José Pepe Mujica, former president of Uruguay, is in Italy to present the book Una pecora nera al potere, la politica della gente. At the Milan stop he was in conversation with Petrini and Sepúlveda, on the subject of happiness.
Three of the greatest exponents and representatives of contemporary culture came together to talk about happiness. And about how to achieve it, by eliminating the obstacles along the path each of us travels. Carlin Petrini, founder of Slow Food, Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda and José Mujica (known as Pepe), senator and president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015, spoke freely about their vision for stemming the haemorrhage of values that characterises our society in a packed lecture hall full of young people, at the Università degli studi di Milano, on Sunday 6 November.
The occasion was the presentation of the book about Mujica's life, Una pecora nera al potere, la politica della gente, which brings together anecdotes, memories and conversations of the former Uruguayan president, before and during his term in office. A multifaceted portrait that also emerged, unfiltered, during the conversation Mujica had with Petrini and Sepúlveda, touching on themes such as inequality, the importance of politics and progress: "Our duty is to think as a species and fight to save the Earth, without forgetting to pursue progress with intelligence", Mujica declared.
"My generation thought that things would constantly improve as time went by, but in this it was a little naive." This is how Mujica opened his remarks. "The culture of immanence — that is, the sum of our subliminal actions — shapes our life choices. The contemporary economic system builds within us needs that we don't truly need; the so-called consumer society is geared towards the accumulation of money. We feel compelled to spend," Mujica continued, "to embrace all of this like a religion. This is why we must change the way we think. If economic development does not also make us happy, then it is false development."
The need to evaluate our purchases in terms of time spent rather than money accumulated was also addressed by Sepúlveda: "The natural and ultimate destiny of the human species is to remove every obstacle to happiness." To this end he quoted Salvador Allende who, during an interview given in 1971, when he was president of Chile, declared that "the revolution is not made in order to live long, but to live happily."
"I belong to the only generation in recent Italian history to have lived through 70 years of peace, which is why I should be the happiest of all," Petrini declared. And yet today's young people show considerable difficulty in achieving happiness despite living in a context where resources are squandered and there are no wars. Hence the importance of having ever more people like Mujica in power: "He, beyond politics, has been able to pass on trust to young people through a single element: the good example."
"If all people are equal," as democracies prescribe, politicians are no exception. "They should live as the majority of people live," Mujica concluded, "not like a minority or an élite." Because if one is more interested in power or money, then it is better to "go and work for some multinational and forget about politics." Dignity and honesty are fundamental values that have no price, and if one is fortunate enough to be chosen as a representative of a community, one must "be honoured, happy." A piece of good fortune for which politicians themselves should be the ones to pay. A reason that should lead them to give thanks for the position they hold. A concrete reason for happiness that is not a synonym for pleasure, but rather for balance and the desire to fight to save the Earth — the one thing every living being has in common.
