his role as the protagonist of history: not just a few powerful people at the height of planet, but masses rising on their own legs to walk towards a brighter, more sustainable and equitable future.

Tools fielded by RRM3

In accordance with the global risk we are currently running, the main risk factors identified by Prof. George Onsy are:
1. Economical
2. Environmental
3. Geopolitical
4. Social
5. Technological
These main domains are then broken down into subdomains to identify causes and effects, such as climate change, cybernetics, automation, human rights, and social injustices often caused by a lack of democracy and a staggering peace Worldwide. From the detailed analysis of the causes and effects, we then come to the conclusion that – as in the golden age of the Italian Renaissance – today it is still possible to go back to rebuilding our sick world if, in the face of the goodwill of each of us, we will measure ourselves with the external environment trying to solve the problems in progress.
The challenge of climate change, for example, must be faced abruptly if we do not want to reach the critical threshold of 2030 with a rise in temperature of 1.5 ° C which would bring with it a series of environmental upheavals. Therefore, the choice of experts in each area of action is functional to identify solutions to the various worries of this post-industrial era, certainly not easy to deal with.

By dividing the members of the RRM3 Movement by category of action and, above all, gradually increasing their development in a “continuum” of thought and action – not only philosophical, artistic, poetic but also technological and scientific – we would be able to reorganize the bases of a new humanistic thought, in which the division made towards the end of the 19th century between “Humanae Litterae” and “Scientia” ends up decaying in view of the unification of human knowledge.
In summary, the goal is to reform a cosmic awareness of that unity that characterizes the human being beyond the differences of race, religion, gender. Only by building a bridge of peace between all men will it be possible to overcome the barriers that today stand between us and reality, itself an image of our way of projecting ourselves outside.
I quote Saint Augustine, philosopher, and father of the Church, 4th-5th century AD, and his spiritual theories. For the Bishop of Hippo, time is a dimension of the soul, it is the consciousness itself that expands to embrace the past and the future with the present. Time represents for him a subjective dimension due to the human spirit which brings together the plurality of dispersed external experiences in unity. Despite the evolutionary progress that has been going on for centuries, today ignorance seems to be prevalent: a dichotomy of the technological learning system as it only contemplates the purely material and consumerist side of the context in which we live, overlooking the spiritual component of the human being.

Conclusion

From the ashes of the Renaissance other arts and cultures were born, the famous “isms”, widely quoted by Prof. George Onsy also in one of his beautiful poems, through a flow of arts, even on the rubble of the two great wars. Wandering today a New Renaissance, moral and cultural, is not just an idealization of a happy era to be re-proposed in the midst of many artistic and cultural currents. Will Italy, the epicenter of the old Renaissance, Italy the melting pot of many Mediterranean peoples, still become the cradle of a New Renaissance?