Leopardi candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

This morning I took a few minutes to chat with a friend from Lithuania. A young girl, intelligent and educated, certainly one of the best people I have met in recent years.

Here is part of our chat:

me – What do you think of the BIPPIblog?
she - I like it
just I am very scared of these things
me - scared?
she - mhm
I don t really know how to help or change something
so that's why it is like closing my eyes
maybe there could be some other way of helping for simple people like me
me - the very important thing u must change, u, me and everybody, is yourself
closing the eyes is not the good way
if every of us would change a little bit, the world would be much better
she - I know but sitting here in a cozy home and saying that I am very upset about those things that happen means the same like closing eyes

I see this attitude a bit everywhere. Young people feel small and unable to intervene in major world issues, which is a lawless and evil jungle; better to deal with things which are closer and more simple: sports, mobiles and Big Brother. Democracy itself, which is activism and participation, becomes an unconscious and bored expression of the vote, with great happiness for famous people who have nothing to say.
Because rebellion is useless, nothing much will change, better to live in peace with themselves and ignore to the pain by closing our eyes, like the young Giacomo Leopardi.
The Leopardi that they teach us in school is a sad and pessimistic poet, students have had enough of him.

Instead Leopardi, the great Leopardi, when 38 years old, shortly before his death and at the height of awareness, hoped for a renewed society in a sense of solidarity, not by abstract moral or religious teachings, but for natural awareness that only resistance against the common natural enemy, evil, can make men really men, and life worth living.
This Leopardi, the great Leopardi, I would dress with the little BIPPI umbrella and put him in the front row to say no to war, abuse, impositions, violence, torture, injustice, xenophobia, forced assimilation of cultural minorities, the destruction of the environment, no to lies, fears generated and fed by the media, induced needs, ignorance of government.
This Leopardi would protest with me against the destructive mega-projects, against military occupations, against any governmental caste, against piloted disruption.
This Leopardi would be a great activist for peace.
I propose Leopardi, posthumously, for the Peace Nobel Prize.

Bruno Picozzi (in translation)