What is your ideal society like? I think most people have the words "free, equal, carefree" coming to mind. Does such a society exist? There is, but it exists only in the writings of those thinkers—an ideal society called utopia. The helplessness of modern life is even more utopian, but the level of productivity makes utopia as distant as a dream, so has anyone in history tried to build a utopia? Has anyone tried to bring dreams into reality?
On February 13, 1969, an explosion occurred off the coast of Rimini, about seven miles from Italy, in which four Italian sailors were ordered to blow up a 400-square-meter island on the coast, the Republic of Rose Island. It is the smallest state that has ever existed in the world, a utopia that exists without war, without classes, without antagonisms, without darkness, and the man who created it is called Giorgio Rosa.
In 2020, a film based on George Rosa's special experience, "The Incredible History of Rose Island", was released, in which George was a Hollywood obsessive male protagonist who built the island on impulse for love and freedom, and finally the island was gone but there was love. But in fact, the real history does not have such a pulse warmth and romance, and what really makes George decide to move the dream utopia into reality is that the social trend of thought at that time was not the so-called love.
1. Free thought
The 1960s were a time of freedom and passion, with Europe pervaded by the French May Storm, radical philosophy, New Wave films, rock 'n' roll, hippies, and young people wearing cultural shirts emblazoned with Che Guevara. It can be said that every young person in the 1960s had a utopian dream, and the Italians at that time were naturally awakened to the yearning and pursuit of freedom.
Unlike the remarkable Countries of France and the United States in the 1960s, the wave of freedom in Italy lasted until the end of the 1970s, and people really felt what freedom and liberation were under the joint influence of reality and literary and artistic creation. Someone once said: "1968 was the best time of my life, and in this year, as a worker, I felt that I had become the protagonist and the master of my own destiny." I still feel this way for the next two years. ”
2. The Land of Roses
George was a marine engineer by training, and his day job at the time was to build maritimes at sea. He had invented a technique called an artificial island building system, so building land at sea level was not a difficult task for him.
The original land structure of the Rose Island Republic was simple, George first inserted nine hollow columns with multiple steel bars into the seabed and filled them with cement, then built a 400-square-meter platform on the pillars, on which two floors of houses were built, two stairs and berthing points. Such a country 26 meters above the sea surface came out of the sea.
After the establishment of the island, everything began to work according to the way of a country, George set up a council, established an official language, Esperanto, drew up a national flag, drew up an official currency, and improved infrastructure such as restaurants, bars, shops, and post offices. More importantly, here people can not be bound by the rules of the Italian government, an anarchist carnival of prosperity in the air, floating in the air, and it was not long before thousands of people applied for naturalization to the Republic of Rose Island.
Soon, George was boycotted by the Italian government, who naturally saw Rose Island as a thorn in the side, believing that its purpose was nothing more than to exploit loopholes to evade taxes. In addition, the Italian government also declared rose island to be a hotbed of illegal gambling and alcoholism, a perfect cover for the lurking Soviet nuclear submarines, and a serious threat to the security of the country.
On February 13, 1969, rose island was calm and the people were still immersed in utopian dreams. Italian gendarmerie units landed on Rose Island and blew it up. After 55 days of independence, the ephemeral state came to a tragic end, and its remains were soon inundated by a storm.
3. Dreamers
There is no doubt that George was a first mover who did what most people wanted to do but couldn't do. But Rose Island is not a personal myth, and everyone who has been to Rose Island continues its romantic and dashing spirit. In the short period of freedom, everyone felt the sufficiency and ease of reality, so that after returning to the real land of the law, they began to seriously think about life and the meaning of existence itself.
We are bound by all kinds of rules throughout our lives, and no one can really live this life in peace and carefree. Freedom has always been a relative rather than an absolute concept, and even if the Republic of the Rose Islands had not intervened later, could it have survived? Even if they could, would the people living on the island be happy forever? These questions may never have an answer, but for Rose Island the answer is no longer important.
Even if the dream will wake up one day, people will still do their best to perceive every second in the dream and reproduce it into reality, which is a weighty romance.
On his deathbed, George received a gift, a brick that an Italian diver had fished from the rubble, which read: "It is an honor to return the fragments of the dream to the dreamer"