In fact the problem Leopardi is facing is speculative and metaphysical, a problem in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to Descartes and Kant:… - Italo Calvino

seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space

Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don’t mean escaping into dreams or the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification. (Terence sent me this quote the other day. A good battle cry, I believe... and one I wholeheartedly respect.)

And yet the city is not dead: the machines, the engines, the turbines continue to hum and vibrate, every Wheel's cogs are caught in the cogs of other wheels, trains run on tracks and signals on wires; and no human is there any longer to send or receive, to charge or discharge. The machines, which have long known they could do without men, have finally driven them out; and after a long exile, the wild animals have come back to occupy the territory wrested from the forest: foxes and martens wave their soft tails over the control panels starred with manometers and levers and gauges and diagrams; badgers and dormice luxuriate on batteries and magnetos. Man was necessary; now he is useless. For the world to receive information from the world and enjoy it, now computers and butterflies suffice.