Gregorio Luri: "Why not reconcile ourselves with our mediocrity?"

Gregorio Luri (Azagra, Navarre, 1955) reads peacefully in the sun. The philosopher and educator, author of School is not an amusement park and The conservative imagination, received last Monday the Atlantis prize and is pleased with the publication of The dignity of mediocrity. A short philosophy of the unfinished. (Encounter, 2025). In both books and conversation, Luri uses quotations to weave together discourse and ideas. He does not do so—he assures us—or not only, for personal enjoyment, but because of the duty he believes we all have to transmit those things that help us understand the world a little better.

He has spoken of the landscape as a "dialogue between things shaped by man."

— I have always championed the pedagogy of landscape. Education is not merely accumulating information, but learning to rise above it: to people, to things greater than oneself. An uneducated person is one who stands beforeGrandmothersAnd all one can say is, "How beautiful." There is no dialogue. The same is true of the landscape. The landscape is humanity most immediately present. To read a landscape is like reading a city: you don't need to know everything, but you do need to hear that there are voices, layers, a dialogue that comes from afar. To know how to read the landscape is to understand that those terraces, those dry stone walls, are the result of entire lives dedicated to taming the land.

And what does the wine landscape say about us?

— The history of Catalonia—and, in fact, the history of the Greek periphery—begins with the introduction of wine. I, being from a small town, remember perfectly what the grape harvest meant: the smells changed, people's faces changed, the whole atmosphere changed.

Did you do the grape harvest as a child?

— Yes. I don't really like to talk about these stories, because it seems like you're dwelling on a bygone era, but I remember that at home there were very clear rites of passage. At 12 years old, you had to drive the plow. It was very difficult for me. We had a very temperamental mule, who would suddenly stop, and when you saw his ear twitch, you knew anything could happen. But it was as if I came home stronger.

What do you remember about that childhood linked to wine?

— There were things that are hard to understand today. At home, they carried a wineskin, which we kept in the sink to keep it cool. When I was seven or eight years old and wanted to drink water, they'd tell me, "No, don't drink water, you should drink wine, that's what's good for you." But anyway, you don't have to cling too tightly to the past. Every change involves losses and gains.

What is lost if wine disappears from our lives?

— A certain way of sitting at the table, for example. And welcoming rituals. Before, when someone arrived at a house, the first thing offered was a glass of wine. These rituals facilitated the relationship.

A kind of social ladder?

— Exactly. We are freer now, but we also find ourselves facing more obstacles with each other.

He also spoke about agrarian culture and the festival as a moment of overflowing.

— I've seen it in some towns in Italy and also in places in Latin America, but I remember perfectly the festival in my town, the one for the Virgin of the Elm. There were people dancing, an outpouring of emotion surrounding her image, and you understood it as a form of expression. Going out like that allowed you to transcend everyday limitations: you took more risks and, in a way, you were more yourself, because the controls you usually impose on yourself were suspended. You came into contact with a possibility of yourself that only manifests itself in these moments. It was the consequence of a festival that allowed you to escape your daily routine and come into contact with something that wasn't mundane but transcendent.

This is where Dionysus, the god of wine, comes in.

— Dionysus is a strange god: he is a god of epiphany, a god who comes from outside, who is always about to arrive. Dionysus represents that feeling that something tremendous is about to appear and that, when it does, it absolutely throws everything into chaos.

InThe lawsPlato speaks of wine as a "remedy against fear".

— A way to let go, to enter into enthusiasm. Enthusiasm in the etymological sense: to step outside oneself. This was part of the celebrations and of collective life.

Euripides spoke of wine as a joy bestowed "equally upon rich and poor." Is wine democratic?

— It used to have a profoundly democratic dimension. The wine you drank was the wine of the land. There was no sophistication or design like today.

And how is he experiencing it at home today?

— My son is the one who really knows his stuff. The wine we usually drink is the one he brings us. He knows because he studied it and because he's worked in restaurants and in wine sales. It's good to have someone at home who knows their stuff, because it broadens your perspective. But I'm no expert. A €10 wine can seem perfect to me. Sometimes, when I hear tasters describe aromas with almost microscopic precision, I think they're very lucky… There's that anecdote about a tasting where someone identified a smell as "freshly ironed novice's petticoat"

A description that is hard to contradict.

— Of course! But for me, the best thing about wine is still the company. Drinking alone seems sad to me, with one exception: when I'm cooking. But the great virtue of wine is that it stimulates conversation. My son says it very well: you don't need to know if a wine has notes of white or red fruit; you just need to say whether you like it or not. If you like it, it's good. Anything else is just specialization, which is also fine as an education of the senses.

In The dignity of the mediocre A quote from the Jewish physician Joseph ben Sabara appears:Wake up, for the red wine shines"

— It's a beautiful phrase. We return to the pedagogy of the landscape: if you know how to look, nothing seemingly trivial fails to conceal a mystery. In the innocence of a glass of wine lies the potential for intoxication, for escaping oneself, the conversation, the enjoyment, a thousand things. And it's interesting that, when you scratch the surface, you discover that the one inviting you to awaken, on this journey, is Satan himself.

And who invites us to awaken in his book?

— I'll make a confession: the book was born here in El Masnou. The parish priest of San Pedro asked me for a twenty-minute talk for what they call an Alpha Dinner. Someone presents a topic, and then everyone has dinner, talking and drinking. He suggested I talk about evil. I agreed too hastily. And the atmosphere that was created—this seamless transition from anecdote to "this wine is so good" and from there to reflection—I wanted to capture it in the book. These discontinuities that form a whole: the conversation, the food, the drinks, the small groups, the return to the group. Deep down, it's also a tribute to the village priest.

Why are you so interested in the idea of mediocrity?

— It has always interested me. It appears in all my books. I'm interested in highlighting the importance of the ordinary person, without whom nothing we consider noble would exist. Everyone remembers the great figures of culture, but no one remembers the person who might be selfish but arrives at work on time, or the neighbor in apartment 5C who leaves the trash can crooked but might one day save your life. I've always wanted to champion this imperfect common sense of the ordinary person. It's the miracle, and at the same time, the target of all criticism.

At the same time, there are few things more widespread than the fear of mediocrity.

— I believe we should strive to be better than mediocre, but we should never renounce our mediocrity. To renounce it would mean we're finished. There's no way to be excellent 24 hours a day. That's why I wanted to end the book with the image of Saint John the Evangelist playing with a partridge.

Can't one be sublime all the time?

— If we're so often mediocre throughout the day, why not reconcile ourselves with our mediocrity? Not by accepting it as inevitable, but because everything changes the moment we accept it. For example, if you inflate the idea of happiness, any discomfort becomes a tragedy, because it demonstrates how far removed it is from that ideal. If you accept that attainable happiness is the mediocre happiness of mediocre people, a wound is a wound. You don't waste time dramatizing inevitable things. Perhaps it's just part of my life.

In what sense?

— When I was 10 years old, someone came to my house and told my mother, "Gloria, your son is good at his studies." It was a drama.

Because?

— Until then, we all knew our place. And suddenly: "What do we do with this child? Where can we find scholarships?" In the end, they found a school, a boarding school in northern Navarre. For me, it was dramatic because it was a very Basque-speaking environment, and everyone laughed at me because they said I spoke it badly. To me, the obvious thing was that it was all of them who spoke it badly! [laughs]. There I saw something that is rarely discussed: in cultural or intellectual progress, you have to pay a very high price, which is uprooting. You never return to your town and your friends in the same way you left.

Do you remember boarding school itself as a dramatic experience?

— What was dramatic for me was realizing I didn't fit in. Every night, at 3 or 4 in the morning, I'd get up and wander all over the school to see if I could find an open window to escape. I had everything planned: I'd take the train tracks and follow them to Pamplona, ​​and from Pamplona I'd continue along them… I imagined myself walking a hundred kilometers, as if it were the easiest thing to do. But the windows were always closed. But thanks to these nightly strolls, one day, at one of those ungodly hours (I usually took advantage of the time to go to the pantry and grab a piece of chocolate), not being sleepy, I went to the TV room. I turned it on, and do you know what I found?

That?

— The arrival of man on the Moon.

Chance!

— Friendly chance. Espinàs spoke a lot about friendly chance. I think it's important to keep that in mind. We organize our lives believing we are their masters… and to what extent do we depend on friendly chance? And on the enemy?