2019

author

I’ve always been passionate about writing and while confined at home due to the 2019 Covid pandemic something caught my attention. One day I saw some construction workers on the rooftops forced to work without masks. The issue of masks has always been controversial, but in a global historical narrative that saw them as salvation from a deadly virus, that image seemed incongruous to me in relation to the medical theory of the main narrative or it seemed to indicate that in some way the construction workers were considered less important than other citizens and could be sacrificed to the virus to continue building when everything else had stopped.

Back then, ideologies about necessary services were beginning to emerge. Necessary humans… They didn’t speak of unnecessary ones, but I began to perceive an excessive space of ideologic interpretation of who was necessary or not in the world, alongside the first serious phenomena of disinformation and the exponential growth of post-truth movement.

Like many, we were also at home. All photo shoot productions had been canceled, and we were waiting for the studio’s work activities to resume. COVID was a disaster for the world, and it was in those days that I received a pamphlet from the Italian Psychologists Order with a dozen supportive phrases for those staying at home. Good intention, but was it enough?

With time on my hands and a passion for writing, I decided to create a free psychological support project for my family, friends, and neighbors (literally, since I connected with them through a neighborhood app). It was a universal, sober, essential psychology to defend and empower. Yet it was agile and direct, based on the immense power of the implicits and protected by an explicit interface of simple accessibility, based on the evolved version of Optima Vita, but simplified to be available to anyone.

It really motivated me that the project combined immediate utility with a kind of benevolent criticism of the Order, demonstrating that with really little more than what they proposed, one could truly help, maintaining the gratuitousness. It was a complex work because as a writing method I wanted to experiment with what I would later call «psychoeducational implicits,» concepts that should not be learned, but only «experienced,» based on ancient subliminal messages practices but adapted to writing and explicitly declared in the text. The format was a free pdf that a person could open and read even in parts, obtaining something in return, like the I Ching, but with a psychoeducational perspective that united beyond disinformation.

The manual is called Super-living, where the «Super» was not for «heroes,» but the old Latin for «Above life.» I had written it in Italian and Spanish, introducing dynamic language and the use of parentheses to multiply the meaning. The attempt was to flexibilize communication with elements of psycholinguistics that form the basis of certain generative dynamics of artificial intelligences and some programming languages.

From day one of the first free distribution project, people’s response was clearly evident. I was already a self-published author of three existential fantasy novels in Italian, starting in 2014: the trilogy of «Kratimus di Atlantide.» They are books that explore human and divine nature through a pretext of epic fantasy and integrated, non-woke LGBTQ+ characters. I had never actively sought publication due to an excess of purism that never made me feel satisfied with the book and due to an objective lack of time. However, I would self-publish them and accept that they sold few copies because not everything is a product, sometimes it’s just personal passion. Nevertheless, Super-living sparked the interest of people who even sent me messages of gratitude and told me about specific people in their lives to whom they would send it. Inspired by that reaction, I decided to take a leap of faith and send the manuscript to the main publishers in Italy, in case they might be interested.

The following week, I received a call from an Italian publisher, Albatros Il Filo, which published the book in a few months in the best bookstores in Italy and, at my request, also in Spain as one of the New Voices of the (Post) Covid world.

A few months later, I began giving interviews on television and radio, and participating in virtual book fairs, represented by the publisher. Due to COVID restrictions, most of them were online, but some of them were on location, which allowed me to travel again to promote the book even during the toughest phases of the pandemic, gifting very accessible moments of peace to my readers in very hard times.

Super-living aimed to convey a serene psychoeducational vision, without ideologies and as universal and comprehensive as possible, based on Optima Vita. It was a simple defense against stress, anxiety, depression, and general issues associated with quarantines, proposing a psychological evaluation model of existential matters based on evidence, without taking a direct part in the main narrative, but encouraging mindful critical thinking and engaging with one’s closest environment.

A couple of years later, in response to the conflicts of the new post-pandemic world, I self-published «[No] War,» decidedly more substantial than Super-living, written using the same psychoeducational implicits technique and aimed at countering disinformation and the ideologies that had already begun to ride the winds of the post-truth phenomenon.

During those years, I put on hold the world of advertising production to focus on the help I could provide online to people who had found in Super-living a light, tremendously simple read, yet capable of leaving a positive impression. I returned to Psychology, but with a very clear objective: to unite people where ideologies were trying to divide them.

Years later, Super-living returned to my hands after the contract with the publisher ended, and I foresee an evolution of the brand in the coming years alongside individual and group psychoeducational activities inspired by the book.

The project had brought me many satisfactions, in addition to fulfilling every writer’s dream, becoming an author and seeing my book published in the most famous bookstores, the ones I used to visit with friends for study and pleasure. Feltrinelli, Mondadori, Casa del Libro in Spain, and many others… the main ones.

The phenomenon of Super-living was a personal and professional success. It didn’t become a best seller as I remain a person without a name or contacts, but with its significance, its impact was enough to reach independently to the University of Padua, the oldest psychology institution in Italy and my training place, which honored me with the title of «University Torch» for international professional merits, even though I hadn’t had contacts for a long time. That’s why I made the Vital decision that my destiny was to continue writing, in full trilingualism.

It was the time to undo a part of that stoic, hermetic, and eremitic nature of a pure Lfe Adventurer of prudent and mental Life, to create something of value and help the deserving people close to me. Sacrificing a certain degree of professional purity as a psychologist to reach more people.

From that moment on, I began to share the knowledge of Serial Victims, Imperturbable Heroes, Friendollars, and some other psychosocial constructs that ideologies control to give post-truth power to individuals that suit them. It is a vicious empowerment that has a rationale for those who use it: the charismatic power of an ideology enhances one part of the human being, crushing another, usually the independent and critical one, and creating eternal sub-living people and ultimately unhappy individuals.

The Super-living state and subsequently the Sub-living and the Living ones became biopsychosocial constructs harmoniously empowering, albeit less than an ideology, obviously, but in a healthy and interactive way, creating bonds in nearby territories and opportunities for constant growth towards a slightly freer world for the common good of those who deserve it. Not just People, but Humans… Super-living.