Third Variation
Nowadays, the problem of the commingling between reality and imagination appears ineluctable, as its maximum level of complexity has been reached: but it is not possible to get anywhere, or even just understand the terms, with the classical management paradigms.

If Whitehead is right when he asserts that the history of Western thought is a mere series of notes on Plato’s books, reflection on the “imaginary” nature of reality takes its place not just at the centre of “modern”, but at the very roots of Western culture. If Fritjof Capra is not wrong, claiming in the Tao of Physics the substantial convergence of Western and Eastern thought, we must admit the universality of this reflection. If one agrees with those who, like Levy, identify the typical connotations of our age in the “virtual” and in its multiple relations with “real”, the “actual” and the “potential”, the inevitable conclusion is that the commingling of reality and imagination is an ineluctable topic.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in the transition from modern to contemporary, one has passed from substantial disrepute of the imaginary, intended as “not corresponding to the truth” and therefore “false” and for this very reason “immoral”, to its appreciation. If real is “what is taking place”, imaginary seems like “what is potential” (the virtual attribute shares the same root of the Latin noun virtus, which means precisely “force and power”). Both terms thus express a reality, but the second one appears richer, as it is linked to a number of hypotheses and possibilities. What is taking place cannot be anything other than what it is, whilst to be virtual is – at the same time – multi-faceted. On the other hand, the diffusion of new information and communication technologies has made available new forms of representing this multiplicity of possibilities. To experience virtual reality or enlarged reality has become a very concrete fact. The virtual part of new media is no less real than the real part, at least from the empirical viewpoint. It is not by chance that one speaks of virtual reality. The most sensible distinction today is then that between atomic real and digital real. Consequently, one must not fall into the (very widespread) trap of extremitization, by which the virtual unilaterally asserts itself: becoming the language of nihilism. The thus-intended imaginary is a mere refuge against anxiety: a success for everyone, glamour even for the marginalized (an hour as a TV extra), or a particular “tropism” in the style of dress (which magically attracts the possibility of having a screen test, or an invitation to be a female assistant or dancer). In these (difficult) conditions, access to factual things is the increasingly difficult, which risks becoming the true chimera of contemporary times.

While an ontological prevalence, so to speak, of the immaterial is an obvious non sense, if nothing else than because the immaterial needs the material to concretize itself and to be: clothes, make-up, cars, second houses, media devices, chips … The immaterial dimension takes root on a sturdy material base, but, progressively, this is taken for granted and as expected. Woody Allen catches the point when he says he, “hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak”. On the other hand, a typical characteristic of scientific management is the opposing inability to overcome the prospect of a naive realism, falling into the opposite temptation, purely factualistic – to give a certain value to the facts, to give them an univocal significance, “only the facts count” – that is always present and never as active as when faced with the need to organize human work and make it efficient. The factualistic temptation rests on the conviction of the power of that which is given, that objectively exists, in itself, whatever the ways and reasons for its appearance, establishment and consolidation. Nothing is more false. Nature loves to hide itself. To understand the truth, the truths, it is necessary to go below the surface of the facts. Facts, at best, can be symptoms, attempts, or experiments. Facts are actually “artificial”. To provide awareness of the polyvocality, of the interpretability of the facts is a crucial objective of humanistic management. More than offering or imposing a meaning, the humanistic manager opens new horizons of possible meanings, facilitating the search for an original path to perception and knowledge, chosen from the numerous viable paths available.

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