Okay, I don’t think I need to tell anyone this, but just in case, here it is, a clear FYI about how much our purchase power matters. Let me build it brick-by-brick via a reflection on the last 20 years traveling to Italy on repeat occasions.
This post is designed to provoke the following lines of questions internally: Do we think enough about what we are losing by living the way we live now and prioritizing the things we do while keeping things chill and status quo since it “doesn’t really directly affect us”? Have we ever stopped to reflect on what we have already lost … what we are about to lose, forever?
Twenty years ago, I took my first international flight and landed in Florence, Italy. I got out of the plane and noticed a smell that seemed to create new olfactory cells every time I inhaled. It was significantly pleasant.
Context: I was there for two months, rooming in a villa in Sesto Fiorentino, studying studio art methodology, art history and the Italian language. I also attended some architectural lectures and all the weekend excursions I possibly could.
Italy was on the Lira back then. There were some other major differences, too. First, everywhere we went, there was a lot more contemplative space. I.e., nobody overloaded your senses around monuments of importance by trying to pedal cheep, plastic, noisy made in China (MIC) stuff. Everything felt more romantic and … sorry to repeat this word, but it’s the only one: spacious.
Of course, I had a Verizon flip phone, never SMSed, used AOL after a long dial-up tone, wouldn’t know what social media was and went nuts every time I heard Mojdo’s Lady (Hear Me Tonight), but that’s beside the point. Or is it? Because these things meant life was moving along quite a bit slower. And it wasn’t so bad, in fact it was blessed.
I remember shopping in Rome on a weekend excursion. I was walking on that main drag, the street that ends at the Spanish Steps. Every store I walked in was attended by an Italian professional shopkeeper. I’d linger at a place and a woman would inconspicuously inspect me from a distance. She’d then b-line over and grab whatever I was looking at, in the size I was, and coax me into a changing room.
Everything fit. I mean … as if I had sent my measurements in and was just picking it up from the tailor. The quality of the clothing and the professionalism of the attendants was transformative.
I had never shopped like that before. I had never felt so feminine or beautiful, either. The quality of materials, workmanship and design was extremely high for my experience as well. In fact, two pairs of shoes, a jacket and pair of pants that I bought that day lasted me more than a decade of regular use.Over my time in Italy that summer, I started to notice that every experience was so careful.
Even the street sweepers had pride. That Italians insisted on things being not just good enough, but absolutely the best they could be. Beautiful to all senses. Because why on Earth do anything otherwise?!
I studied my art coursework with an experienced artist who had lived for decades in Rome as a potter, the ancient techniques of fresco, majolica, relief and manuscript illumination. And I had to create artworks based on these mediums. Sometimes I’d stay in the studio until 2 a.m., working on my manuscript or fresco.
This experience built an empathetic connection to years long past — how so many artisans worked beautify buildings and interiors it in these ways. Spending most of their waking hours on tiny details. How much it mattered. How much it changed the way life could be.
It was all a stark contrast from the states, where I had only ever been before. And to return was very hard.
Fast forward to 2011. Exactly ten years later. I was on a trip to Italy again — Roma, Firenze, Como. I saw immediately that things had changed. For the worse. First, the Euro. This crushed everything and pitched the playing field of purchase power against quite a few locals and tourists. Next, there seemed to be so many people out on the street selling cheap MIC things on blankets and making noise with fluorescent MIC toys.
In a beloved place I had felt so much deep peace and experienced profound reflections on a night ten years before — Piazza Navona — there was some kind of carousel setup with loads of cheap toys, candy, etc., lending the square an incredibly ugly fairground feeling. Lots of street performers and, sadly, beggars. There was no peace or space to take anything in. In fact, I somehow surrendered to the fact that I was not in the same place.
Then I noticed the clothes. They were all bigger sizes. I fit into a medium back in 2001. In 2011 I was a xs/small. Cheaper material. Everything sold by reticent people who spent more time talking to each other or organizing the clothes than helping anyone try them on.
Let’s step next to December 2015/January 2016. I returned to Italy, first to Rome to party for new year, then to Florence, to paint. One day, on a walk just over Ponte Vecchio from the city center, I met a man in a facial clinic. A Greek doctor who gave me an acid-peel facial of some kind that I later regretted. But the conversation was worth it. I kicked back on his table and it started: my education into how globalization was killing everything I loved about Italy. I mentioned what I saw changing over the past 15 years. And he took his cue to unload a breathtaking amount of information on me that, to this day, I cannot shake.
He said that China owned a lot of factories in Italy. In the north. That these factories are run tax-free and lots of money runs around under the radar (surprise! not). That they don’t practice any human rights regulations and are not held accountable for related violations.
As an example, he cited one such factory that caught multiple times on fire, killing many workers and re-opening quickly each time to keep up with production. He said what I saw, that many Italian shops are now overtaken by cheap MIC knockoffs and goods. That many immigrants work much cheaper than Italians, so now the stores are not locally attended. He said that Italy has an immense debt to China and pays in so many ways. This is the case in Greece. This is the case in Africa. This is the case in a LOT of places.
He then said something to me that I knew was so true that it left me walking a bit slow out of the appointment: what is being sold is not immediately tangible. What is being sold is a way of life. While tourists flock to experience their lives being touched by the soul of a country and its rich culture, Italy is selling it. And we are about to lose something very special.
The long, slow evening meal (I remember so many from 2001, so few now) with many glasses of wine and food courses and the lingering coffees and conversations. The craftsmanship. The pride. The attention to detail. The quality. The smells. The space and silence and beauty and feeling that we are in an Italy that features an impenetrable ancient sense of ascetics.
The Greek doctor continued to weave his own theory for me, saying we are going to lose a lot in this world, to a culture that works where they live, that takes few vacations and is proud to overwork, overdo and brainwash its masses into allegiance. A country that has already shown its intentions with Tibetans, Uighurs, Hong Kongers and now the Taiwanese.
Of course we can’t blame only China here. We’ve all been participating in one way or another in setting up a viable context for this. The way was paved. Via globalization, we’ve already lost, dearly, to the takeover of American franchises like Starbucks, McDonalds, etc. In fact, it’s arguable that this was a kind of phase 1 of the breakdown of everything we love (can we even quantify what has been lost so far?), because suddenly smaller shops had a much harder time competing. The Euro didn’t help — did I mention this yet?
More subtly, yet no less profoundly, people start to gradually project convenient and cheap onto a place that was not so before. Suddenly MIC goods were not so out of scope in more and more (and more) places, actually, flooding the market and the street corners.
Today, I live in Lugano. The Italian part of Switzerland. I see the same pressures exerted up here but to a lesser degree in some ways and a more obvious degree in others because the country prices people out pretty ruthlessly. Nevertheless, there are a lot of chains and a dearth of soul where money gets piled in places for tax reasons. There’s also very little protection around gorgeous old buildings if someone waves a wad of cash in the right direction. A McDonalds pushed out a beautiful part of the lakefront a couple years ago and drove us nuts. We went down to Como to see some friends a few weeks ago and noted two Chinese-run shops dominating all sales in the train station.
The point of all of this
Extinction lingers around so many cherished ecosystems and experiences: coral reefs, old forest, the species that need large old forests to live, cultural traditions, stonework, woodwork, elegance, delayed gratification, process, sacrifice, attention span, empathy, leisure, reflection. All of these things are dying out at a horrifying rate due to a human economy with really warped priorities.
What are we doing to stop this? What are we teaching our children to do by example? Are we standing up for anything or just shrugging our shoulders and saying “ah well, it’s going that way anyway.” I regret to say that I did this when lots of people were shouting about the dangers of globalization. I couldn’t see how corrupting it truly would become. I see it now all around me — along a tainted yellow-brick road from hindsight to a future I shudder to imagine. Should I have hope? Should I even wonder — what will I see in 20 years?
PS: I could write this whole entry over again about my experience in 2002, in Costa Rica’s rainforests, and what I learned about the incredibly rich biodiversity of old forests — as well as the clearcutting going on there, the species that had just gone extinct, the rate of forest clearing now, the species that have since gone extinct … for meat, to sell cheaply to McDonalds/food chains up north and why I am now vegan. Maybe I should. Maybe I will. But if I don’t, it’s safe to say that the food you buy matters, too.
