![]() From the outset, it must be noted that it’s not a question of two lunatics. We can joke about the folly of a pair of freaks, but drawing a number of more general lessons is preferable. It is true that they had not seen the edge of the Earth’s disc, but they had not seen it because the Carabinieri and the coast guard, under the pretext of rescuing them, had prevented them from reaching it. When the health measures were finally relaxed and they returned to Venice – to the relief of Salvatore Zichichi, maritime health officer –, they took home, in any case, proof that they were right. Twice they made an attempt to escape and resume their adventure and twice, immobilised by the currents, they had to be rescued from shipwreck. ![]() That said, the couple’s convictions were firm and their courage, militant, admirable in itself, worthy of a better cause. They went off course and were picked up in Ustica, near Palermo, and forced there to quarantine on their boat for fifteen days in the port. Where were they headed? Staunch flat earthers, they wanted to verify with the naked eye the limits of the planet, the finis terrae that, according to medieval legends, would be found on the island of Lampedusa. ![]() Days later they had to be rescued at sea by the coast guard in a sorry state: tired, thirsty, and risking shipwreck. Last April, at the height of the lockdown in Italy, a middle-aged Venetian couple illegally travelled to Palermo, Sicily, where they sold their car to buy a boat. The major challenge is to save the common world. They do not want to live in a world like this one. The Flat Earth theory and other denialist utopias are the radical expression of increasingly widespread indignation at the mental and material decay of the common world.
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