Ricerca della Felicità (23797)

La ricerca della felicità

Dalla Dichiarazione d’Indipendenza Americana alla Movida madrilena

Indice

• Capitolo I: The Pursuit of Happiness in the New Continent:
• 1.1 The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America …………4
• 1.2 The American Dream …………………………………………...6
• 1.3 Movie: “The Pursuit of Happiness” …………………………....7
• Capitolo II: Art Nouveau nell’Epoca dell’ottimismo:
• 2.1 Contesto storico: Belle Epoque ............................................................10
• 2.2 Art Nouveau e società.............................................................................12
• 2.3 Gustav Klimt: “L’Albero della vita”.......................................................13
• Capitolo III: Eugenio Montale tra disarmonia e speranza:
• 3.1 Introduzione..............................................................................................16
• 3.2 Montale e Leopardi...................................................................................17
• 3.3 Da “Ossi di Seppia”: “Felicità raggiunta”...............................................18
• Capitolo IV: Miracolo Economico in Italia e Germania
• 4.1 “Das Wirtschaftswunder in Italien und Deutschland”………………….20
• Capitolo V: “Goodbye Lenin!” Ein Film von Wolfgang Becker
• 5.1 Einführung zur DDR-Gesellschaft………………………………………24
• 5.2 Handlung des Filmes “Good bye Lenin”………………………………..26
• Capitolo VI: I flessi
• 6.1 Flesso a tangente orizzontale, verticale, obliqua......................................28
• Capitolo VII: La Transición Democrática
• 7.1 Introducción Histórica: La Peninsula Ibérica..........................................29
• 7.2 España Post-franquista: revolución de las costumbres y Destape..........30

La ricerca della felicità

Dalla Dichiarazione d’Indipendenza Americana alla Movida madrilena

7.3 Rumba: el baile de la “reconciliación”....................................................32

Introduzione

È difficile spiegare cosa sia la Felicità, poiché spesso neanche noi sappiamo come definirla ed in base a quali parametri valutarla. Ciò che possiamo constatare è la sua transitorietà che spesso provoca un grande dolore, commisurato all’immensa ed ines­plicabile gioia di un attimo. Il contrasto tra la felicità e la delusione provocata dalla sua assenza causa nell’uomo una sorta di dipendenza che spinge, come accade per le droghe, ad una ricerca senza sosta che risulta frustrante ed inappagante. È molto facile perdersi in questa disperata ricerca mentre risulta molto più arduo fermarsi e riflettere sulla propria vita per apprezzare tutte le cose positive che ci ha donato.

L’umanità vive in uno stato di perenne infelicità, sentimento che nasce dal nostro modo di pensare che ci spinge a desiderare ciò che non abbiamo invece di apprezzare la nostra vita e trarne il meglio senza piangerci addosso. Questo è, senza dubbio, l’errore più grande che si possa fare, poiché desiderare qualcosa di più o di diverso senza sapere bene cosa sia significa ignorare quello che abbiamo raggiunto, o peggio, perdere la fiducia in ciò che abbiamo costruito e nella persona che siamo diventati.

Sebbene non esista una soluzione, o meglio, una formula per trovare la felicità e serbarla per sempre con sé, c’è un rimedio alla nostra infelicità che si trova dentro ognuno di noi e che aspetta solo di essere scoperto. La cura contro l’insoddisfazione che ci schiavizza ogni giorno consiste nell’accettare i propri limiti e nella capacità di trarre sempre il meglio dalla propria esistenza. Ciò significa vivere ogni attimo con la consapevolezza che, solo se lo vogliamo, può trasformarsi in un momento gioioso, anche se si trattasse di una banale e routinaria serata in casa con la propria famiglia.

L’aspetto più bello di questa capacità che tutti siamo in grado di acquisire sta nel fatto che, come un virus, contagia tutti coloro che entrano in contatto con noi. In questo modo, in ogni istante della giornata ed in qualunque circostanza, anche nella situazione più difficile, si può trovare un pretesto per sorridere alla vita e per superare le avversità con uno stato d’animo diverso e con una maggiore serenità e forza interiore e con la sicurezza che la felicità esiste e che, se solo lo vogliamo, possiamo goderne ogni volta che vogliamo, senza farci condizionare dal mondo esterno e dando peso sempre e solo alle cose di cui realmente non potremmo mai fare a meno come l’affetto dei propri cari, l’amore del partner, il sostegno degli amici e, senza essere ipocriti, una minima sicurezza economica.

La ricerca della felicità

Dalla Dichiarazione d’Indipendenza Americana alla Movida madrilena

Chapter I: The Pursuit of Happiness in the New Continent

Introduction

According to the historical events, the United States is a “young” nation, which is part of a bigger young continent: America. As everybody knows, it was discovered in 1492 by the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus who landed in the Caribbean even if it is not exactly so, as the first European settlers were the Vikings, who explored the North Atlantic Coast of Canada around the year 1000. Anyway, the first real settlers are considered the English religious dissenters Pilgrim Fathers, who in the year 1620 founded a colony in New England, in the east-part of the USA, after anchoring in Provincetown Harbor with their ship called Mayflower. They needed to profess their Puritan faith without restrictions and the only way was to abandon the unfair and oppressive Anglican Church of England founded by King Henry VIII in 1536 to find a hospitable and virgin place in which to create their own community and where to live in peace and serenity, following the puritan ethic of the hard work to improve one’s social and financial condition.

So what better place than North America, a new continent for a new free puritan society?

As a matter of fact, their dream came true. Moreover, they succeeded in establishing peaceful relationships and often in collaborating with the Indians, the real owners of North America until the beginning of colonialism. In the following centuries a new hope to find there a better place to live in spread also in Europe and caused a phenomenon of mass immigration never had before, which lasted almost sixty years, from about 1870 to 1929. Immigrants were mostly desperate men, women and children coming from Britain, Ireland, Germany and Italy, who courageously faced the difficult journey across the Atlantic helped only by their faith in a better existence waiting for them on that immense and hopeful territory.

La ricerca della felicità

Dalla Dichiarazione d’Indipendenza Americana alla Movida madrilena

1.1 The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

Till 1776 the USA existed not yet as a nation. In the same year the thirteen New England colonies united in protest against harsh taxes imposed by British government on imported goods and also against the lack of representation of the north-American colonies in the British Parliament. They arose and defeated the British in the War of Independence (1775-1783) and after their victory they established a new independent Republic with its own President. The commander of the Continental Army in the American War of Independence George Washington became the first President of the USA in 1789 till 1797. He is remembered above all for his brave action against slavery of black people imported from Africa and for his devotion to the “black cause”.

Therefore he and all the northern industrialized states of the USA became the enemy number one of the rearmost southern states, that needed “the strength of black arms” in their plantations, as their economy was only based on agriculture. This was the cause of the Civil War (1861-65), that finished with the success of the Northern States and of course with the abolition of slavery and the beginning of the black emancipation.

As a consequence, many black families moved towards the northern states in order to find better working conditions in important industrial centers like New York, Detroit and Chicago. So once again, also the blacks had a new possibility to realize their dreams in this huge and incredible land. But let’s go back to focus on the date 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was issued.

The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies were now independent States, and thus no longer part of the British Empire. It was written by Thomas Jefferson and signed by the delegates of the thirteen colonies. The second sentence of the document states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This sentence is the inspiration to the title and to the content of my project, above all because the American Constitution is the only one that nowadays still contemplates the right to the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. According to me, the worldview of the founder fathers of the USA is what has allowed this country to become so powerful and free, though with some contradiction, and their values have turned it into a sort of land of hope, where every dream can come true.

Even the establishment of a unique Constitution for the federal states of the USA represented a model of cooperative statesmanship and compromise:

The Federal Convention convened on May 25, 1787 in the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. Through discussions and debates it became clear by mid-June that, rather than amend the existing Articles, the Convention would draft an entirely new frame of government. All through the summer, in closed sessions, the delegates debated and redrafted the articles of the new Constitution. Among the chief points, the mainly discussed topics were how much power to allow the central government, how many representatives in Congress for each state, and how these representatives should be elected, directly by the people or by the state legislators. Therefore we can learn that the Constitution, that was written by governor of Pennsylvania Morris, was the result of the work of many rational minds all with the same purpose: to create a free, right and happy state where people and government could always collaborate for the common peacefulness.

The Constitution consists of a Preamble, seven original articles, twenty-seven amendments, and a paragraph certifying its ratification by the constitutional convention.

The world famous Preamble states:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare,

and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

1 www.ushistory.org/documents/declaration of Independence

The Supreme Court declared in 1897, the Constitution is the body and letter of which the Declaration of Independence is the thought and the spirit, and it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, as the Founders established the foundation and the core values on which the Constitution was to operate. Therefore, It should be clear that the Constitution must never be interpreted apart from those values expressed in the Declaration.

1.2. The American Dream

America is also known as the Melting Pot. As a matter of fact, it is perhaps the only State where you can find people of all nationality. Everyone brings with him an important history and can tell you about the positive or negative events involving his ancestors. So you could hear about exiled people or political refugees, emigrants, adventurers and very often of African slaves and if you are lucky you could also find yourself talking to one of the few descendants of a tribe of American natives. This mixture of different races, cultures and religions shaped the New World.

The growth of the American mind was deeply influenced by the idea that man’s effort was the only way to achieve the success and also by the ideals of reason, faith in human progress, cosmopolitanism and philanthropy typical of the Enlightenment, the movement born in Western Europe and that exactly in the years of the issue of the Declaration and of the following Constitution reached also North America. All these beliefs concurred to the creation of the well known American Dream. The American Dream is a national philosophy of the United States of America in which democratic ideals are supposed to be a guarantee of prosperity for its people. In the American Dream, first coined by the American writer

and historian James Truslow Adams in 1931 in his book “Epic of America”, citizens of every status feel that they can achieve a “better, richer, and happier life”.

“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

The meaning of the “American Dream” has changed over the history. While in the past centuries it represented the availability of land and the continuing American expansion, the ethos today simply indicates the ability, through participation in society and culture of the United States, to bring prosperity to oneself.

The United States, unlike most other nations, defines itself not on religion, language, geography or shared history, but on a set of ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and consolidated in the Constitution. At the center of these ideals lies the idea of the American Dream, a concept that has proven to be incredibly elastic and durable for centuries and across racial, religious, historical and cultural difference.

2 www.us_constitution.org

1.3: “The Pursuit of Happiness”, a 2006 movie by Gabriele Muccino

Main characters

• Will Smith as Chris Gardner
• Jaden Smith as Christopher Gardner Jr.
• Thandie Newton as Linda Gardner

Plot

In 1981, in San Francisco, the smart salesman Chris Gardner invests the family funds in Osteo National bone-density scanners, an apparatus twice as expensive as an x-ray device. This machine financially shatters the family, bringing troubles to his

The Epic of America

3 (1931). Simon Publications 2001 paperback: ISBN 1-931541-33-7

La ricerca della felicità

Dalla Dichiarazione d’Indipendenza Americana alla Movida madrilena

relationship with his wife Linda, who leaves him and moves to New York where she has taken a job in a pizza parlor. Their son Christopher stays with Chris because he and his wife both know that he will be able to take better care of him.

Without money or a wife, but loyal to his son, Chris sees a chance to concur for a stockbroker internship position at Dean Witter, offering a more promising career at the end of a six-month unpaid training period. During that period, Chris goes through a lot of adversity personally and professionally. When he thinks he is “stable,” he finds that he has lost $600 when the government takes the last bit of money in his bank account for taxes.

He finds himself homeless because he can’t pay his rent. Therefore, he is forced to stay in a bathroom at a train station and must scramble from work every day to the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, which offers refuge to the homeless. He must leave work every day so that he is there with his son by 5 in the evening, in order to be assured of a place to sleep.

He is seen carrying his suitcase to work because he doesn’t have a home. At work, there are nineteen other candidates for the one position. One day, he is called into an office and in it were the heads of Dean Witter. They tell him that he has been an excellent apprentice and that tomorrow will be his first day as a broker. Chris struggles to hold back tears. Outside he begins to cry as the busy people of San Francisco walk past him; he feels realized and as he’s very happy and proud of himself… he looks at the world around him and discovers that it has another light: the light of hope.

His first thinking is to share this happiness with the only person who believes in him: his son Christopher. So he rushes to his son’s daycare, hugging him and knowing that everything is going to be all right.