Cultural contamination in an interconnected world

 

Paolo Cugini

 

What are the consequences of the new cultural paradigm, whose main feature is the break with the past model? If the paradigm changes, the way of approaching reality must also change, because that is precisely what has been brought into question. In the West, our cultural journey has been marked by harshness, by a reason and rationality that have left no room not only for imagination, but also for feelings, passions—everything that characterises our daily experience. Over the centuries, there has been an exacerbation of the principle of rationality, which has prevailed over everything, anaesthetising reality, making it insensitive and incapable of approaching the world in any way other than through reason. There is a passion within history, in our veins; there is a profound feeling that experiences life differently from reasoning. Nature has a heart, which feels life according to criteria that escape the logical and dialectical systems elaborated in modernity. For this reason, everything has collapsed. Nature is patient, calm, but at a certain point it rebels against violence, abuses, violations, and falsifications. We are witnessing the revolt of nature: it cannot take any more. Did we have to wait for the destruction of the planet to realise that there was something in our Western way of approaching reality that was not working?

If conceptual systems collapse, with them fall the closed logical procedures, the conceptual walls built to defend from nature and reality. If there are no more conceptual pavilions and systems of protection, this means the field is open, there is room for everything, and the world, from now on, can create those relationships upon which it is structured. It is at this level of understanding that the concept of contamination comes into play in the new cultural paradigm.

I use the concept of contamination in an exclusively positive sense. This is already an important indication. The move away from the modern paradigm, which placed reason and the subject at the absolute centre of discourse, presents man as part of a whole. Western thought, consolidated in the modern era, always placed man at the centre of a world in which everything revolved around him and from which he could benefit. This world has collapsed; it could not withstand the impact with reality, which, as quantum physics teaches us, is all interconnected—the exact opposite of what the modern paradigm thought. Having spent centuries classifying reality, drawing boundaries, judging who was worthy and who was not, we found ourselves without answers when reality presented us with the bill, telling us that everything is interconnected, that relationship is the key concept for anyone wishing to understand the meaning of things. If everything is related to everything else, it no longer makes sense to create perfect systems that have no real reference but serve only to conceptually justify personal positions, often to justify usurpations and political power.

Contamination is a concept that is both fascinating and dangerous. Fascinating because it leads us to unexpected, new dimensions that require us to be open to questioning ourselves. Entering contaminated worlds and allowing oneself to be contaminated means understanding that, in the new cultural paradigm, identity is no longer a concept built on predetermined values but is formed by moving through time, paying attention to where one steps, but always looking forward and with a spirit open to encounter and relationship. At the same time, however, the concept of contamination is dangerous because it calls into question everything we have fixed upon and that has determined the structure of our world. It is dangerous because it requires abandoning conceptual securities, along with the willingness not only to build something new but also to allow oneself to be deconstructed. The concept of contamination, in the various fields of knowledge, cannot be implemented in a modern paradigm closed within its own systems built upon a priori principles. Above all, however, the concept of contamination does not work in contexts where someone believes they hold the absolute truth. Contamination sets us on a journey of discovering new worlds and, as we discover them, we come to understand ourselves.

Therefore, there are two guiding ideas in this second part: interconnection and contamination, which, in my view, are closely linked. This second part is intended as a line of enquiry, offering a path that should be reconsidered and remodelled based on each researcher’s specific journey.