The digital age is giving humankind immediacy, the possibility of knowledge, levels of accessibility that seemed unthinkable to reach even 10 years ago, but as with everything, there is a downside to this technology. Beyond the sociological implications that do not compete and do not interest us in this discussion, digital has taken away the romanticism of slowness and sensations not visual.
We often underestimate the memory of an scent.
This phrase always elicits mixed reactions. They say you can't remember a smell, but in reality, scents and aromas can evoke memories and emotions related to them in a powerful way, almost as if receiving a flashback that suddenly hits us when we smell them. This is because our olfactory receptors are in direct contact with the limbic system that is responsible for the emotional sphere, unlike the visual, auditory or tactile sensations that are instead immediately processed by the logical part of the brain.
The sense of smell has often been underrated, however. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, considered it the most mediocre of the 5 senses, an idea later embraced by the more modern era during the Enlightenment, and even more recently by Darwin, who cataloged the nose as a series B organ, an organ of prehistoric man who had little else to rely on except his sense of smell.
Art, literature and the iconography of the past may have always had a great respect for the sense of smell, but it is only in recent years that psychologists and scientists have finally rediscovered, so to speak, its dignity. Studies on the sense of smell have become popular by virtue of the discovery of profound differences that exist between our human perception of odors, in reality very limited (but still very important), and the varying degrees of perception of odors in the rest of the animal kingdom.
Think of how much we suffer when we have a stuffy nose. With a stuffy nose one suffers from the realization of how drastically the perception of taste is affected, how he sometimes feels even "isolated" from the world around him, almost as if he can't see it or perceive it.
While in the womb, a growing baby already develops the sense of smell. This sense is useful to mankind even today. It helps us recognize a dangerous situation and react with caution. Two examples of this are the unpleasant smell of food that is going rancid which helps us realize it cannot be consumed safely, and the smell of gas which informs us of a leak which could cause catastrophe if we don't act immediately to resolve the problem.
The olfactory sense has been the subject of studies by a well-known psychotherapist, Claudio Risé, who has more thoroughly examined its importance by searching for the origins of the popularity of perfumes in ancient sacred scriptures. In all religions, there is talk of gifting different forms of perfume to the gods in order to profess faith and in return, receive protection and guidance. The situation has turned upside down in modernity, unfortunately. Risé says that the root of most of today's ailments lies in the distance we have taken from our body, from our senses, which then turns into distance from other people; the most affected and ostracized sense today is precisely the sense of smell, "fundamental for orientation and closely linked to life, its conservation, pleasure and reproduction. One test is the spread of allergies that develop due to the absolute disability of natural data ". (Cit.)
Through the sense of smell we can bring back memories and emotions, stimulate the imagination and even our dreams.
Part of our mission is precisely this: to bring people closer to the rediscovery of sensory perception, and in particular, that of the olfactory sense. This, we hope, will help to awaken instincts and emotions that have been crushed by routine and daily frenzy, and to return us to being free, serene, and consequently better disposed towards the enjoyment of life and others.