Due to the pandemic, the way we relate and communicate is changing. Now that it is possible to meet friends and go back to work, one of the questions we ask ourselves is how to say goodbye. Between colleagues, customers, with the acquaintances we cross along the way. The Saluto it has always been the key to access the universe of others, whatever our context of action.
In Italy the question has been the subject of study by the university Louis and five other partner universities (La Sapienza, Roma Tre, Macerata, Fine Arts of Bologna, Conservatory of Sassari). Together, according to completely random analyzes - indeed, documented and in-depth - they came to the head of a new way of getting in touch with each other: the greeting of the porcupine.
Coronavirus has made us all a little bit porcupines after all, who for survival must protect themselves and at the same time respect others while maintaining right distance. But the point is: net of this sacrosanct prudence, how to preserve the human dimension? Human warmth?
The elaborate greeting refers to the fairytale of porcupines di Schopenhauer of 1851, to which we owe the very philosophical concept of empathy. In a winter night, two porcupines huddle together to enjoy each other's warmth in order not to freeze. But soon the thorns are felt. And the pain forces them to detach. But the cold attacks them again and again they come back, and then again, the thorns, then the frost, and so on, in a dance between two ailments (and two comforts). Until we get there together right distance.
The greeting of the porcupine at the time of Coronavirus foresees that when facing each other, at a safe distance, two people look into each other's eyes and, as if for a toast, bring forward the arm and palm of the right hand and then bring it back to the heart again.
The look in the eyes of the other frees us, frees one form of recognition, warmth, and above all humanity. The greeting of the porcupine takes a few moments longer than the nudge that has been used in recent days, and it is good, it increases the awareness of the gesture we are making, its meaning, and its value. A new communication code that accompanies the claim I see you, I hear you, I am there, I am a porcupine to which a YouTube channel of tutorials and animation is dedicated.
Secondo Angelo Monorites - Professor of negotiation at Luiss, coordinator of the study (and author of the video #BEHUMANAGAIN #Iosonoporcupine) together with the psychotherapist Maria Rita Parsi - this new form of greeting is ultimately a kind of common mental activator. It was meant to solve that sort of emotional dissonance that we are all living for good or bad between the urgency of protection (from contagion) and the need for humanity inherent in us. We will soon see on the streets how much favor it will meet.
