weblog #1 – 02/18/2016
Tomorrow, 5 years ago, me and other companions were taking an abandoned building in Montesacro, a neighbourhood in the northern east part of Rome. A number of at least 40 or 50 people were “abusively” taking over a public building which had been left rotting for 6 years, since the administration had moved into another building a few blocks away. Via Montemeta 21, that’s the address. We were a union of different souls brought together by a common cause. So, that day we named it Puzzle Lab. Our project started, our job as 24/7 militants and activists was on. At the beginning, only me, other 3 engineers from my university, and 2 students from the faculty of eastern languages, were actually sleeping and occupying 24 hours a day the five-story building.
Since that event, and for three years after it, I had meetings almost every night. I took care of a huge number of things. Ranging from pretending myself as electrician, plumber, construction worker, to bringing to life and contributing to many subprojects. Mainly a student’s house and dorm, Puzzle opened a school of italian language oriented to immigrates, a public library and a reading room, a medialab, a people’s school oriented to secondary school student’s. The last one, in particular, brought me to a new awesome experience: teaching kids. It was REALLY tough and stunning at the same time. The kids, mostly coming from disadvantaged families and layers of society, were actually teaching me so much too! I was giving them notions of history, philosophy, explaining them math, or physic problems and theorems. They were allowing me be more and more aware and conscious of the world, and experienced in life.
Not only, as a collective, we were a lot active in many projects for the neighbourhood, but also, as individuals, we were employing our time in the groups relative to our respectives universities.
My lifestyle changed radically.
I realized the critical importance of mass education and began to feel the compelling need to fight against fascism and all the cultural fetishisms promoted by a capitalistic, humanity-rotting, society.
Today, as human beings, part of this society, and since we’re born, we are subject by any mean to the cultural education the pervades our own environment. Not only what we learn and how we gain our basic knowledge in school and so on throughout our academic career, but a great part of our education – meaning mindset, thoughts, feelings, reactions, etc. – is also achieved by all the tv shows, commercials, movies, video games, music, novels… Every medium is actually used to spread cultural values, symbols, and common sense. Social network too are often influenced by who funds a campaign. So, even our virtual world winds making up our ideas and thoughts.
A couple of days ago, during the third week of the iOS development program, a course I’m currently attending at Flatiron School, our director of faculty Joe brought up a claim regarding an episode of “soft” gender discrimination (aka latent sexism). Very shortly, it was all about a naive joke that happened. I don’t really know what joke was, but it was something to the effect of saying that women are basically worse than men at programming. I’m sure that whoever did it never meant to do or say something harmful to any woman just for the fact of being so. It was definitely a light joke, but yet reveals the immediate consequence of having been targeted by an hideous mass education, from birth to present. Even when you lock up your ears, certain awful ideas still worm and become part of yourself. They just live in a sort of background in people’s minds.
“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.”
This quote is from Antonio Gramsci. Certainly one of the most inspiring people in history, in my opinion.
Joe’s attention and sensibility to this kind gender of discrimination, above all his speech on the matter, really brought up in my mind Gramsci’s quote.
We likely won’t end up, with our careers, as famous film directors, or mainstream artists or writers. But just like all that plethora of journalists, reporters, summer-hit singers, entertainment industry stars and so on, we will have the power and take part in the daily process of mass education.
As mobile developers, we will hopefully have the chance, one day, to have the product of our work being used by thousands of different people across the globe. Thinking this, it’s what mostly inspires me in the constant struggle of becoming a better developer and a better person every day.
The sparkling feeling of this responsibility is really all it’s worth for me in learning how to build a catchy mobile app or game, for example. You will get to influence people’s mind sometimes, and at that point remind to ask yourself: is the message I’m sending to the users something positive for all of us? Hope you’ll be able to be brutally honest with yourself, and to answer YES !
https://www.facebook.com/puzzle.welfareinprogress
https://www.facebook.com/collettivoaula2/
Documentary Lab Puzzle Welfare in Progress… [ITA]
