Today is all about yesterday and tomorrow

KARACHI: We live in a time when a minority of highly wealthy and influential people does all the decision making while the majority of people want to be part of this decision making, said the Italian ambassador to Pakistan at his book launch on Thursday.

“We now have to take into consideration all the different stimuli coming from all the different directions,” he added.

Vincenzo Prati, Italian ambassador to Pakistan, launched his latest book, The System and Human Consciousness, on Thursday at the Sheraton. A modest gathering of 30 persons listened to Prati explain his book, an eclectic work that covers ancient and cultural history, such as the Renaissance, the philosophical and academic thought that tries to make sense of our history and recent events such as 9/11. The book was translated by Prati’s daughter, Giulia.

The book traces historical and academic thought, including discourse on memory, reason, psychology and religion, and sees how it affects the human mind. It is about the global system that has evolved, and continues to evolve, and in return affects and is affected by the subconscious of the human mind. The author also delves deeply into the relationship between the subconscious and conscious and the relationship between reason and myth.

Prati also mentions some of the trips he made with his wife, Nariko. The couple visited some of the most important historical monuments in the world and together, dove “into reflections on universal history, on the dilemmas of globalisation and on the evolution of the human mind”, to quote from his book.

According to the author, the target is to reconstruct the stages of evolution of the system in parallel with those which emerge in our consciousness, that is in constant dialogue with the unconscious mind. Thus, in an effort to redefine the past and its impact on our mind to shape the present, the author rethinks the three crucial developments of the mind, which he describes as the big change of the 15th Century after the Mongol invasion, Renaissance and the Axial Age, which is the period from 800 BCE to 200 BCE in which several thinkers emerged in China, India and the Occident.

Prati feels that his book, despite its historical content, is about the present. “A diplomat is like a journalist, you have to be in neither yesterday nor tomorrow but in today’s issues,” he explained. His book draws from his vast experience of diplomatic services around the world.

Commenting on the book, guest speaker Hameed Haroon said that Prati thinks out of the box to reconstruct the past through the present. “In his book Prati researches global history in his relentless desire to produce and reopen what we left unopened,” he commented.

The English translation of the book has already been launched in Islamabad and Multan.

Published in the Express Tribune, June, 4^th, 2010.