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Welcome. Welcome to this closure.
They told me "You will conclude", so I'm telling you, let's get this over with, please.
Let's conclude with: "A noticeable absence: You"...
...within an extraordinary reflection.
I would like to conclude tonight with a very specific reflection...
...regarding this noticeable absence, a noticeable absence: You.
We will be reflecting on the black hole of the educational process.
What I mean is that within the traditional educational process...
...all around the world...
...a really odd function is taking place.
The educational process focused outwards...
...where we study a wide variety of subjects:...
...physics, chemistry, mathematics, history, grammar, etc, etc, etc...
...and nevertheless, this nucleus of knowledge...
...where we are focusing on the perception of reality...
...is tracing a spectacular black hole,
...and this black hole is no other than yourself...
...it's the human being.
You are the only one that has been absent from your own learning process.
What do I mean?
The individual studies so many things throughout his educational process...
...he has approached so many subjects...
...but he hasn't approached the subject of his own being.
This idea has even disturbed some educators, who tell me: "no, no, the individual is actually present...
...we even call attendance and there he is...
...we study anatomy or biology and the individual is there", I mean, no, no, no...
...this vision of the individual is really interesting.
Here, I would like to introduce a proposal I consider to be crucial so the rest of the proposals are able to take place...
...what do I mean?
Please show the next ïmage.
We have this vision of the multiple problems in the world...
...a brief sight of our surroundings shows the multiple problems that concern all of us...
...that stimulates us, that challenges us to overcome it...
...and to perceive the resonance of the political, family and cultural problems...
...we perceive economic, social, demographic, ecological, religious, educational problems, etc.
All of a sudden, we perceive these problems as a tremendous dust cloud that blinds us, and we wonder, where shall we begin?
What shall we do, how can we solve it, how can we approach the world's problems?
It´s multiple, it's multidimensional, occurs simultaneously everywhere, and it strikes us.
Nevertheless, I would like to share a vision.
First of all, I would like to point out that the essential problem of this perspective is one:...
What is this problem?
It is the low levels of consciousness of the individuals that inhabit the world.
This low, very low level of consciousness of the people who inhabit the world, is what has generated all the problems:...
...the political, economic, cultural, religious, ecological, demographic problems.
Whenever we approach a knowledge sphere or an action sphere, we inmediately find a tremendous amount of problems.
All these problems are caused by the low levels of consciousness of people who belong to certain power circles,
...the spheres of business, the spheres of education, within families, relationships, etc.
Therefore, this subject is absolutely crucial.
Please show the next image.
What would the proposal be?
The proposal would be to modify the perspective of the educational system.
This implies an imaginative exercise.
The proposal is: to place the person as the center of the educational process...
...and conscience as the center of the person.
Because, undoubtedly, if we place the person at the center of the educational process...
...we will be able to study and to analize plenty of elements regarding the individual.
We woud like to focus here on a specific subject,
the development of conscience, interwoven within the educational system.
That is from early childhood, to early stimulation, from kindergarten, to elementary school, highschool and college...
...we can conduct a parallel system.
The work of the person with himself, the study of his own being,...
...the development of his own consciousness...
along with the study of the rest of the subjects: biology, chemistry, physics, history, grammar, etc...
...he is studying himself, there is a study of his own being.
After studying elementary school for six years, junior high school for three years, senior highschool for three years...
...and a degree for five years, the result is that in the end, the person hasn't achieved an adequate knowledge of his own being.
Without really having a concrete vision of which are his needs...
...without self-knowledge, without knowing what he wants or how to create a life plan.
Therefore he has to learn it as he goes along...
...along with the cost of serious, very serious, mistakes...
...when he could have learned it simultaneously, along with this educational process.
When we talk about consciousness, we often approach too abstract and controversial matters,
here, I would like to land this into the educational system and into the everyday life.
What do we mean by "the consciousness approach"? Next slide please.
When we talk about the structure of consciousness, we talk about fundamental functions.
First extraordinary carachteristic: self-reflective consciousness.
What does this self-reflective consciousness mean?
This is the feature that better distinguishes human consciousness from that of other living beings.
There are animals with a reactive consciousness, based on stimulus and response...
...but human beings have an auto-reflective consciousness,
that is, a conscience capable of perceiving itself...
...and simultaneously perceive the "principle of reality".
This auto-reflective consciousness is what provides us with a free will...
...and what has established all the difference, absolutely, all the difference.
We are conscious entities, but not only conscious entities,
we are conscious entities, conscious of the fact we are being conscious...
...this is the auto-reflective consciousness. And this is the great gap that divides us from animal behavior.
The auto-reflective consciousness provides us with a psychological complexity, provides us with a free will...
but we not always reflect adequately on free-will.
What about free will? It is based on two fundamental functions of conscience:
critical conscience, and auto- critical conscience.
I analyze the world and reality through critical conscience. I analyze myself through auto-critical conscience.
It is from this double analysis that the creative act emerges.
My answer to the world.
Then we face the possibility of ethics, the possibility of aesthetics...
...we face the configuration of a meaning. Every individual has the responsibility to create his own universe of significance,
facts aren't what we really experience, what we really experience is what facts mean within our internal stage of consciousness.
This auto-reflective consciousness is what makes the difference, and has seven functions: the awareness processes.
Conscience, above all, helps us to be aware of everything that is, of everything that exists, of my own existence...
...of the existence of the world, and to question it.
Attentional processes, that are the helm of consciousness.
Many people ignore how to conduct or direct their own conscience.
It is through attentional processes, linked to the awareness processes, that we link information, that we create metaphores,
that's how we establish analogies, how we origin definitons, and how we create different levels of awareness...
these are the cognitive processes; the understanding of the deep meaning of something I have just acknowledged or observed.
It is through these cognitive processes how we start transforming ourselves and our own world.
All of these functions can be developed. There are techniques to develop them.
You can teach a child to develop his awareness processes,
his attentional processes, to accelerate his cognitive processes.
We have all had the experience of being in one place without actually "being" there.
Of not having a conscious management of the attentional focus:
the awareness processes are canceled, cognitive processes disappear...
...and you can sit in a desk for ten months and not learn a single thing, no biology...when I say nothing I mean nothing.
And then you have to study for tests, write notes in a rush. Why? Because there was no development of the conscience.
There is no capacity for being present, here and now.
The same thing happens with the companies, in the every day life: people experience the absence of the self...
what St. Therese of Jesus called "the mad of the house"...
the attentional dispersion processes, explained afterwards by André Breton, nowadays present,
and we now realize how this triangle generates knowledge.
What happens to this knowledge? It is stored in the memory...
which is also an extraordinary vision, since it is the biographical resonance of the past...
...it is the way in which past exists in the present,
and desire, the arch of desire, which opens up and is connected with the will,
and which represents a horizon of significant opportunities, inserted in the present, in the conscience.
Conscience inhabits the present moment; the past resounds on the present as the memory, and future, as desire.
All this linked to the acts of will.
Thus we have here the result of creativity:
this creative act, which is the result of the union of the critical and the auto-critical consciousness...
because creative acts don't appear out of nowhere, it is a creative inference...
...this creative inference and this creative act,
where we explore ourselves and our world, creativity is an answer.
There is a result from the analysis of the critical and auto-critical consciousness...
this result is the creative act, which is my answer to the world.
Creativity is reflected on this last function of the conscience, which encloses the self-reflective cycle...
Contemplation. We are not only creative beings, but we are also conscious of the creativity we develop.
This self-reflective consciousness, this "being aware of" what I'm doing, is what allows a person to experience self satisfaction...
...the sense of fulfillment.
All these functions can be enhanced along the educational process...
...but nobody pays attention to them.
We memorize things: they ask us to memorize the names of all the rivers in the world,...
...so we have this 'overview' of the functions of conscience. But where do we apply them?
When we apply the functions of conscience, its awareness processes,
the attentional processes, the way he [for example, a child] understands things...
how he develops his memory, how he increases his desire, the conscious management of desire linked to will...
the mechanics of desire and will, so he answers with a creative act when he faces his own life...
Darling, you must take care of your own life, you!
With your own perception, with the creation of your significant processes
...you will make your own decisions, and decisions will mark your life.
We have to understand the intensity of a life, does not depend on the quantity or the speed of actions...
the intensity of a life depends on the accuracy of its decisions...
a lucid consciousness, a sharp one, consistently articulated, a child grows with a really extraordinary strength...
and a youngster: if we teach him all these functions during elementary and junior high-school
once he reaches senior-high school, we will have a very lucid and consistent young adult, responsible for himself,
capable of applying all these functions within the "self sphere".
Here we have a quick proposal of the multi-dimentional conscience:
The holographic dimention of conscience, where we find the instinctive potential,
the one that processes all the biological internal functions.
The motor potential, the external movements of the body;
the *** potential, the complete process of polarity...
...and the biochemical and biomagnetic attraction between bodies; the emotional process
or the management of emotions, and finally, the rational potential,
which stands for the management of abstract thinking.
When we apply the seven functions of the conscience on each one of the human potentials,
your instinctive conscience, your motor conscience, your *** conscience... they will all transform,
they will be enlightened, either your emotional or rational conscience.
What do I mean? For example: the signification processes when we approach the *** potential.
To identify the difference between sex as a physiological function, and erotism, which is the culture of sex...
... a structure, a value system, a sensibility, a type of awareness of the meaning of
the codes of caressing and how someone can trascend sensations
in order to build a link of shared intimacy.
In order to be able to link sexuality with the affective life, with the emotional life,
which is the 'added' element as studied
to actually achieve the *** experience. Being clear with the difference
between *** as a physiological process, and an *** as a mental process,
as the encounter between two people...
...as a process that nests in deeper levels of significance.
When consciousness begins to develop, and we expand the sense of each one of our potentials,
we find a very extraordinary answer.
The same happens with rational potential, when we experience
the development of linguistic codes, the creation of concepts...
...problem identification, the capacity for analysis and synthesis,
contradiction, ambiguity and paradox resolution,
...and more especifically, the decision-making process.
When you teach this to a child or an adolescent, his perspective is completely different.
He will have tools for the growth of his own being, and therefore he can create a life project
facing the "life-project" spheres: health, vocation and work spheres, family and social life spheres.
We will realize how this life project reflects our own consciousness towards the every day life;
the sense inflicted in each one of these spheres.
But when we go through them, I cannot stop here, this is a lot of information, I will only stop at the health sphere.
Within the health sphere there is sleep, nutrition, exercise, relaxation, hygene, and we have a lot of things to learn from this sphere...
that aren't taught at school, things never show up in your educational process.
Regarding work and vocation: people are shaped from the earliest stages,
to believe work will help you develop your potentials...
that it will provide you with life quality, economic productivity...
but vocation will provide you with development, and self-fulfillment.
Vocation is an extremely important term, but we understand that vocation
is the connection among the strong points of each one of these potentials.
Vocation is a genetic profile. Only when a person really knows himself, extraordinary responses will show in life...
the person knows himself, discovers a vocation-
because vocation is not something you make up, you discover it.
There is not just one vocation, there are many vocations, every person has many vocational possibilities.
Vocation is assumed, and finally implemented.
When we approach the family sphere, we are not provided with family codes, perspectives are closed for us...
...we are told that we must get married and have children in order to be a normal person, I mean, no, no, no, family vocation is one,...
...but couple and single vocations also exist. Being able to understand this three different vocations is absolutely crucial.
These are three completely different chess boards, but we would have to understand it,
we would have to teach this from the earliest stages.
All this constitutes an elemental knowledge that every human being is confronting.
When we explore each one of these spheres, including that of social life,
where we find trips, meetings, encounters, friends, recreational activities, love relationships...
...when we understand what the main importance of social life is, and that all these spheres entail a life project...
you ask someone to tell you about his life project, and most people do not understand what that is.
Nor they have it, nor have they structured it,
because they never taught them how to do it, and we just go through life some way...
while we try to understand it, always improvising; this should be study material during the educational process.
The individual within all life spheres, and with all its potentials.
What is it what we expect from the creation of a life project?
The creation of a bridge that will allow us to arrive where we want to go, in order to be what we want to be.
But someone has to teach me how to build this bridge, because otherwise I will build lots of fake bridges...
...lots of my bridges will collapse. I need to build the bridge, my life's project inference.
And this is formed by really simple elements: what I am, what I know, what I have...
this all tells me, as a result, what I can.
I am always able to do many things, and among the things I am able to do, I choose what I want to do.
Then I will choose what I want, among what I am able to do, and not among what I am not able to do.
Many people try to build their bridge with what they are not, with what they know not, with what they have not...
...and then they tell me "I can't", well, I'm telling you, you will never make it.
You need to start off with your raw material. But all of these are codes that have been thoroughly studied...
...where the individual can be implemented from the earliest childhood, in order to experience a really extraordinary change.
Please show the next image.
Ok. This is the idea. I am summarizing this, and fihishing with this thought:
The individual's fulfillment is the couple's support.
The couple's fulfillment is the support of the family.
The fulfillment of family, is the support of society.
And finally, society’s fulfillment is the individual’s support.
This way we are creating a virtuous circle of the development of consciousness.
But this virtuous circle must be created along with the educational process.
We have found here what the philosophy is: The universal vocation of service.
We don't seek the development of the person's consciousness or the maximum fulfillment just for himself...
We need him to put this capacity of reaction at the service of his community,
for the common good, for the benefit of the human community.
This universal spirit of service is what allows us to understand our maximum fulfillment relies on the others.
I then conclude with this vision: What is the contribution? Semiology of everyday life.
We are in fact celebrating 25 years, "silver anniversary" of "Semiology of everyday life".
We have created an educational model based on a semiological vision
from Pierce, Saussure, Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes, based on a very interesting backbone:
the notion of sign, code, structure, system and model, applied to the person, to the development of his consciousness
to create the "Semiology of everyday life".
When we observe our daily world, and find so many people living as slaves of their own internal void, of their lack of fulfillment
of the five main axis of compulsive conducts: sex, power, money, fame, sensations, where we remain trapped...
...trying to fulfill the ravages of abandonment, one's sense of dissatisfaction...
when we see a frustrated world due to its lack of vocational fulfillment...
...when we see a sad and desperate world because of the inability to create an adequate code for couples or a solid family structure
because people had no idea of how to do it, because we practiced as we went along,
because we have hit our heads against the wall,
when this gap can be covered by the educational system.
The proposal is the person as nucleous of the educational process, and consciousness as the center of the person.
If we change that perspective, if we place the individual at the center, values will permeate.
We'll then find reliable people, we will find people with consistent value structures
with completely different significance syntaxis, but if we don't, then things won't change.
We need to reflect, get back to the being, re-introduce it, place it at the center of the educational process...
...fulfill this gap, this noticeable absence, and understand we can contribute with the best of ourselves...
...so that our way through life is not useless. Let's leave our world a little better than how we found it.
Thank you very much for your kind presence.