Theater in Milan yesterday – an Italian comedian (and many other things), Enrico Bertolino.

The show http://www.enricobertolino.com/casta-away/ was very good, go watch it if you can.  It was fun but sobering – mostly around politics and ethics.  Lot of material in Italy to make fun of the way we are treating those matters….

But close to the end, Enrico said something around “to change things, everyone of us should focus on doing whatever it is our task  to do – in the best  way we are capable to!”.  The theater exploded in an ovation. I was underwhelmed.

The situation is so bad that doing our job well will not take us out of it.  We need to do much more. We need to get beyond of our own job and start caring about the collective matters.  We need to find a new way to make politics, from the ground up – with no hidden ideology or mystical gurus. If we do not do so in a massive way, others will, using the instability and social unrest deriving from the economic crisis downstream effects as a fertile  terrain; what happened in Genova few days ago around the bus strike could become the first example of a long string.

I spoke to Enrico after the show; he told me that the sense of what he said was that we should not all try to do somebody else’s job, but he agreed wholeheartedly that to get a real change we need many of us to step beyond our small interests.   And this is one of the things I need and want  to do using this personal crisis as  a pivot.