At the Festival of Economics, questions of meaning to read the future

Mirja Cartia d'Asero, managing director Gruppo 24 ORE, comments: 'From 2022 to today, the Trento Festival of Economics has been a crescendo of events, popularity and attention. More than a festival it has become a celebration, people are curious to see, know and learn. The Holy Father's words were as unexpected as they were welcome. In the face of this moment of great complexity, what is the festival? I believe it is a moment of intergenerational dialogue, where we do not just give information to young people. The flow is not one-way, but it is an exchange. I aim to listen first and foremost, also to the young people, to whom we wanted to speak with the Fuorifestival: a meeting ground with their languages. A leitmotiv, that of approaching young people, which is very important for our Group'.

Franco Ianeselli, mayor of Trento, starts with a joke: 'We apologise for the rain'. And then: 'It is nice that Trento during these four days tries to be the world capital of free thought. Here, simple answers do not count, but asking questions about where we are going and having the opportunity to stop and reflect'.

Maurizio Rossini, managing director Trentino Marketing: 'It is a source of satisfaction to have seen so many young people today. Some of them look lost, but I believe that most of them have good ideas and can grasp the opportunities of this world. We want to bring optimism and the message that ideas are feasible. Only in this way can we offer Italy this energy and ideas, otherwise they go abroad'.

This was followed by a dialogue between Gianfranco Ravasi, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and Lavinia Cigna Biagiotti, President and CEO Biagiotti Group.

For Cardinal Ravasi, 'We are and must always seek meaning. Through this parable we ask ourselves about a fundamental question. I express it in the words of a great playwright, Bertolt Brecht, 'I am sitting by the roadside. The driver is changing the wheel. I do not know where I come from. I do not know where I am going. So why am I waiting so impatiently for the wheel to be changed?". Here you understand the search for meaning, "quo vadis", is the question of society itself. And then, quoting Wittgenstein: "What I wanted to search for was the contours of an island. What I discovered, in the end, were the borders of the ocean'. And that is why, says Ravasi, 'when we ask ourselves where we are going, we too must not be satisfied with historical and social coordinates, but ask ourselves a question of meaning by looking beyond the shoreline'.

Ravasi then speaks of the need to recover the concept of truth. "We have reached the point of talking about post-truth. I believe we must recover an objectivity of truth'. "The demand on truth is fundamental within contemporary culture that is entrusted to a continuous flow, often negative, with attacks on others". Today 'the rhetoricians and not the wise rule the world'. . Then a final message 'that I ideally leave as a farewell', a poem by Mario Luzi, 'I would like to arrive at the gate'. Which concludes as follows: 'What is needed, I believe, is a liberation, a sort of purifying burning of the vaniloquy to which we have abandoned ourselves and of which we have become complacent. Let the bulb of hope that is now hidden under the soil cluttered with rubble not die, waiting to bloom at the first spring'.

Lavinia Cigna Biagiotti, President and CEO Biagiotti Group, talks about the history of her company, 'I am the third runner, I started running at the age of 18 when I lost my father. I often ask myself where I would go, as my mother taught me: to put myself in front of a blank sheet of paper, detaching myself from digital devices, on which I try to write something that makes sense for the many people who work in this company and for our country'. And finally: 'My search for meaning is to dialogue with Rome and leave a small trace - fashion is often labelled as a vanity fair. Instead with our work we try to create value, to find a drop of eternity from this ephemeral'.

Once the dialogue between the two protagonists was over, Fabio Tamburini, editor-in-chief of Il Sole 24 Ore, Radio 24, Radiocor, and chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Trento Festival of Economics, intervened: 'Uncertainty scenarios are the order of the day, we live in a scenario of total uncertainty. The dilemmas of our time are many and our ambition is to bring a small but significant contribution to sow knowledge, because only from this comes awareness and the possibility of being protagonists'. "The principle of delegation cannot work, we all have to feel responsible, because otherwise it ends up that the decisions are taken by a few, but the consequences are borne by many. We must be ready to intervene in reality, we are not talking about the future but about our present,' said Tamburini, saying he hoped that 'this Festival can offer a contribution to answer questions and to start a path towards a future of peace'. Tamburini recalled that, in recent years, 'we have been protagonists of extraordinary events, which bring incredible uncertainty. We thought of the pandemic as an extreme scenario, a hypothetical risk, an unthinkable scenario drawn up by insurance companies, instead it really happened. It seemed that war scenarios in Europe were a thing of the past, instead we are living the conflict in Ukraine. The mechanism of globalisation, which I thought was a model of relations destined to last forever, has jammed, perhaps it will return with other models. Who thought double-digit inflation would return to the western world?"

Concludes Federico Silvestri, general manager media & business Il Sole 24 ORE, speaking of the Fuorifestival, which aims to 'bring younger audiences closer to new languages. Young people are attracted by a piece of content, and then, as has happened many times, they also queue up to listen to a Nobel Prize winner'. We 'refer to what for us is a less proximate target audience, by having creators, influencers, but also artists. We choose them not only to show us their art, but they come here to tell their stories and listen to questions from the audience. We contaminate the festival with entertainment because it is entertainment that has content".