By a curious effect of self-propagation, the Days are spreading like wildfire. It is not a question of the days getting longer, thanks to the arrival of Spring. But of the Days, the ones with a capital G, which now infest the calendar like a creeper creeping through the cracks of an ancient ruined wall.
Every day, as newspapers and major news sites often take the trouble to let us know, there is now an anniversary to dedicate those 24 hours to. And since this virus is now worldwide, the days overlap and tangle, like a creeper... you get the idea!
Don't you believe it? Last 21 March, just to give you an example, were: the International Day of Forests; the National Day of Memory and Commitment in remembrance of the Innocent Victims of the Mafia; the UNESCO World Day of Poetry; the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; the National Pollen Day; the Sicilian Regional Day of the Mediterranean Diet.
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By now, every institution feels compelled to ride the fashion of the day: regions, states, national associations and international organisations proclaim days to be dedicated to more or less original topics. While some of these celebrations are now irremovable, such as 8 March, 1 May or other holidays that have now been metabolised and digested, there are hundreds of others that have been added more or less silently, believing they support this or that (often very just) campaign.
The effect is quite bizarre, however, in that one finds oneself reading online: today is National Cat Day! Immediately afterwards, surfing, one discovers that: Today is International Water Day! Continuing to scroll with our thumbs we learn that: Today is World Anti-Obesity Day! In short, what should have been food for thought on serious and real issues have become fixed topics to be addressed every year, with copy-pasted Facebook posts and clockwork public statements by politicians and administrators. Artificial intelligence would certainly be useful in this field: “prepare me an annual calendar with all the regional, national, international, world, ONU, FAO, EU days and attach a statement of support, appreciation and various wishes for the future”.
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Generally, each Day also requires schools to address the topic to which the Day is dedicated. But if this were the case, so many topics and areas are dedicated to, one might as well delete syllabuses and textbooks to rely only on the Agenda setting imposed by the Days. And in this regard, the Agenda of politicians, ministers and administrators is practically written down by the Days, at each of which they are ready to make utterances that are barely decent the first year, stale the second and unbearable from the third onwards. Little thoughts from Bacio Perugina that are repeated, tweeted, posted at every turn of the calendar and that affect no one but only serve to show that ... “See, I remembered, I too am sensitive to the suffering of stray dogs, polluted bees, dried-up rivers”.
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This inflation of journals, as was the case with the coloured benches, creates a constant confusion and reverberation of information that overlaps and will soon require a fixed page in the newspapers, in the style of the Fortuneteller's Calendar, entitled “Today's Day”. Forcing people, be they readers or voters, to necessarily reflect on a given issue on a given day is nonsense. To think that they can forcibly reflect on four issues a day imposed by the calendar is madness. And only the institution of the “National Day of National Days”, still culpably missing from the calendar, can rectify this situation.
Image Eric Rothermel on Unsplash
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