Look at that beauty, look at that peace. This is not just the beginning of a reflection on Serbia, but the emblem of a fundamental principle: the value of an experience is determined by its context. Here, dogs roam free, people greet each other, time seems to flow at a human pace. It's a different context, operating according to logics different from those that many of us in the West are accustomed to. And it is precisely from this seemingly simple observation that a deeper truth emerges, one that concerns us all: existing in a way incompatible with the context in which you live is the main cause of failure and unhappiness.
Serbia, like many countries in Eastern Europe, is a living laboratory of violent transitions. From Tito's communism to capitalism, passing through war. These rapid and traumatic changes create destabilization that takes time to be absorbed. Yet, what emerges is not chaos, but an adaptation to a new reality. One piece of evidence: the so-called "communism" as a closed economic system no longer exists, except in North Korea. The world, even where red flags are waved, now operates according to globalized capitalist mechanisms. The question that arises spontaneously is: how many people in Italy and Europe still cling to the idea of a context that no longer exists?
How many people believe they are operating within a “social system” when in reality the system has profoundly and irrevocably changed?
Those who instead understand the changes and what is decided from above are those who ultimately manage to pull the spider out of the hole.
This is not cynicism, it is realism. Pulling the spider out of the hole – that is, achieving results, being successful, living with freedom – is not a matter of luck or sterile rebellion. It is a matter of understanding. Of reading the real context, not the one idealized by the media, politics or one's own desires. 90% of the population, according to my observation, lives in a perpetual contextual incompatibility. They think the world works in one way, while it works in another. And they pay the price, in economic terms, in terms of opportunities and serenity.
From Serbia to Italy: the short circuit of well-being
Rural Serbia showed me a healthy social context: simple people, tied to the land, welcoming. A community fabric that in many parts of Italy and overdeveloped Europe has fallen apart. Why? The problem is not wealth itself, but the type of context that well-being has created. In Italy, the welfare state, born with good intentions, has progressively built a perverse context: it has encouraged the culture of assistance at the expense of the culture of work and education.
The data speaks for itself: Italy is one of the most indebted countries in Europe, with stagnant growth and productivity that refuses to take off.
This is not a coincidence. It is the direct consequence of a context that rewards dependence and discourages contribution. When I returned to Italy from America in 2004, bringing with me twenty years' worth of experience in marketing and multimedia, I encountered a country unprepared. Not only technically (primitive internet connections), but mentally. The dominant philosophy was – and still largely is – that of “running for cover”. Never organizing oneself to be the first, to anticipate. The Americans, with all their enormous flaws, have built a context that, for better or worse, stimulates innovation and individual initiative. We have built a context that awaits salvation from above.
Excellence That Doesn't Exist (and Why)
One often hears talk of “Italian excellences”. But how many are there really? In the business world, the true ones – understood as people who create sustainable value and innovation – can be counted on one hand. The case of Parmalat and Tanzi is emblematic: celebrated as a great entrepreneur, he turned out to be an incompetent supported by opaque means. For decades, the Italian context has allowed, if not encouraged, a relationship capitalism and nepotism, where success was often not linked to merit but to connections.
Today that era is ending.
It's good because things should be earned. But here arises another problem: in a context that does not educate to entrepreneurship and merit, who can truly deserve? Easy access to comfort and information has created generations that seek the easy life, without understanding that true well-being comes from contribution, not consumption. The figure of the net contributor is dramatically lacking: the person who, through their activity, adds more value than they consume.
Entrepreneurship: the only contextual way out
If the current context is leading us to decline, how do we change it? You don't change the world with protests or desires. You change it by starting to build a new context from the bottom up, starting with mentality. And here the keyword is just one: entrepreneurship.
Work must be seen as an opportunity for learning, not as an ideal of life.
In Italy, who truly promotes this culture? The first person that comes to mind is Flavio Briatore, because he has the courage to say unpopular but true things: that you have to work to learn, that a permanent position is a dangerous illusion, that the future belongs to those who create. But one man alone is not enough. Organizations, industry associations, institutions that should stimulate entrepreneurship often limit themselves to sterile complaints or celebrations of a past that will not return.
They don't tell the truth: that the problem is cultural, before it's economic.
An entrepreneur is not an “independent”. It is, or should be, a deeply interconnected social entity, which collaborates, takes risks, and creates opportunities for others. Promoting entrepreneurship means teaching people to live and exist in the world. Because you can't learn to be an entrepreneur without first learning to live: that is, without understanding how the real world works, what its (ruthless) rules are, and where its (hidden) opportunities lie.
Freedom is a contextual luxury
I can afford to say certain things. Why? Because I have built, not without effort, a context of personal freedom that allows me to do so. The truth is often a luxury. A luxury that can only be afforded when one does not depend on a system that that truth might irritate. This is the final paradox: true freedom is not doing what you want, but having the understanding and resources to exist in harmony with the real context, and possibly to improve it.
The secret, therefore, is not in blind rebellion, but in applied knowledge. In understanding that the interest in growing, prospering, and building is what distinguishes us as human beings. If we continue to ignore the context in which we are immersed – a global, competitive context that rewards those who create value – we will always remain behind. There's no need to hate the system. You have to understand it.
And then, with pragmatism and courage, learn to navigate it and, where possible, to make it better. Starting with ourselves.
The next time you hear talk of crisis, decline, lack of opportunity, ask yourself: am I reading the real context, or a caricature of it? Is my life compatible with the world as it is, or with how I would like it to be? The distance between these two questions is the space where your future is played out.