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Silo - Book Presentations HUMANIZE THE EARTH
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 13th November 1989.
In the next twenty five minutes
I intend to give a general idea
of this trilogy
that is published today under the title "Humanize the Earth".
I thought that entering directly into theme,
without giving some information about the context that operated in this production
was, at least, insufficient.
I have also considered that I should give my opinion
frankly committed on such context
and not limit myself to a neutral description.
The three works that make up this volume
were written in a small town,
surrounded by vineyards and olive trees,
plantations that correspond, in general,
to agricultural production in semiarid areas.
That is the "landscape" frame
in which this book has been generated.
But it is also necessary to mention other aspects
amongst those of which I would like to stress
the cultural environment of the country,
so hostile to the emergence of new ideas.
These writings ...
These writings, are not the result of the big city nor of a great cultural center.
They are the result of silence and remoteness.
This absence,
this psychological barrier
between us and the official culture,
has been beneficial.
And the stubbornness in our declarations put us in clear dialectic
with respect to the intellectual environment of this country,
which will not be modified
until there begins a real process of change
of mentality and procedures.
But change will not come
by imposimposing the values ??of a world
which the school maps
show "on top" of Latin America,
nor will it occur either by the rescue of supposed ancient "roots".
We, who have been engaged in teaching
that there is no identity,
nor is progress achieved by taking models of the external world,
have clashed for a long time
with various interpretations
of the so-called "national culture".
For it is evident that culture is neither about garments,
nor about a folklore,
nor is it a sterile and superficial struggle against such clothing and such folklore.
If such an identity is to be born,
it will only arise from thinking and doing within a country
and from the inside of a continent,
with the intent to returning to the world
positive contributions that the world has given
rather than returning all the evils
that this world has also generated.
Moreover, in the process of globalization we are experiencing,
there is no sense in any regional or national chauvinism.
Instead,
it has to do with the progress of our disjointed societies,
which have to structure cohesively their production
and their culture
to integrate in a larger process in motion.
When I speak then of national
or regional identity
I'm doing it from that perspective
and not from the retrograde chauvinism
or from neo-colonial dependency
to which disjointed societies
are exposed at the present time.
Because it will confront a world that is creating a productive identity
based on industry and technology
and, in that context, the culture will contribute
to the clarification of those objectives of material progress.
So to think of our societies from "within"
means basically to think about their development
based on the establishment of centres of production
of energy, industry and technology.
How then do we define
the culture we want,
not for the world, of course,
but for this country,
for this continent
and for this immediate stage?
It will be defined as
an ideological orientation
launched in all fields of intellectual endeavor
towards the production of material well-being.
Until that happens
culture will continue to be manipulated by incompetents
serving only
as an instrument of distraction from the profound changes that our people need today.
Meanwhile,
all those that want that change are silenced and marginalized
not only in the political field,
but in the field of material, ideological and artistic production.
And what lies have been concocted here,
giving the impression through certain corrupt media
and through some intellectual and political circles,
that our work is simply a European ideological mix
as if it were wrong to uphold some of Europe's vigorous teachings
and as if the criticism launched had not been made, in turn,
from European ideologemas.
How many times has it been said
that our activity threatens our national values
when in fact many of those values ??are totally imported,
both in their expression and content.
How many irresponsibles have said,
echoing foreign centers of power,
that we rely on the foreign...
To conclude these considerations about the cultural frame
in which our work has been produced,
I say this:
if in a society
misjudgement becomes established as the norm
and such falsehood becomes institutionalized,
it is because something serious is happening there
and it would not be surprising
if everything was getting worse
in this tower of Babel
in which people no longer understand one another
because it is said that white is black, black is blue and blue is yellow.
But putting aside our struggles
in this country and on this continent,
and leaving aside even larger contexts,
in which our work is given,
we will concentrate on the specific comments
about the book that is launched today.
The 21,407 words arranged in 4434 lines
that reflect the thinking of this work,
are few words and few lines.
This scarcity of material
shows, in our opinion,
the wings of a leisurely reflection.
There is nothing better to sum up the information,
than to quote the note on the first page of this edition
in which reference is made to dates and circumstances
associated with the production of this trilogy.
Quotation marks ...
"The Inner Look was completed in the late autumn of 1972,
and was revised in August 1988.
In turn, the Internal Landscape was completed in the winter of 1981
and was also modified in August 1988.
Finally, The Human Landscape
was written completely in October the same year.
Between the first publication of The Inner Look and its revisions sixteen years passed.
During that time,
the book circulated in many languages ??of the East and West,
encouraging personal contact and correspondence of the author
with readers from different latitudes.
That fact, certainly,
helped decide to amend several chapters of the writing
because it was noted
that different cultural backgrounds to which the work arrived,
produced innumerable differences in the interpretation of the text.
There were even words
presenting serious difficulties at the time of translation
and which tendend to misinterpret the original sense
with which they were used.
Possibly -the commentator continues-
it was part of the plan of the author,
to carry out this "aggiornamiento"
of the first two books
in order to assemble them with the third.
Note
that it is in August 1988 when corrections are made
and two months later, the third book appears completed.
And it is the Human Landscape,
that while retaining the basic features of the style of the two previous productions,
unlike them highlights special particularities of the cultural and social worlds,
forcing a shift in the treatment of the topics
that inevitably drags all the components of this body of literature
which then we came to know under the title of 'Humanise the Earth'. "
And here ends the quotation.
For our part
we can say that this trilogy reflects
the repositioning of the point of view of the author
from the interior of the human being
to the natural and social externality.
In effect, the first text to consider
is The Inner Look
that refers to descriptions of psychic phenomena that occur
at different levels of consciousness.
Thus, allegorizations and symbolic treatment of these phenomena
is supported in poetic prose,
which allows us to stop
the associative flow
and to capture changing states
in quasi objects detained for their better observation.
This form of description,
could be opposed with another quite different:
the conceptual and rational treatment
of the phenomena of the stream of consciousness,
such as Phenomenology does.
But what would we do, for example,
with the experience of simple elapsing?
Already Husserl in the Phenomenology of Consciousness of Immanent Time,
cites Augustine's Confessions,
in which he says:
"When I try to understand time,
I do not experience it
and when I experience it, I do not understand it."
This is so, undoubtedly
because one of the functions of the concept
is to stop the phenomena in order to abstract from them their essential structure.
but it happens
that it is not the intention in The Inner Look
to make a description of essences,
but to show and suggest using allegorizations,
those phenomena that are significant of a meaning,
of a direction of the consciousness and of life.
It should be remembered that before entering those obscure descriptions,
The reader is recommended to take into account the author's intention
and to observe a certain attitude
if they want to follow the thread through those strange labyrinths.
But if it was the case to explain what this book finally is about,
it could be said
that is about the meaning of life,
its main topic is the state of contradiction
and that this state corresponds to the register of suffering;
that overcoming mental suffering is possible
to the extent that one's life is oriented by non-contradictory action;
such non-contradictory action
transcends the personal
and goes to the world of others.
In short,
The Inner Look speaks
of overcoming mental suffering
by way of actions launched towards the social world,
provided that such actions
are registered as unitive, as non-contradictory.
The second book, entitled "The Internal Landscape"
has been commented upon in its time,
I refer therefore, in more than one point to such considerations.
There is little to be added here
about the system of allegorization supported in poetic prose
which continues in this writing.
What appears as different
is that the topic becomes externalized towards the world of cultural values
and with increasingly stronger references
to the social field.
Early in the book we read:
"... Leap over your suffering
and it will not be the abyss
but life that grows within you.
There is no passion, no idea, or human deed
that is not linked to the abyss.
Therefore,
let us turn to the only thing that deserves to be treated:
the abyss and that which overcomes it. "
This approach apparently dualistic
highlights the key concerns
about the "growth of life" and the annihilation of life.
The annihilation seems to take a certain substantiality
when designating it it as "abyss."
But this is only a poetic license
in which the sole mention of nihilation of being
or "erasure" of being,
as Heidegger would propose,
would cause an irreparable fracture of style.
We are not therefore talking about "abyss" in terms of substance,
but about the annihilation or darkening of human existence.
Becomes clear
that the first dualistic effect disappears when understanding the concept of abyss
as non-being, as non-life rather than as an entity in itself.
The concept of abyss is chosen
because of the psychological implications that it has
and because it produces registers of dizzyness or vertigo,
associated with a contradictory feeling of attraction and repulsion.
This attraction to the nothingness
which triumphs in suicide
or in an intoxicating or destructive fury
and which motivates the nihilism of an individual, a group, or a civilization.
So here we are not dealing with anxiety or nausea
as a passive disintegration of meaning
but with vertigo and nihilistic attraction,
"deus inversus" of life,
that competes with this recognition.
If in the human being there exists the freedom to choose,
then it is possible to modify the conditions
that foreshadow catastrophy in their mechanical development.
If, by contrast,
human freedom is only a mercyful myth,
then it is of no importance what course collective events take
or the lives of individuals,
as fate governs the facts.
In the Internal Landscape, the freedom of human life is affirmed.
Moreover,
it is said that its meaning is essentially freedom
and that this freedom rejects the absurd and the notion of the "given"
even when the "given" is nature tself.
And this decision to expand freedom is not limited to the individual
since they has no nature,
but being in a historical process,
makes the individual responsible with the human whole.
The world of objects can be changed and transformed by humans,
but as long as they do not consider themselves in evolution and transformation,
their objectives will be carriers of meaninglessness and nihilization the world.
Given the above, in Chapter VII, it is said:
"Namer of a thousand names,
maker of meanings,
transformer of the world ...
Your parents and the parents of your parents continue in you.
You are not a fallen star, but a brilliant arrow flying towards the heavens.
You are the meaning of the world
and when you clarify your meaning you illuminate the earth.
When you lose your meaning, the earth becomes darkened and the abyss opens."
"... I will tell you the meaning of your life here:
it is to humanize the earth.
What does it mean to humanize the earth?
It is to surpass pain and suffering,
it is to learn without limits,
it is to love the reality you build ...
You will not fulfill your mission
if you do not apply your energies to vanquishing pain and suffering in those around you.
And if through your action they in turn take up the task of humanizing the world,
you will have opened their destiny towards a new life."
The Internal Landscape deals with,
in short,
the meaning of life with reference to the struggle against nihilism within every human being
and in social life,
and urges that this life becomes
activism and militancy
at the service of the humanization of the world.
Finally,
the third book entitled The Human Landscape,
is dedicated in its first chapters to clarify
the meanings of "landscape" and of the "look" which refers to that "landscape",
questioning the way of seeing the world
and of perceiving the established values.
There is, in this work,
a review of the meaning of one's body and the body of others,
of subjectivity
and the curious phenomenon of the appropriation of the subjectivity of others.
Consequently,
it develops a study broken into chapters
about intention ...
intention in education,
in the narrative of History,
in ideologies,
in violence, the Law, the State and Religion.
This book is not, as has been said,
simply rebellious,
because it proposes new models for each issue it critiques.
The Human Landscape,
deals with giving foundation to the action in the world,
redirecting meanings and interpretations
of values ??and institutions
seemingly definitively accepted.
After showing
the method used
to discuss various issues,
the book closes
with the words we use to close also this dissertation:
"... There is no need to talk about new things
if someone is interested in these ideas
and the way we have spoken about them up to now,
because they
can talk the same way that we would.
And on the other hand,
if we were talking about things that are of no interest to anyone,
or with a form of expression that does not allow things to be brought to light,
it would make no sense to continue to speak for others."
A production of the Center of Studies, Parque Punta de Vacas - 2012