(Applause)
We all know that humans descend from monkeys.
But when did this happen?
When was the jump?
When the last monkey or monkey became the first man or woman?
For Humberto Maturana this happened three and a half million years ago,
when our hominid ancestors stood on two legs,
They looked at the horizon, they looked at each other, they could reproduce themselves through the embrace
and create small communities to share parenting and food.
Sitting in a circle, around the fire or in the middle of the village,
they needed the words to coordinate actions, make decisions,
to share their stories, their fears, their dreams.
The language, what makes us human, for this Chilean biologist,
was born in a space of peaceful survival,
of enjoyment of being and being together.
Another scene, opposite to this one, is what cinema offers us,
when he focuses his camera on a horde of monkeys
that is fighting aggressively for its territory.
One of them lifts a bone, and kills one of its enemies.
In triumphant attitude, he throws it into space and the bone spins in slow motion
until crossing centuries of history and arriving at 2001,
become a spaceship that takes us through the odyssey of space.
Two scenes: the film and science, which put us before a dilemma.
Are we loving beings that live in language?
Or in the human root is violence, the defense of territory,
the annihilation of the different?
Today we live in the global village.
We have created machines almost as smart as we are.
Able to play our conversations to infinity,
overcoming time and space.
We spent the day typing on walls, cell phones and on screens,
who we are, what we do, where we are, what we think.
We converse all the time, even in 140 characters.
We continue urged with the need to communicate with others,
but we could not banish the violence.
We continue to build walls that isolate us from the different ones.
We continue making wars, we continue fighting for the territory.
Three and a half million years have passed and the dilemma is still valid.
Can human beings coexist without submitting to each other?
Why I am interested in answering that question is that I am part of the Ágora.
A civil association that was born in Córdoba more than 20 years ago
with the idea of rescuing the Greek Agora.
The public space as a favorable environment to recreate citizenship.
Those of us who make the Agora believe that the word, the circle, the networks, the art
They are powerful tools to banish violence.
And when I say to banish violence, I do not mean to suppress conflicts,
or avoid the sensations that assail us when the city seems like hell
If we go by car and the traffic is in chaos and we can not get to a place in time.
When we are afraid of walking in the street,
when impotent we see that public services are not guaranteed in the neighborhoods.
I’m not talking about suppressing those conflicts, quite the opposite.
To bring them and put them on the table to discuss them together.
The strategy of public dialogue is one of the activities of the Agora.
Our first public dialogue happened in a bar, in Palmira.
We invite many people, experts, to talk about the issue of human security.
There was talk of security in employment, security in education, in health,
and there was a table where they discussed security at night.
On that table were the police chief, the young people, the owners of the clubs.
The waiters who attended the guests left their trays and joined also,
because they knew they had a lot to say about security at night.
Another fact, which was perhaps a coincidence, brought us a new word and idea.
We commission some posters with the word citizenship.
And when we went to look for them, we found an error: citizenship.
The “i” and the “u” changed their place and a new word appeared.
Citizenship
We were interested in that idea of caring as a new way of being together.
The care of oneself, the care of the other, the care of the planet.
That today is no longer just an ethical imperative, but is a matter of survival.
“Either we care, or we perish,” says Leonardo Boff.
Can you imagine if in the city the transit was organized according to care?
Can you imagine if in the school the care of the other, of the relationships,
of the field, of space, was the most important issue?
The most important learning?
Can you imagine what could happen if in science caring was the goal,
the paradigm that organizes the new discoveries and ideas?
They imagine?
Or do you think it’s a little naive?
Some people are probably thinking that this is too utopian, right?
Very idelialist, maybe.
But you know what?
I am tired of violence being the only way to resolve conflicts.
Are not you tired of consuming every day the dose of scenes of bad living
that lavish the media,
that convince us that the only way to solve the violence of the world
Is it to annihilate the enemy?
Or in the worst case, save yourself who can?
One of the most beautiful things that the Agora has left me
It is the experience of meeting thousands of people and groups of people,
that meet around a cause, an idea or a problem
and try to solve it together by betting on the collective power,
to synergy, to creativity, to humor, to intelligence linking,
to solve including.
True citizens and citizens
who honor life and transform themselves by transforming themselves.
Collective and anonymous heroes.
Maybe anonymous because they are collective
and the media do not attract your interest.
Your actions are limited to a small group.
In the Agora, we believe that it was time to change the look
and to start training the eye to observe scenes of good living.
That is the concept, the idea, that encourages us in our current project.
We invite young people, and not so young, to go out with cell phones, cameras, engravers
to find those moments, those spaces,
minimal gestures that show us taking care of us.
Living in harmony with the universe, solving problems with dialogue.
Says Italo Calvino, that hell is not something that will come,
He is here among us, he is the one we all make together.
There are two ways of not suffering it.
The first one is easy.
It consists in accepting hell, becoming part of it until you almost do not see it.
The second one requires attention, care and constant learning.
It consists in looking well at what and who, in the midst of hell, are not hell.
And make room for them and make them last.
Because I am absolutely convinced that another world is possible.
And because we can achieve it among all if we honor life,
is that I invite, each one of you, to look very well
in your house, in your street, in your neighborhood, in your city, in the whole world
what and who are not hell. Make space, inhabit it, make it grow.
(Applause)
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