Teremos uma apresentação inovadora neste X Simpósio sobre Cidade Do Futuro, instrumento político formado no início de 2013 na cidade de Rosário, a partir da confluência de dois movimentos sociais autônomos da cidade, o movimento Giros e o Movimento 26 de Junho, movimentos sociais que são referenciados na tradição das experiências pós-2001.
Apresentarão em concreto o método de construção política que tem, segundo sua experiência, um poder de convicção muito maior do que dar uma discussão política em abstrato. Eles nos dizem que, para construir um mundo onde cabem muitos mundos, precisamos convidar e convencer que existe uma maneira diferente de gerenciar educação, cultura, produção, marketing, organização comunitária. Nosso trabalho propõe uma forma de fazer isso.
Contarão a experiência de construção desse chamado "partido do movimento" que é Cidade Do Futuro, cujo objetivo não é apenas representar nas instituições do Estado, mas ser uma expressão materializada da sociedade em movimento.
É um instrumento político onde:- projetos territoriais,- escolas,- cantinas/casas comunais,- espaços culturais,- unidades produtivas, marketing,- mídia, - mandatos populares no Conselho municipal de Rosário e outras localidades da província de Santa Fé, e políticas prefigurativas de escala, como a urbanização de Nuevo Alberdi ou a empresa pública de alimentos coexistem.
Todos esses projetos convivem no mesmo instrumento porque há uma hipótese de construção política por trás disso: esse processo crítico de desafeto que a sociedade tem com a política deve ser suturado de alguma forma. Isso é feito de baixo para cima, aproximando a tomada de decisões de onde essas decisões têm impacto e vinculando os problemas do cotidiano à política. Buscamos captar no presente pedaços daquela cidade e daquela sociedade que queremos para o amanhã.
Todos concordamos que existe um modelo injusto de produção de alimentos, que a educação é importante, que a cultura é fundamental, etc, mas poucos podem dizer o que é um modelo justo ou como seria. É aí que Ciudad Futura nos mostra em menor escala, através de uma prática prefigurativa e concreta, que existe um modelo diferente.
Este trabalho será apresentado por Epifan Mitsuba Estefan Mitsuba Bianco e Alejandro Gelfuso. Estefan Mitsuba é membro do Ciudad Futura. Coordenador Territorial da futura circunscrição do centro da cidade. Coordenador das escolas de formação da Fundação cidades sem medo-Cidade Do Futuro. Alejandro é membro do Ciudad Futura. Fatos-Mídia Cidade Do Futuro. Coordenador Provincial de desenvolvimento da Cidade Do Futuro. Licenciatura em Comunicação Social UNR. Doutor em Ciência Política.
Avremo una presentazione innovativa in questo X Simposio sulla Città futura, uno strumento politico formato all'inizio del 2013 nella città di Rosario, dalla confluenza di due movimenti sociali autonomi della città, il Movimento Giros e il Movimento 26 de Junio, movimenti sociali a cui si fa riferimento nella tradizione delle esperienze post-2001.
Essi presenteranno il metodo di costruzione politica in concreto che ha, secondo la loro esperienza, un potere di convinzione molto maggiore che dare una discussione politica in astratto. Ci dicono che per costruire un mondo in cui molti mondi si adattano, dobbiamo invitare e convincere che esiste un modo diverso di gestire l'istruzione, la cultura, la produzione, il marketing, l'organizzazione della comunità. Il nostro lavoro propone un modo per farlo.
Racconteranno l'esperienza della costruzione di questo cosiddetto ”partito del movimento" che è Città Futura, il cui obiettivo non è solo quello di rappresentare nelle istituzioni statali, ma di essere un'espressione materializzata della società in movimento.
È uno strumento politico in cui coesistono:- progetti territoriali,- scuole,- mense/case comunali,- spazi culturali,- unità produttive, marketing,- media, - mandati popolari nel consiglio comunale di Rosario e in altre località della provincia di Santa Fe, e politiche prefigurative di scala come l'urbanizzazione di Nuevo Alberdi o l'Azienda alimentare pubblica.
Tutti questi progetti coesistono nello stesso strumento perché dietro c'è un'ipotesi di costruzione politica: questo processo critico di disaffezione che la società ha con la politica deve essere in qualche modo suturato. Questo viene fatto dal basso verso l'alto, portando il processo decisionale più vicino a dove queste decisioni hanno impatto e collegando i problemi della vita quotidiana con la politica. Cerchiamo di catturare nei pezzi presenti di quella città e di quella società che vogliamo per domani.
Siamo tutti d'accordo sul fatto che esiste un modello ingiusto di produzione alimentare, che l'istruzione è importante, che la cultura è fondamentale, ecc., ma pochi possono dire cos'è un modello equo o come sarebbe. È qui che Ciudad Futura ci mostra in scala ridotta, attraverso una pratica prefigurativa e concreta, che esiste un modello diverso.
Questo articolo sarà presentato da Epifanía Estefanía Bianco e Alejandro Gelfuso. Estefanía è membro di Ciudad Futura. Coordinatore territoriale della circoscrizione del Futuro centro città. Coordinatore delle Scuole di Formazione della Fondazione Città Senza Paura-Città Futura. Alejandro è membro di Ciudad Futura. Fatti-Media Città futura. Coordinatore provinciale per lo sviluppo di Future City. Laurea in Comunicazione Sociale UNR. Dottorato in Scienze Politiche.
Nous aurons une nouvelle présentation dans ce Symposium X sur Futura City Un instrument politique formé au début de 2013 dans la ville de Rosario, de la confluence de deux mouvements sociaux autonomes de la ville, du mouvement Giros et du mouvement du 26 juin, social Mouvements référencés dans la tradition des expériences post-2001.
Ils présenteront la méthode de construction politique spécifique qui a, selon leur expérience, un pouvoir de conviction beaucoup plus que de donner une discussion politique dans le résumé. Ils nous disent que pour construire un monde où de nombreux mondes, nous devons inviter et convaincre qu'il existe une façon différente de gérer l'éducation, la culture, la production, le marketing, l'organisation communautaire. Notre travail propose un moyen de le faire.
Ils compteront l'expérience de construction de cette «partie de mouvement» ainsi appelée qui est une future ville, dont l'objectif est non seulement de représenter dans les institutions de l'État mais d'être une expression matérialisée de la société en mouvement.
Il s'agit d'un instrument politique où ils coexistent: - projets territoriaux, -escueas, -comadores / maisons communautaires, espaces culturels, province de Santa Fe et des politiques à l'échelle préfigurative telles que l'urbanisation de Nuevo Alberdi ou la société d'alimentation publique.
Tous ces projets vivent dans le même instrument car derrière il y a une hypothèse de construction politique: à ce processus critique de désaffection que la société a avec la politique doit être suturé d'une manière ou d'une autre. Cela se fait de bas en haut, en prenant des décisions où ces décisions ont un impact et liant les problèmes de la vie quotidienne à la politique. Nous cherchons à capturer dans les pièces actuelles de cette ville et cette société que nous voulons demain.
Nous convenons tous qu'il existe un modèle injuste de production alimentaire, que l'éducation est importante, que la culture est fondamentale, etc., mais peu peuvent dire ce qu'est un modèle juste ou ce qui serait. C'est là que Ciudad Futura nous montre à plus petite échelle, grâce à une pratique préfigurative et concrète, qu'il existe un modèle différent.
Cet article sera présenté par Epiphany Estefanía Bianco et Alejandro Gelfuso. Estefanía est membre de la ville de Futura. Coordinateur territorial de la circonscription Centro de Ciudad Futura. Coordinateur des écoles de formation de la Fondation des villes sans crainte de villes. Alejandro est membre de Ciudad Futura. Faits - Moyen de communication Ciudad Futura. Coordinateur du développement provincial de Ciudad Futura. Baccalauréat en communication sociale Unr. Doctorat en science politique.
Tendremos una novedosa ponencia en este X Simposio sobre Ciudad Futura un instrumento político conformado a principios del año 2013 en la ciudad de Rosario, a partir de la confluencia de dos movimientos sociales autónomos de la ciudad, el Movimiento Giros y el Movimiento 26 de Junio, movimientos sociales que se referencian en la tradición de experiencias post-2001.
Presentarán el método de construcción política en concreto que tiene, según su experiencia, un poder de convencimiento muchísimo mayor que dar una discusión política en abstracto. Nos dicen que para construir un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos, necesitamos convidar y convencer de que existe una manera distinta de gestionar la educación, la cultura, la producción, la comercialización, la organización comunitaria. Nuestro trabajo propone una vía para hacerlo.
Contarán la experiencia de construcción de este denominado “partido de movimiento” que es Ciudad Futura, cuyo objetivo no es solo representar en las instituciones del Estado sino ser una expresión materializada de la sociedad en movimiento.
Es un instrumento político donde conviven: -proyectos territoriales, -escuelas, -comedores/casas comunales, -espacios culturales, -unidades productivas, de comercialización, -medio de comunicación, -mandatos populares en el concejo municipal de Rosario y otras localidades de la provincia de Santa Fe, y políticas prefigurativas de escala como la urbanización de Nuevo Alberdi o la Empresa Pública de Alimentos.
Todos esos proyectos conviven en un mismo instrumento porque detrás hay una hipótesis de construcción política: a este proceso crítico de desafección que tiene la sociedad con la política hay que suturarlo de alguna manera. Eso se hace de abajo hacia arriba, acercando la toma de decisiones donde esas decisiones tienen impacto y vinculando los problemas de la vida cotidiana con la política. Buscamos plasmar en el presente pedazos de esa ciudad y esa sociedad que queremos para mañana.
Todos estamos de acuerdo que hay un modelo injusto de producción de alimentos, que la educación es importante, que la cultura es fundamental, etc, pero pocos pueden decir cuál es o cómo sería un modelo justo. Por ahí es donde Ciudad Futura nos muestra en una escala menor, a través de una práctica prefigurativa y concreta, que existe un modelo diferente.
Esta ponencia será presentada por Epifanía Estefanía Bianco y Alejandro Gelfuso. Estefanía es militante de Ciudad Futura. Coordinadora territorial de la circunscripción centro de Ciudad Futura. Coordinadora de las Escuelas de Formación de la Fundación Ciudades Sin Miedo-Ciudad Futura. Alejandro es militante de Ciudad Futura. Factos - Medio de Comunicación Ciudad Futura. Coordinador desarrollo provincial de Ciudad Futura. Licenciado en Comunicación Social UNR. Doctorando en Ciencias Políticas.
We will have an innovative presentation at this X Symposium on Future City, a political instrument formed at the beginning of 2013 in the city of Rosario, from the confluence of two autonomous social movements of the city, the Giros Movement and the 26 de Junio Movement, social movements that are referenced in the tradition of post-2001 experiences.
They will present the method of political construction in concrete that has, according to their experience, a much greater power of conviction than giving a political discussion in the abstract. They tell us that in order to build a world where many worlds fit, we need to invite and convince that there is a different way to manage education, culture, production, marketing, community organization. Our work proposes a way to do this.
They will tell the experience of building this so-called ”movement party" that is Future City, whose objective is not only to represent in the State institutions but to be a materialized expression of society in movement.
It is a political instrument where: -territorial projects, -schools, -canteens/communal houses, -cultural spaces, -productive units, marketing, -media, -popular mandates in the municipal council of Rosario and other localities of the province of Santa Fe, and prefigurative policies of scale such as the urbanization of Nuevo Alberdi or the Public Food Company coexist.
All these projects coexist in the same instrument because there is a hypothesis of political construction behind it: this critical process of disaffection that society has with politics must be sutured somehow. This is done from the bottom up, bringing decision-making closer to where those decisions have impact and linking the problems of everyday life with politics. We seek to capture in the present pieces of that city and that society that we want for tomorrow.
We all agree that there is an unfair model of food production, that education is important, that culture is fundamental, etc, but few can say what a fair model is or how it would be. That's where Ciudad Futura shows us on a smaller scale, through a prefigurative and concrete practice, that there is a different model.
This paper will be presented by Epifanía Estefanía Bianco and Alejandro Gelfuso. Estefanía is a member of Ciudad Futura. Territorial coordinator of the Future City center constituency. Coordinator of the Training Schools of the Foundation Cities Without Fear-Future City. Alejandro is a member of Ciudad Futura. Facts - Media Future City. Provincial development Coordinator of Future City. Degree in Social Communication UNR. PhD in Political Science.
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Openness and imagination: the human future towards freedom and uncertainty
Good Morning everyone. Let me thank the many people who made this Symposium possible, in this new interconnected form.
My speech today is about the human being, highlighting some of the characteristics that distinguish its psychic functioning and its relationship with the environment that surrounds it. In this way I would like to arrive at the conclusion that the human being, as an individual and as a species, is constitutively able to create new realities, changing the conditions in which he finds himself acting: he, or rather WE, are therefore capable of creating not only a new world but also a new human being.
Talking about the human being is not just about discussing it as an object of philosophical study, as if it were a natural entity to be observed from the outside. On the contrary, the invitation is that everyone does feel personally called to connect to the discourse, because I will talk about each of us, of our daily experience, of our inner knowledge, of how we perceive and articulate our existence.
In order to do it, I will ask myself some questions, from which I will start to unfold the many elements that I need to arrive at the conclusion.
1. How does the human being relate to the environment? Or how does consciousness get in touch with the world and how does this contact manifest?
2. How does the ability to create mental images work for evolution?
3. How does the past affect me? And what about the future?
4. How much freedom can I get compared to what limits me in my life today?
My answers find their roots in the work of Silo[1], literary pseudonym of Mario Rodriguez Cobos, Argentine thinker who founded the current of Universal Humanism and who also conceived this Symposium in 2008. Let me also thank all the scholars who have explored his themes and made further contributions.
DEVELOPMENT
I will therefore go into the heart of what I want to discuss. The first question is: In what way does the human being relate to the environment? That is, how does consciousness get in contact with the world and how does this contact manifest itself?
Here I use the word consciousness in a psychological sense, not in a moral one. With the word consciousness I mean the internal apparatus that makes us perceive the external world and organizes the responses that we give to this outside world. Consciousness does a great job: it continuously receives inputs from all the external and internal senses, it processes them by combining with those in memory, and organises actions. Consciousness aims at maintaining homeostasis of the functioning of the psychophysical unit of which it is an expression. So far we would not be very different from our cat.
What is the nature of the elaborations of consciousness? What does our consciousness exactly do? It portrays the outside world, then plays a bit with these representations and at the end of the game does it come up with an action to do? Consciousness in this perspective would operate a reproduction of the world, as if it were a passive entity in front of it, and it would mechanically devise solutions to the problems that the world poses.
It is not so simple; consciousness is not passively waiting for some signal from the external world. As Brentano, Husserl and Silo state, consciousness is incessantly in activity, searching relentlessly for mental objects, that is, the representations that best complete the acts it has launched. I represent the world to my inner self not because I find it in front of me, but because my consciousness does a continuous work of active construction. Inside of me I have no photographs, but original and unique elaborations.
This constructive and subjective process of consciousness is so real that, in the judiciary field for example, studies are carried out on the reliability of the testimonies given during trials or interrogations, since there are huge differences between the accounts of people who report the same event: everyone structured the event differently, with details that were even absent in the scene to be described.
So, we are active creators of reality, each of our own.
Ironically, if I had no perceptual or mnemonic data about the world, what would remain in me, as mental material to make my consciousness work? Very little: consciousness would have no representation and the world, ultimately, would not exist for me. Nor I would even exist, since my elaborations are based on my data of the world.
As a conscious being, I start to develop while I am still in my mother's womb, in relation to the world I live in, intended as a material and as a social world. There, my peculiar way of perceiving is intertwined with the way I am perceived by other beings like me, and I interact with a world that exists only insofar as I can grasp the salient aspects of it - for my life, for my senses and for my consciousness.
I build the reality of my own world, and I can do it through what of the world is available to me. I am, ultimately, a world-consciousness structure in constant activity. The boundary between me and the outside world, that I can physically establish where the tactile limit of the skin is, represents an elastic, or rather theoretical, boundary that can be defined as a communication between open spaces.
Silo explains this concept with the term "landscape". There is an internal landscape, given from all my mental representations, and an external one, the world that I can perceive, and it’s in the intertwining of these two landscapes that my world-consciousness structure unfolds, allowing me to learn (by acquiring new data from the interaction with the external landscape) and to operate on the external landscape through the action of my body - which is included in the process.
Grasping the inescapable embrace in which these two landscapes continually interact is part of a training, in order to grasp a particular internal register, the one of the gaze.
Another siloist concept, the internal gaze is the register we have of the observation point from which we see consciousness and all its acts. Any change of the gaze reflects on the way in which landscapes carry out their action.
This awareness of the gaze is very important if we want to change something about the situation of widespread violence in the world today. All the motivational books, such as "get back control of your life" emphasize the human capacity of becoming aware of the gaze and of modifying it in a desired way. The same approach is used in psychotherapy: the self-fulfilling prophecy is the clearest example of how the gaze affects our actions and the events we let occur.
The internal gaze is not only the individual one - on oneself and one's landscape, but even that of entire categories of people, for example scientists. Starting from physical sciences, today in all fields of knowledge the anthropic principle is advancing, that is, the consideration of the role of the observer in the construction of reality.
We are abandoning the illusion of objective knowledge, in favor of a perspective that puts the interaction between the human being with its means - and the world to know - at the center of interest; from the microscopic level of subatomic particles to the macroscopic level of cosmology.
Taking into consideration the gaze of the human being, a new vision of the Universe emerges, one that is far more complex than a 100 years ago: the physicist Carlo Rovelli defines “a world that doesn’t exist in space and doesn’t evolve in time. A world only made of interacting quantum fields who teem with other quantum to generate, through a dense network of reciprocal interactions, space, time, particles, waves and light "[2].
The concept of interaction is becoming central to all sciences. The epistemic categories and their boundaries, useful until recently, today are an impediment for us to understand the nature of the new vision emerging from the current knowledge.
What I believed so far must now collapse, so that a new way of seeing things can rise. Facing this "new" complexity of the gaze, I understand how European explorers of the sixteenth century must have felt, discovering lands never even imagined before.
The Hubble telescope that captures the hundreds of thousands of galaxies of the deep universe, definitely puts on a side the geocentric perception of the world I have lived in so far. Suddenly, the Universe is infinite and unfolds thanks to my gaze that captures it.
Human consciousness on this small outlying planet becomes important because it ultimately represents, for the moment and according to what we know, one of the possible levels of interaction and one of the ways of building knowledge, but certainly the only one we have access to.
This reflection is affecting all fields of human knowledge, which must reconsider the epistemic foundations of the disciplines and elaborate a new cognitive program in which the gaze of the human being is included as a central element of the method.
We now come to the second question: How does the ability to create mental images work for evolution?
The world-consciousness dynamic is expressed through the activity of representing, that is, producing images, as they are commonly defined in psychology. Pictures are synthetic reconstructions that consciousness produces as a result of its own activity, therefore they are original, unique, although education and sociability constantly operate so that mutual communication of images is possible. Since we are young and throughout life, thanks to language we share concepts, that are meanings that we associate with our images.
It’s in the failure of actions and communication, in ambiguities and errors, that we notice the subjectivity of our images and our landscapes, and this forces us to agree, to find again a consensus on the pre-dialogue beliefs underlying our conversational exchanges. It is the nature of our knowledge, as Edgar Morin writes: “Each knowledge carries with it the risk of error and illusion”[3].
Historian Harari talks about "imagination constructs" that have accustomed people from birth to adapt to certain behaviors and to think in a certain way, thus creating "artificial instincts" which we call culture[4]. Beliefs are complex and prescriptive images, difficult to recognize due to their subjective character, because culture has a cooperative form based on large numbers and the evidence we have of it is proper the opposite: it is the "truth" since everyone believes it. Fortunately, many brilliant thinkers went against the current, they questioned what was believed to be true and they thus allowed access to new knowledge.
The images are flexible: they are continually reconstructed, changed, updated, to allow the adaptation of the psycho-physical structure to the physical and social world, and vice versa, to adapt the physical and social world to one's desires. This reciprocal adaptation activity points to an evolutionary direction, since it operates through the instrument of the body, at the same time subject and object of the material and social world, to transform landscapes in the direction of overcoming physical pain and mental suffering. This basic intention of our species guides us from the earliest hominids, as the same conditions of finitude and lack are the engine of evolutionary intention.
We can then say that it is an implicit direction of Life itself, from its own simpler forms to the most complex.
This direction of the human being acts by articulating a time horizon in the consciousness, in which the past, the present and the future are intertwined with each other, but where the construction of the future excels, for the same intentional mechanics of the consciousness, always reaching forward in search of new mental objects. Therefore, we will call imagination the activity of representing in the direction of the future; what allows new contents to emerge, which overcomes old beliefs by discarding them or by integrating them into broader visions.
Giordano Bruno writes: "Every time we believe that some truth remains to be known, some good to reach, we always seek another truth and aspire to another good. In short, investigation and research will not be satisfied in the attainment of a limited truth and a defined good"[5].
This whole process, on an individual and species level, translates into a continuous change, and those positions that claim to preserve a present balance, or even worse to return to past situations that you considered positive in distant moments, are shortsighted.
And now the third question: How does the past affect me? And what about the future?
The temporality of consciousness arises from the articulation of the three times that we can build: past, present and future. The past is all that is memory, landscape of training, and always comes into play in the construction of new images. The past defines me: I am an historical being soaked in the culture in which I grew up. It also defines me as a social being, since it’s in the interaction with the intentions of others that I have configured my intention. The past predominates the more I accumulate in the memory. Yet the future prevails: it’s the planning dimension of existence, the program of my actions, it’s the intention that manifests itself in the body and in the world. The present is the crossing point of the images coming from the memory and the images resulting from the imaginative processes in which I project myself into future situations. It’s in the present that I act, I feel, I think, whereas I include the past, I am pushed into the future, expanding, in this way, the gaze that observes temporality in action.
And now the last question: How much freedom can I get compared to what limits me in my life today?
The push towards “futurization”, coming from the evolutionary direction that wants to transform the given conditions, corresponds in human history to a process of personal and social liberation in which we are, each of us, called to make our contribution. This liberation takes root in the body with actions to remove the pain and approach to pleasure; and as needs and possibilities have expanded, human beings have fought against disease and poverty, and the fear that generates suffering. The body itself can emerge transformed in this process of liberation: surgery, prosthesis, assisted fertilization are some of the ways in which we intervene on our body when this represents a limit to our intentions.
The process of human liberation has just begun. Last appeared on the planet, its evolution was fast, and in a virtuous feedback circle, the more it changed the more he was able to change. Representative possibility has accelerated even more the development of his abilities, since he didn't have to go for trial and error, but he imagined situations and found solutions.
John Stewart, development of consciousness scholar, defines two fundamental characteristics of the human being: self-evolution and systemic self-management.
The first is the ability to get rid of the biological and cultural limitations of the past in order to choose what is necessary for the benefit of the future; the second is the ability to develop mental models of interaction between oneself and the environment, which allow to identify useful actions for the evolutionary future[6].
These abilities are present in all human beings as intrinsic possibilities in the functioning of consciousness itself. But only in the presence of an intentional choice we can become aware of them, develop them, put them at the service of improving the individual and collective life. What qualitative leap would human and non-human life have developed on this planet if everyone acted to free themselves from the limits imposed at each level?
This symposium is a moment of meeting and circulation of ideas that want to illuminate a part of the liberation path that awaits us in the future; to free ourselves from the tyranny of money, for example with the universal basic income; to free ourselves from the destructive threat with a reduction of weapons and the elimination of nuclear power; to free ourselves from gender disparity and in general from all kinds of discrimination; to free ourselves from the threat of an ecological disaster and to free ourselves from the violence that affects so many aspects of human life.
How far can we go on the path of liberation? Clearly, from the present where we observe, we can only glimpse in the distance crossroads that we could take and crossroads we hope to avoid, but the path is not defined in any way. From Heisenberg onwards, in the scientific field (but with consequences of epistemological relevance on the whole human knowledge), uncertainty described the non-mechanistic and non-deterministic behavior of some physical phenomena, to generalize this acquisition to the far more random phenomena of life e of the human.
Pico della Mirandola poetically describes this immense freedom that the human being has in front of him: “I have made you neither celestial nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine”[7].
Certainly this dimension of uncertainty fascinates and scares at the same time. Sometimes it can take the concrete form of the question: “Will we become extinct or will we be able to transform our species and our environment in ways that we still don’t even imagine?" Abysses and bright perspectives coexist as a possibility to shape.
CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, let me briefly recap.
The characteristic of the human being is openness, since its consciousness, intertwining the constructive activity in the interaction with the world, structures and shapes itself and the world. The ability to create images and project them into the future in the direction of overcoming pain and suffering, is the basis for the transformation of limited conditions in which he acts. The transformation takes place in the gaze that he uses to observe, both the internal and external landscapes that constitute the world. He has already encoded right through himself, his own destiny of personal, social and spiritual liberation.
This is all very important today. In the words of Hugo Novotny: “In the current historical moment, it has become essential for the human species to take on a protagonist role in overcoming the actual crisis and in passing to the future evolutionary stage of life on our planet; and for this to be possible, the intentional leap cannot be postponed towards a new level of consciousness, towards a new ethics and a new spirituality"[8].
The "superior orders whose life is divine" of Pico della Mirandola and the new spirituality of the next stage of human evolution, refers to the mystical dimension that the human being has been exploring for some thousands of years, looking for a way to a new level of consciousness and knowledge. The limits of individual identity are boundaries within which the register of the consciousness itself is contained, but there is a deep river with no banks, which relates to the contact experiences with the ineffable world of universal meanings.
Sasha Volkoff accurately describes the meditation process that can be used to reach it: “To the extent that silence is made and consciousness is emptied, the moment occurs when, with no content to use, consciousness looks inwards and records itself; at that moment, when the subject meets itself, the level break occurs. The consciousness finds itself 'empty' and then sees itself not as an object but directly as the subject"[9].
The further step in the liberation process we aspire to is being able to imagine our own evolution beyond the limit of the death of the body. In the mystery and faith that accompany this passage, mystics of many religions have mentioned the path of the spirit, beyond the physical body and regardless of the ego we identify in life with, that undertakes the way of transcendence.
I conclude with a beautiful quote from Silo's story "The clay of the cosmos":
"Thus, the visitor was expecting a new birth within that species in which he recognized the fear of death and the vertigo of destructive fury. He had observed how those beings vibrated with the hallucination of love, as if they felt anguished by facing the loneliness of the empty Universe, as they imagined their own future, as they struggled to decipher the first footprints left on the path where they had been thrown. Sooner or later this species, made with the clay of the cosmos, would take the path that will lead to discover its origins, but that path would be unpredictable"[10].