Syncope

Syncope is a momentary suspension of the blood flow and the cerebral activity provoking a sudden and temporary blackout. The effects can be irrelevant, limited to momentary discombobulating, but sometimes they can be worse. In some cases, if the interruption of the blood flow in the human organism is extended beyond certain limits, death occurs. Among all, the “syncope oscura” – the one without identified, logic causes – is considered the most dangerous, because it doesn’t permit medics, the technicians of the body, to intervene.

Also the functioning of the social organism is guaranteed by a whole of flows. Flows of goods, persons, data, energy. These flows can be interrupted due to the most diverse causes. A technical incident, for example. Or a theft of materials. Maybe a sabotage. When it happens, the effects often are irrelevant. The services suffer a pause, provoking a bit of discomfort, bad mood, hindrance. And then everything goes back to normal. But what happens when this interruption of flows extends itself beyond certain limits? What if these interruptions would multiply and cross one another? Goods and persons flow and rush through the streets, streets of tar and steel. Data and energy flow and rush through the cables, cables of copper and plastic. These last years of turmoil – infested by the need of popularity, by the ambition of recognition – have instilled in the heads of many, of too many, that the minimum requisite to realize a “blockade” is large mass participation. One blocks when one is with many (therefore, one needs to be many; therefore, one needs to persuade many; therefore…). But this is not true. This is nothing more than a hypothesis amidst others.

To block a street, one doesn’t always need to gather hundreds of people. For example, a few years ago, a few comrades, with few means, forced the cars in a whole valley to queue. For example, a few years ago, an ordinary summer fire just next to a big arterial road made a whole metropolis go in tilt (this happened more or less in the same time that in the same metropolis, several dozens of comrades where gathering for hours on a square to protest against the sentence of a court).

The interruption of a railroad is even more probable. This is happening more and more, a bit everywhere in Europe, be it because of incidents or by purpose. But it is unavoidable. With all those junction boxes, those railroad switches, those semaphores, those omnipresent cables next to the rails in small canals, at the mercy of negligence and rage, the possibility that something will happen became almost a certainty.

And the cables? Don’t they wrap up the entire territory, unraveling in thousands of directions, sometimes unsuspected? Don’t you find them always and everywhere, just next to you, about your head and under your feet? Also here, we see all these junction boxes, switches, antennas, manholes and so on allowing the daily use of all sorts of machinery. Allowing daily routine. Allowing daily life. Even what is synonym for virtual reality, internet needs cables to function. Sea cables, even deep sea cables, but cables that in the end come out into the open on the beaches. Like Jonah, the cable which links houses, industries and institutions (political, economical and military) of Israel with Europe. And which has its “landing station” here in Italy, in Bari.

Daydreams, of course. One should not detract an individual imagination all stretched towards putting itself at the service of the collective urgencies. This could provoke a cut and one would take freedom not approved by the sovereign assembly. Certainly. Without the slightest doubt. It is evident. We beg your pardon. We will stop here.