In principle, good morning, or good afternoon
I do not know what time it is, but, as you better feel it.
Indeed, my name is Augusto,
however, with respect to what the person who introduced me said,
I do not agree that I am special,
On the contrary, I think that today I could be a listener,
or be one of you who is on this side.
The only thing that we could say that I have,
is that what I bring to tell you, aspires to that we recognize a commitment,
and a potential that we all have.
What I bring, that is, the effective sense of my presence,
is to tell you about an idea, which took the form of a project,
to which we all agree in calling Tying ropes,
which basically consists of an alternative,
an alternative of thought,
but also of concrete work to our current paradigm,
a paradigm of deep competition, an individualist paradigm, of consumption.
The project is born and the idea arises, from becoming conscious,
and visualize an ecological need.
and here I stop for a while because, everywhere
of ecological necessity, from many points of view,
but it is rarely explained, from where.
We believe that ecological needs are a product
of an old belief of the human being, of placing oneself above nature,
and not as part of it.
This produces a relationship of domination over nature,
which, in turn, brings with it the destruction of it.
We believe that we are part of nature,
and that by destroying her, we are destroying ourselves.
From visualizing this, I started working
in something much more particular,
but that also responds to this bigger,
the excess of plastic bottles.
I noticed that although I am from a relatively small family,
and we are not consuming a lot of soft drinks, in general, a lot of liquid packaging,
Much of our garbage bag, was composed of this plastic.
So, how to find a solution, how to start to reduce, to recycle,
to process those bottles.
And looking on the Internet, I found a small idea,
but what prompted me to ask my old man, who is metallurgist,
to help me put it into practice.
Here is an anecdote to tell.
I’m really studying philosophy, and my old man, we could say,
He grew up among irons.
You can imagine the face he put on when I told him I was going to study philosophy.
If it’s what you like, he told me.
But you will also imagine
the face that he put
when I told him that I had detected a need in our family environment,
and that he needed his help and his knowledge,
to be able to put it into practice and achieve that need.
Then, something relatively strange happened,
but that was very enriching.
Both passions, one the solve needs,
another for iron, construction, metallurgy, etc.,
they started to get infected.
Suddenly I was interested in how a lathe works,
what material, what is the difference between a gear and a …
Suddenly that started to motivate me, and he, I think deep inside him,
He also became interested in the ecological issue.
So, we started working and the idea is the following,
cut a bottle to a certain width, produces yarn.
They will look at each other and say, for that simplicity is there standing!
However, I will say yes, and besides, it is not my idea,
because I actually took it from the Internet.
But that’s what it’s about, and that’s why I say I’m not special,
because it’s not about having brilliant ideas,
it’s not about being a great innovator, a great entrepreneur,
to effectively bond with people and work for a context
who demands and needs us.
We achieve this,
a machine that can process four bottles at the same time
and that the thread can make ropes.
This is another smaller photo.
So, this enthusiasm, this contagious passion,
He took us,
led us to different spaces,
like science fairs, or different people,
than the thread that this machine produces,
those people showed us the possibilities that the thread had
the potentiality
That is to say, we, in principle, thought of ropes or nets,
but suddenly they started bringing us ideas that would never have occurred to us,
For example, basketry, anti-hail networks,
use it for fences, things that would never have occurred to us.
And from this, we realized
of the potential as a product that had the thread,
and we started to work a little more
about what were the utilities of it.
Once we said here we arrived, we built this machine,
we left it to the school, and decided to take another path,
we realized the potential that the machine actually had
if we could place it in concrete contexts,
in concrete situations,
as in neighborhood work cooperatives, high schools,
so that it becomes a social tool
that allows generating, for example, jobs.
And that opened our heads, it blew our heads, I would say.
Suddenly, the machine could be a source of work.
And not only were we going to be solving an ecological need,
but also a social need, a need as basic as work.
Then, the machine came to us above to a place, to a community,
to a human group, and begin to produce, to generate autonomy,
in economic principle, that is, generate an income where there was none,
but there was no point in staying there, but that autonomy could be reproduced
in other projects, with the same perspective.
That is, they detect environmental needs,
to link people, and to work specifically to solve those needs.
Then, to the extent that the autonomy was enlarging,
it was expanding, a collective work base was generated, horizontal,
that had a shape, we could say, spiral,
where more and more people were involved
that they felt part and that they worked together,
for this context that I say, it demands us.
So, we fundamentally believe that
to work with these needs, some to solve them, others not,
but start walking a path,
is to make fewer and fewer people depend on them.
And, therefore, we believe that by working on this
We are effectively working to build freedom.
However, we realized that to sustain a project
of such magnitude and ambition,
it needed to be given a strong pedagogical basis.
That is, one of the arms of this spiral that I represented, had to arrive
to secondary and primary schools, so that the new generations
and the new kids, start learning from this perspective.
That is, they can put critical eyes on their environment,
that can isolate needs,
and that the school teaches them to bond with each other
to work effectively for those needs,
or by what they detect.
We imagined, for example, a technical school
working on the design and work of machines.
Another, human school, thinking this idea of freedom, of ecology, of the world,
and an economic school, for example,
analyzing the potential of the thread in the market.
And that suddenly, these schools,
working from different fields and perspectives,
could be in a plenary,
or in a kind of horizontal open space,
effectively discussing what was to be done with this environment
and with this context.
Today, indeed, the machine is in school,
at the school I was going to,
is being used by the boys of the primary
to take to science fairs and raise awareness from there,
and for the boys of the secondary
to make, for example, the nets of their soccer arcs.
And that the machine is already a pedagogical tool,
is for us a breakthrough in particular, impressive.
So, this project stops being a project,
and it becomes a network of human links, where other projects can take place,
and that, in some way, generates a new form of culture,
a new way of feeling in the culture, being part of it.
So let’s stop thinking about ourselves,
and start looking for a way to make our practices collective,
to bond with others,
while the bond enriches us,
but it enriches the others too.
It enriches us as a community, as a thinking and critical community.
A change in our culture that, in turn, allows us …
gives us the possibility to work together
for a more egalitarian, more just, more free world.
And, to give a bit of closure, and pick up the principle,
Why does not this project have a leader?
Why do not I introduce myself as the leader of this project?
For many things, but I will highlight two.
One is that if I presented myself as the leader of this project,
I would be ignoring the multiple instances
that make the project what it is today.
My family, the State, my education, my friends, etc.,
lots of things that if I presented myself as a leading individual,
they would not appear.
Those things were what gave me the tools
to effectively visualize the environment,
and work for him, bond with others to work for him.
And on the other hand, because the leader is a category of his own
of this paradigm against which we want to build the alternative.
It is an individualistic category that encloses us, alienates us,
it impoverishes us.
Meanwhile, the leader is delegated the responsibility,
total the leader takes charge,
but all the time, we are ignoring
our own potential, to change and work for the environment,
for that responsibility.
And also, because if we want to work with the leader,
we have to do it vertically, we have to place ourselves at your orders,
because, supposedly, it is the leader who knows the correct path,
as if there was one.
That’s why our project has this horizontal shape,
assembly, collective, mutual work where everyone can feel part
from wherever you want, from where you feel you are doing the right thing,
So, to close, I not only thank you for your attention,
but I also invite you to upload, not now to the stage, but to upload
to this way of thinking, to this way of working,
If you want to join this project, you can do so by communicating
but, above all, that we begin to think and work to transform
the current conditions in which we link with each other,
and with the world.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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