E-mail: p.grimaldi@unisg.it Tel.: +39 (0172) 45-85-11
9, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, Pollenzo, 12042, Bra (CN), Italia
Full Professor, University of Gastronomic Sciences
This article is based on the hypothesis that at the present time, at the turn of the millennium, the fire that man began to use at the dawn of his history is extinguished forever. Man, using technologies that transform and replace open fire, has thus come to an important turning point in evolution, changing many of the fundamental elements of his life under the sign of which society, culture, and mythology have developed since primitive times.
The disappearance of living flame from everyday (domestic and other) life marks a great transition, leading in the near future to the complete loss of centuries-old forms and practices that marked the rhythm of human life and activity. The lack of living fire, which becomes more and more unnoticeable, invisible, immaterial, causes desolation. This is a turning point, some consequences of which we are already beginning to observe, and which has brought to light a number of subjective and collective decisions (sometimes palliative) that demonstrate how important this problem is for the affective life of both the individual and for humanity as a whole. The disappearance of fire from our lives is an important cognitive problem that we shall have to deal with in order to overcome an existential crisis (material and non-material, affective and logical), the outcome of which will determine the culture of future generations
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