This article is based on some old telegraph notes from a course with Ricardo Yepes and later with Julián Marías and which I have been updating, although it is incomplete. It reflects the basic ideas that support our courses and conferences on Strategy, Leadership and Management Skills for Managers and Entrepreneurs.
They are essential concepts for managers, entrepreneurs and any professional in the company who intends to do an excellent job.
I have no illusions about the interest that the subject may have for the general public. Despite truly reflecting the cause of the crisis.
1. The Sensitive Life
The person never becomes entirely consistent. It does not have to be dominated, but cordially understood. Choose your own ends. In the person, learning is much more important than instinct; the choice of ends and means and their implementation are learned. Non-genetic. She has to learn almost everything she does: walking, eating, talking, reading, etc. All of this is living.
The most properly human is the choice of ends and means. The individual is perfected by reaching them. Because you have freedom for all that.
There is correspondence between body morphology and intelligence (bipedalism, hands with five fingers that gave rise to the decimal system, an expressive face due to the position of the eyes in the same plane, brain development, etc.) that allows it to express, relate and act in such a way. as it does. If we didn't have hands like we do, intelligence wouldn't do us any good. The hands are a non-specific, multipurpose instrument, thought to be an instrument of instruments and languages: they can cut a tree with an ax, cut a needle or play the piano. They can scratch, write, caress, hit, open, feel, swim, point. They are very expressive; they even serve for the deaf-mute to speak and the blind to see.
The human body is configured to fulfill many functions: swimming, diving, crawling, climbing, running, climbing, lowering, driving, arming, jumping, working, communicating, fighting. Intelligence and body are highly interrelated. Man is an intelligent body or bodily intelligence.
The soul is "the integral form of the body". Everything that happens to one, happens to the other. While alive they are inseparable. They always walk together. They form the person. The soul is endowed with intelligence and personal character; it is not derived from matter and is capable of doing things completely unrelated to matter such as: overcoming time, thinking, imagining, feeling, wanting, loving, speaking, writing; irreducible aspects to matter, although inseparable from it. It does not emerge from the spontaneous self-organization of genes. Univitelline twins (identical DNA) can fill lives of an entirely different psychological, intellectual and moral quality. The person is not simplifiable to simple chemistry and biology.
2. The Intellectual Life
The person is the talking animal (as well as the dressing animal). Able to know and manifest their inner states. Able to speak and listen. Talking requires thinking. Thought is unsaturated. No matter how much you think you can always think something else.
What unites men is reason. And what separates them is unreason or irrationality. Only with reason can they coexist with each other.
Feelings are the way to feel trends. Feelings form a very complex world. They play a central place in the person's life. They make up the inner soul situation. They propel or retract action and bring men together or apart. Your domain is not always secured. They are not always docile to intelligence and will (reason). It is necessary to educate them since they can go against what one wants. It is the key to self-control. They can be irrational in origin, but harmonized with reason. Self-esteem mistakes create false feelings of overestimation, arrogance, or frustration. Correct estimation of reality and self-knowledge prevents feelings from making false starts. Behavior is the informer of true feelings in a visible, direct and authentic way.Just look at the face and observe.
Behavior based solely on feelings (sentimentality) produces self-dissatisfaction, false self-image, and poor self-esteem. It generates a life dependent on a state of mind and leads to acting as one is at that moment by chance. Gestures are the language of feelings. Normally a person rich in gestures is rich in feelings.
The will is an intellectual function. It is the "rational force" by which we incline to good. It is "acting reason". It is reflected in behavior. The will is present by acting. It is complex to specify when an action ceases to be voluntary. They can be influenced by fear, strength, or ignorance. The man is responsible to others, the law and the judge. The choice of ends and the choice of means must be correct. Motivations can be important, but they do not nullify will or freedom.
Who is leading the action?
There must be balance and harmony between the 6 factors. But the engine for harmony is reason. Reason must take command over the rest of the human dimensions, so that integration is human.
Achieving that harmony is a matter of habit. Be careful with the great importance of custom. The path to that harmony is ethics. It is a fact that within man there is an internal disharmony and also that he has enough capacity, if he wants, to harmonize it.
Ethics is the education of feelings and inclinations so as not to incur disharmony (excess or defect). It is to admire a mature, balanced character, rich in feelings. Achieving that harmony is living ethically, which is the only way to be happy.
3. The Person
The person is an end in himself, and he also creates himself by habits. Having positive habits is the most perfect way to "have".
Habit is a stable disposition that tilts certain actions making them easier. It requires repetition of acts that entails a strengthening for such acts.
Technical habits.- Handling and skill of instruments. Intellectual habits.- Multiply and divide.
Habits of character.- Referred to the conduct according to the education acquired.
These involve mastery of feelings. They lead to harmony (virtues) or disharmony (vices).
How are habits acquired? Only with practice. There is no other way. Thus they become a habit, which is the 2nd nature of the person. Habits modify the subject in a virtuous or vicious direction. Everything a man does changes his own reality in the same sense as his action. You cannot act without improving or getting worse. When you despise, you become a despiser, and if you make a fuss, a slob. Is it better to suffer injustice or commit it? Suffer it; because by committing it one becomes unjust.
The proper and natural thing of man is to reach his end. And its purpose is to perfect its qualities to the maximum. Especially reason and will.
What is man? It would be better to ask: what is it capable of becoming? Human nature is such that it carries beyond itself. It transcends itself in man. "Man infinitely surpasses man" (Pascal). Man is the being that is only himself when he surpasses himself; when it goes beyond what it is. This is freedom. Man is free. Truth and good are reached only freely. It is not assured to reach them (for being free). For your freedom you can go in favor of natural tendencies or go against them. Man is the only creature that can refuse to be what he is. Ethics is something intrinsic to the person, to his education and as it is seen now, to his natural development. It is not a “regulation”, nor a religious prejudice, nor an organizational norm. But something present at the very bottom of the human.Ethics is the behavior that emerges from the core of the person's spiritual being. Habits modify the subject who acquires them. Human nature is perfected only by positive habits (virtues). You perfect yourself by acquiring them. (The perfectible perfector). Human nature lies in its ability to perfect itself.
Therefore, man is an intrinsically perfectible being. From inside. And if not, it is not perfected in any way.
4.- Technique and the Human World
Man is a maladjusted being who needs to modify his material circumstance in order to live. Human work improves the world, and working man perfects himself. The person does not adapt to the environment, but the environment adapts it to him (unlike animals). Alter where you live. It is the only animal that inhabits the earth. The other animals simply live in it. Producing is already something. Taking care of a home is much more. Home is the place to which one always returns.
Technocracy is the power of technique that, by itself, imprisons man. It is opposed to understanding him. Understanding involves benevolence, which is saying, be yourself! Man is capable of discovering the meaning of things. It can also be the opposite (i.e. not benevolent). Altering the meaning of things and stripping them of their true being, we call it instrumentalism. To dispose things or people badly is to reduce them to pure instruments. Use them without benevolence.
Instrumentalism is an exaggeration of the will to power. The instrumentalist only wants means and forgets the ends. It turns ends into means (enslaves its employees) and means into ends (making money at all costs). Precisely the typical case of instrumentalism is technocracy. It judges man by his ability to produce and exorbitant importance of profitability. It produces the “homo faber” and gives rise to a strong materialism. Anthropologically they are very similar: materialism, technocracy, individualism, instrumentalism, "homo faber", authoritarianism, etc. All of them degrade the dignity of the person.
5.- Science, Values and Truth
Imagination and creativity are a factor of the first magnitude in the scientific advance according to Newton and Einstein. But the advance is not neutral or isolated but conditioned by the vision of the world and of the life that those who carry it out have in their historical moment and with their determined circumstances. There is an a priori vision that establishes the assumptions from which to start, the method they use to advance and the way of posing problems. In short, they start from a specific culture. Never start from scratch.
The conduct does not admit a purely scientific treatment. Scientific and technical laws are humane, although they can be very effective. In human behavior the first thing is the ends and the meaning that the person in question gives to things. Science alone cannot answer the problem of the ultimate meaning of things. There is an essential, ethical, philosophical and artistic prior knowledge that does establish the purpose. But current institutions and unfortunately also the university do not offer students these ultimate values or a clear or correct vision of man or the world in which he has lived. However, it is about transmitting not only science but mainly culture. The end is the first thing that appears and the last that is achieved. It is what causes the start-up of man.It is the beginning of all human actions. Excessive concern about good results is a form of instrumentalism. To judge it only by the results is to alienate the man who performs it; it occurs in highly technocratic societies.
Practical knowledge differs from theoretical knowledge in that it has to deal with many unforeseen circumstances that can destroy the theoretically most perfect plans. A rationalist or idealist believes that a perfect plan will theoretically be carried out to the letter. It's false. The practical reason is a corrected reason, and the one who does not rectify is a stubborn or theoretical one.
The prior criteria before acting are a set of values (culture). They are the truth and the well taken in concrete. A value is a pre-criterion for concrete practical action. A value is the meter that tells us what each thing really means and matters to us. They stand on their own. They are considered good without more. We all act counting already according to predetermined values. They can be very varied. There are 3 sources of values: 1) what is in force in society, 2) what is received in education, 3) what is discovered by personal experience. This set creates a personal and personal table of values that tells us what is important to us. What one is not willing to give up. Not all are equally important: there is a hierarchy. It is important to ask yourself what values you have.Values set feelings in motion (trigger a certain affective reaction). They make us feel fear or anger or passion or tenderness. The more important, the more we feel them. They are not neutral or cold. They are usually embodied or embodied in symbols. (Flags, music, images, photos, ceremonies, colors…). They give rise to models of behavior and life. They are transmitted through live and real models. It can be embodied in a hero or idol. What is important is that the chosen model is worth it.They are transmitted through live and real models. It can be embodied in a hero or idol. What is important is that the chosen model is worth it.They are transmitted through live and real models. It can be embodied in a hero or idol. What is important is that the chosen model is worth it.
He who does not choose anyone as a model chooses himself with poor results. Why we imitate some and not others has to do with education and freedom. Today, very large educational influences have the cinema, TV and social networks. The model that one discovers, identifies and accepts as good is a strong experience. It moves deeply. It is the encounter with the truth of my life. If it constitutes a deep and radical experience, it becomes part of ourselves. Leaves an indelible mark. The deep in man is the permanent. And vice versa. The encounter with those values that embody the truth for me, give me inspiration and from then on, nothing is the same. That truth must be lived; it is not enough to know it. There is a close relationship between truth and freedom. The first gives meaning to the second.The highest sense of artistic creation is the found truth. All human life (accompanied by a great feat or not) has its origin in an inspiring truth. Without coherence or authenticity, the encounter with the truth is weak and does not inspire behavior. Today in the theoretical a plurality of conceptions is admitted and in the practical the empire of taste is rather followed. Truth is authentic when behavior is consistent with it. A civilization is inconsistent when it forgets the value of duties and is primarily interested in science and technology.Today in the theoretical a plurality of conceptions is admitted and in the practical the empire of taste is rather followed. Truth is authentic when behavior is consistent with it. A civilization is inconsistent when it forgets the value of duties and is primarily interested in science and technology.Today in the theoretical a plurality of conceptions is admitted and in the practical the empire of taste is rather followed. Truth is authentic when behavior is consistent with it. A civilization is inconsistent when it forgets the value of duties and is primarily interested in science and technology.
But what is the truth ? (Pontius Pilate already asked). It is not an obvious or calm matter. From different points of view, heroic actions, sacrifices, wars have been carried out, which have caused progress, hunger or misery. The truth is only incorporated into man if he freely accepts it. You can reject it. The importance is enormous. Not letting the truth be told is the worst of intolerances, especially when it is done in a “tolerant” way. "What I say is true because I say it." The one who lies claims false creative powers.
6.- Freedom
It goes through all the acts. Especially those who are born of the will. Freedom has three moments: Desire, Deliberation and Choice. 5 uses of the will or five ways of wanting: 1) Desire, 2) Choosing: to approve or reject, 3) Dominion or Power, 4) Creative Will: to create, 5) The most human: To love. Freedom allows to acquire the greatest greatness or the greatest degradation.
- Constitutive freedom. The deepest. The spirit that possesses itself. No captivity, prison or punishment is capable of suppressing it. It is inner freedom. It is not the absence of barriers. That is a fantasy that leads to uprooting and total disorientation. A priori man has a body, birth, history, education (passive synthesis). It is impossible to start from scratch. Freedom of choice. Inclination in a certain sense starting from passive synthesis. Choose freely according to certain values. Freedom is the proper management of desire. Repeated choices provoke habits, which make men better or worse.Development and growth of freedom.- Improvement with habits. Strengthening. Virtue. Positive return on freedom. Training for the arduous and the valuable.The acts at the beginning are totally free. But acquired the habit they are not so much. Therefore, freedom grows or decreases depending on how it is used. The more force, the more freedom. The realization of freedom is the set of decisions that design life itself. Living is exercising the ability to forge projects; whatever one does, one improves or becomes impoverished. Man deserves to aspire to great things. One has to realize his own ideals. A freely decided own life project gives authenticity and meaning to life. Social freedom understood as liberation from misery and lack of economic, legal, cultural, political, moral or religious assets. Freedom means education in the first place. Having the opportunity to carry out their own projects to give the best of themselves. It is necessary to fight against misery,establish justice and equality. Everyone; especially politicians and businessmen.
The use of freedom and action modify the situation. Here it is necessary to refer to authority and responsibility. Authority over freedom is authoritarianism. The authoritarian cannot run the risk of people being free because they would act badly. It is better to avoid, according to him, that they could be wrong. From despotic tyranny to paternalism, they all fear freedom and seize power to prevent men from being evil. The most feared authoritarianism today is fundamentalism (which separates faith from reason).
Freedom, authority and responsibility are necessary. The three. Freedom is the architect of creativity, initiative and a climate of trust, making it the engine of history, the economy, politics, science and society as a whole.
Only an individual or a free people can progress. If there is no freedom, everything stops, the search for truth declines, initiative and responsibility disappear and new forms of misery ensue. Precisely, true authority is based on giving freedom to ensure progress. Authoritarianism is easier than authority since the latter requires dialogue. Exercising authority is a difficult learning because you must convince yourself and have confidence first in yourself and then in others. Trust enhances people's creativity, performance and motivation.
7.- Happiness and the Meaning of Life
The achieved life demands the fullness of development; the harmony of the soul. Happiness first affects the future. Man is a being open to the future ("futuristic" said Julián Marías). Sometimes expectation is almost worth more than fulfillment. Happiness is not a matter of pleasure, nor a state, nor a habit, but a condition of the person himself. It is born from the internal conformity between what you want and what you live. It is required not to have life in hollow. Life is a task. It is hope. They are expectations. Know what the truly important values are. You are a person when you have theoretical knowledge and practical ability to answer three questions: Who am I? Because I am here ? What should I do ?
The famous "Carpe diem!" means: seize the moment, enjoy the day. It is a commitment to the present. The future doesn't matter; It will bring me complications, work, old age, scarcity. I must enjoy as much as I can now. Dumped in the present looking for instant gratification. Commitment, which means linking the future in some way, is a complication and is not accepted. This is an incomplete approach to life. It is the logic of the immature, irresponsible, selfish and not very supportive. According to that logic
Is it worth being fair? No, because when you try to be one, you lose; not taking advantage of your neighbor is naive. The law of the fittest is established, which is a degenerate and pernicious approach.
8.- Relationships. Work Groups and Social Life
Ideas are goods that can be shared (the material can only be shared). Sharing spiritual goods, far from diminishing, increases (knowledge, responsibility, commitment, joy, etc.). Sharing is a sign of the presence of spirit; spiritualizes. Unlike dividing, it easily creates division. The best way to share is love: It is the sum of affects (feelings) and effects (will). Love unites. It is unitive force. You have to take care of it and make it grow. It is all the more durable the further away it is from interest and utility. In life there is as much happiness as there is love.
To understand the human, it is essential to understand the social. "He who cannot live in community or is a beast or a god." It involves moving from Individualism to the Team. Social life and therefore economic, cultural and political life have a lot to do with ethics.
Institutions develop humanely when there is leadership. In the leader, commanding and obeying are alternative. Both of them demand to put into operation their own intelligence and will to issue or execute the order. Furthermore, to obey is to command the entrusted task. The command-obedience relationship is two-way. Communication unites men. It demands mutual responsibility; from one to another. This is what guarantees initiative and effectiveness. Leadership is based on dialogue, intelligence, communication, persuasion, participation, decentralization, autonomy, trust, responsibility and initiative. It is the most effective model of authority.
A society without organization cannot advance or improve if people cannot make tasks their own. Then strength appears as a measure of relationship and the culture of fear. The wills are confronted and the authority bases its power not on the reason but on the coercion (although not by force it always has to be unjust). Initiative and creativity disappear. This prolonged situation leads to disastrous economic results. Therefore, the reasons must be shared. That the other obeys based on the same reasons as the one who commands. Communication is to have in common. Sharing is a sign of the presence of spirit. Without communication, an organization is a pure impersonal system, mostrenco, like a machine. Communicating is not transmitting information; is to have in common.Every individual reaches his fullness when he integrates and participates in society or in the organization. An organization that works well takes time to achieve, because combining intelligence and will is a slow task. Men of exemplary character and clear ideas are usually required in this regard. Moral values can only be taught when shared (a common task is done). One is required to pass on to the next generation the traditional deposit received, increased by their own contribution.Moral values can only be taught when shared (a common task is done). One is required to pass on to the next generation the traditional deposit received, increased by their own contribution.Moral values can only be taught when shared (a common task is done). One is required to pass on to the next generation the traditional deposit received, increased by their own contribution.
Individualism is one of the modern pathologies of freedom. It is selfishness, which is an exaggerated and passionate appreciation of oneself. It is an attitude and a feeling that induces each professional to isolate himself from his peers and stay apart with his family and friends. He forms a small society at his service and abandons the great society to his fate. He considers himself self-sufficient and does not need others. Each one has to do for himself, alone. You easily slip into selfishness without feeling any regrets. He relates to others through agreements and contracts freely assumed and rescinded by one or the other.
In individualism, every relationship is contractual (including marriage) and is only in effect for the duration of the covenant. It accentuates ruthless capitalism and a bourgeois mind. It ignores the long-term consequences of the options taken. Weaken the organization. The links between people are not natural but are born of fear or convenience and are a cut to freedom, which is poorly understood as "absence of external impediments". He trusts that a social harmony will be produced by itself, impossible thing, since the human things can go well or bad, but they are never mechanical. Social harmony is not spontaneous. It forgets the inequalities in human situations that require cooperation and solidarity. The individualist says "that's your problem."He cooperates only as far as his own interest tells him that he compensates for doing so so as not to be harmed. In the long run he undoes the common because he doesn't believe in it. (In collectivism everything is common, even what cannot be shared, such as property).
Organizations and companies of different types, in their positive aspect, have brought about an extraordinary advance in science, technology, an enormous increase in well-being, a decrease in misery, advanced communication and production systems, and have created possibilities for much larger development than in the past.
On the negative side, they have created a deeply depersonalized society, an anonymous system made up of anonymous subsystems, in which the individual is not recognized as a singular and concrete person. Thus society does the individual and not the other way around as it should. The person thus becomes a mere function of the system. The important thing is that the task is done and not who does it, who is nobody. It is an excessive functionalism with little margin for personal freedom. You are someone to the extent that you have a role and you are only what that role imposes on you, as a bus driver.
In individualism it is also manifested by the autonomous force of systems. Today's sophistication and high technology overwhelmingly increases complexity, thereby increasing bureaucracy, and the formula to simplify the system and make it manageable is made impossible, giving rise to absurd experiences. It becomes more and more precise to endow it with human sense so that it works. But valuable people are far from the centers of power and communication becomes almost impossible. If the subordinate has the opportunity to make his voice heard, what he wants then, in reaction, is to impose his quota of power. The fight of the kingdoms of Taifa occurs. All this anonymity and depersonalization completely dilutes responsibility and people are content to have reduced freedom in the private sphere.All this basically produces a great weakening of the organizations.
In an individualistic society that prevents teamwork, values and ideals are replaced by the consumption and desire for material goods, becoming a very materialistic society, without convictions and, consequently, brutal and violent. He is much less happy than he would like. Because the happiest is not the one with the greatest power or wealth, but the one who does the noblest task.
9.- Violence, Law and Law
Man's law is the measure of reason about himself and others. When it is dispensed with, it becomes violent, irrational, and makes itself bad to a degree hardly suspect. Violence and brute force is non - reason. Before it one can only defend or cry. Many times, both.
Human energy and aggressiveness if it is not made rational becomes violent. The reason is as radical as biology. He who does harm misuses reason. Violence is a frustrated communication. All aggressive behavior must be interpreted as poorly conducted dialogue. The violent person is manifesting a deficit of affection that perhaps he is trying to remedy. Contemporary social structures easily provoke it by prevailing interest over love, friendship or justice. It is not uncommon in our environment that many think that the natural state of man is one of war against everyone. This is what the competitive spirit, the desire for victory and individualism lead to. Without courage and strength, necessary attitudes, one is weak by default and does not want to face danger and evil.Every human right is born from the dignity of the individual and concrete person, and is prior to the dictated laws. However, in today's society unfortunately this is not the case, and morality goes one way and is left as a matter of personal conscience.
The perverse conclusion is that this obliges to establish as a criterion of justice the simple current legality, forgetting that governing rational beings requires doing so from reason. Justice must be something in the service of reason, not of legislation. Ethics is knowing how to behave in the face of the changing circumstances of life.
One of the serious consequences is the perversion of authority, because few things are as high as having the freedom of others. Authority no one has it by birth. It is not natural but acquired. No one can appropriate it. In fact she has it because others give it to her. The freedom of another is a good superior to any that a man can obtain for himself. Exercising authority is not natural, it has something supernatural. It is adding a second life to your own. Authority is dominion over free men. Whoever insists that there is only one possible way of doing things well, is usually an enemy of the freedom of others, since in human action there is a plurality of good means to achieve a good end. An ideology only admits a certain means as valid to achieve an end.
In the exercise of authority, it is key that the subordinate endorses the mandate. By making it his, he modifies it and surely will improve it, and in his dialogue with the authority he improves it again. Thus the initial order is perfected and incorporated into the command to which it obeys. This is so if the relationship between the two is presided over by intelligence.
It requires trust, since wanting to check everything is impossible and leads to madness. The perspective to understand the extraordinary depth and scope that authority has to exercise, which Plato has already discussed, demands essential requirements for personal excellence.
10.- Culture
Paideia, education. Cultured man or cultivated man is the one who orders intelligence. It causes internalization and enrichment through learning. Learn and possess what you have learned. To have been educated, to have knowledge, inner wealth, an intimate world. The origin of culture is the creative, discursive and affective nucleus of each person. This crop is first inward and later outward. It requires discovery of interiority and its cultivation. To have a cultivated spirit is to know how to read human works and discover in them the hidden wealth of the ignorant. Whoever knows a lot about the subject is the one who best "reads" a sculpture, a painting, listens to a score, etc., culture is deposited in external works and when man understands it, he makes it his own and incorporates it. The external manifestation and expression of an interiority is culture.It comprises a very broad set of manifestations. Knowing how to speak, welcoming, and having courteous gestures is culture.
Bad education is uncultivated. It always supposes a matter to which a form is added that it did not have before and that transmits a message or a meaning. It is the ability to clothe the material, clothed with a meaning from an inner world. In order to internalize, silence and a certain solitude are always necessary, accompanied by study, reflection, contemplation, or some kind of internal dialogue. Shaping things increases the natural world and originates the creation of an expressive work of human interiority. It is a continuation of nature that indicates what is the spirit of man.
It has a symbolic function. The cultural work remits beyond itself. Cultures are as varied as freedom. Each man, each town, each organization prints his own stamp, his style, his personality, his time on his works. Therefore, culture is variable and historical. Its dimensions are:
a) Expressive and communicative dimension of culture: To understand culture, it is necessary not to separate it from its author, since it expresses and communicates its own inner world. The spirit that gives birth to it (the cultural work) is identical to that of the one who made it. Every cultural work is the expression of the truth seen subjectively by its author. If it is not ours, it will carry a somewhat enigmatic truth, difficult for us to understand. It will take time and effort and we will not succeed.
An expressive action is the gesture and behavior representative of the inner will and feeling. Spoken language is another important form of cultural manifestation. Also customs and rituals have symbolic value.
b) Productive dimension: Matter is shaped. Materializing the spirit or spiritualizing matter leaves an imprint and an added form that goes beyond itself by covering it with meanings and values that it previously lacked on its own. The culture of a people expresses its knowledge, feelings, ideas, values, organization, roles and functions. It involves work and production. But it is not only activity and effort but also culture. The organization, transformation and continuation of the natural environment, in a word, the improvement of the world, is culture. The cultural work is a continuation of the one who performs it. Man likes to create and possess what is created and what he represents. When he does not love work because it is simply fatigue, weariness, effort, merchandise, money or if he does not put anything of himself, there is no cultural growth.When man cannot carry out his work at work, he does not reach his fullness. It is "culturally stopped", and morally it is unacceptable. Working is a right because it is the channel for human development and creativity.
Man does not live just to subsist. He needs to perfect the world in order to perfect himself. The unfolding of creativity and culture assumes that work is the path of human fulfillment. It is essential to transform work into something more than the purely practical or task for their own subsistence. Formerly it was something servile, instrumental and limited to necessity, so the noble tasks were politics, philosophy, religion, culture and war. Work performed freely becomes the central task in the fulfillment of every man. After the long process of liberation from proletarian misery, the second and third purpose of work has become central: the improvement of the world and of man himself.Never before in history has work had such a decisive distributing role in human life.All this presupposes a social organization and a cultural mentality based on free initiative and on the responsibility of people. In a professional who works properly, the technical dimension of morality is not separable. If the latter is removed, no consideration is given to the person, be it a lawyer, nurse, or vendor.
As the set of types of productive actions is portentous (companies, finance, ICT, systems, transport, infrastructure, legislation, health, justice, NGOs, law, institutions), the temptation to explain man as a mere function is understandable. But the key and the decisive thing is always the person.
c) Symbolic dimension: A symbol is an image that evokes or alludes to an absent object, different from itself. Symbol is a meaningful image. (A rampant lion is a symbol of bravery). Aside from its own immediate significance, it suggests a more ideal one that cannot be perfectly embodied. The symbol (a flag) has a meaning because it brings to us a reality that is absent, but in an imperfect way. Imagination works. We use them to express realities that we do not have at the moment. We need symbols to relate to the absent. This is how we materialize the spiritual. Feelings, values, virtues are immaterial realities that can be materialized in symbols. Materializing the spiritual or spiritualizing the material is typical of man. Our behavior constantly unites the sensible and the intellectual with the material.That is creating culture. Magic is something else: how to trust hidden powers or believe that results will be achieved with very little effort.
Art is all human activity that creates beauty. Therefore, all cultural work is art. By a purely scientific treatment of actions and human life, their meaning is not understood. When that analytical rationality (originated in the left cerebral hemisphere) tries to set itself up as a single explanation, it is not understood. Culture is a manifestation and hope for dialogue; entry into a common world of shared goods. Cultural understanding is not only a subjective experience, it is also entering into dialogue with a work and its author, as well as with the values it expresses. Without education it is not possible to understand the artist.
d) Historical dimension. Educating is not only transmitting theoretical knowledge but, above all, models and values that guide practical knowledge and action and help to acquire convictions and ideals. Educating is the function par excellence of all authority. There is no true education without transmission of culture, that is, without teaching and assimilation of gestures, words, customs, works of art, of those who have gone before us.
Educating is helping to cultivate the inner world by assimilating the culture that raises mere force into the world of reason. Educating is transmitting ideals through a friendly relationship. It is a most important interpersonal relationship that requires a certain authority. Being an educator requires training to learn how to help. Educating implies love and dialogue; both at the same time. Educating is an art. And the artist always makes unique pieces. Technique and science repeat. Educating requires personalization; custom work.
11.- Economic Life
Culture precedes economy; this is part of that. There are always more needs than resources. The human being, unlike the rest of the animals, is radically poor. The economic principle of achieving maximum profit with minimum expenditure is essential. Human labor also multiplies resources. Interest and benevolence must be complementary and not exclusive. Instrumentalism is the loss of the natural sense of things; it leads to detecting the means and taking them as ends. The exaggerated economic benefit is a form of instrumentalism that impoverishes people and institutions. In a healthy economy, monetary profit is neither the ultimate end nor the predominant criterion of economic activity.It is one thing to consider wealth as an abundance of money and quite another to consider it as the achievement of an adequate state of well-being to live a life worth living.
When wealth is considered only as an increase in money, there is no well-being or an adequate life, even though there is an abundance of money. The cremation furnace is predatory, applies the law of the fittest, and easily incurs corruption. It is different to be poor than to be miserable; The latter is a slave to the primordial human needs and supposes a state of dehumanization. There is no culture without a certain degree of well-being. Without it, culture, which is a manifestation of the spirit, is impeded. The core of poverty is in the unemployment of human capacities. A poor person is an underused human being, who has not learned to use his intelligent faculties, to work, to express himself, to exercise his rights. He is without opportunities, without well-being. Even if I make a lot of money.
That is why the degree of wealth is not measured so much by the per capita income as the degree of liberation of the creative capacity of the people. Poverty is really uncultivated and a concept apart from money. The information age has given way to the knowledge age that is based on the intelligence and will (reason) of people. A consumerist culture puts excessive force on having material goods and the empire of the senses. One thing is scarcity and another is ignorance. True wealth is in the spirit of man; This is not a spiritual but a crudely economic consideration. The best source of resources is creative intelligence and strong will. The serious cultural error is to believe that well-being or misery are essentially material aspects. The root of the matter is only in the person.
The consumer society's craving for money ruins their spirit. Man can give benevolently while taking care of his own interest. The market (buying and selling) is a truly human activity to the extent that it transcends pure interest, like any human activity carried out intelligently. Money plays a role, but so must other cultural elements such as language, communication, satisfaction, authority, responsibility, service, commitment, kindness, etc., typical of the human capacity to act in rational and benevolent way.The initial sense of benefit was bene-facere (doing good). Today the concept has been impoverished. The benefit is understood in a selfish way and apart from solidarity, passing its social utility to the background. Thus, the good businessman seems to be the one who knows how to assure the profit and has the entrails hard enough to do without the rest when "there is no other choice." The company needs benefits. But if that is the only pattern, there is a distortion when using a single measure to judge problems. Disregarding the welfare of others is unsupportive and ethically objectionable.
Therefore, the desire for wealth can be good or bad depending on how it is understood. If the objective is not the well-being of oneself and others as an end, a great amount of social, human and even economic disharmonies originate. The market cannot be just a buying and selling device. It must be a common participation with the distributable material goods. The market must lead to ethical development based on solidarity and human values.
Today the company tends to be a work system based on responsibility, effectiveness and initiative. It requires 5 things: 1) use of the best technology, 2) high level of professional preparation, 3) internal organization that allows people to give their best, 4) communication system to coordinate, and 5) an effort to maintenance of the previous variables. The biggest enemy of the market is the cheater who wants to enrich himself without working, working sloppily or taking advantage of the situation. The law of the strongest is a thing incompatible with profitability. The company must be a source of economic, cultural, human and ethical wealth. But there are too many ways to make those variables worse. The origin of the economy is free and creative human action. Whoever forgets this sees it only as pure mechanical, impersonal matter,functionalist. Unfortunately real life is often far from ideal.
12.- The City and Politics
The city is characterized by anonymity, overcrowding and haste. Functionality and profitability count more than habitability. The unbridled importance of TV and ICT. No device or computer can truly substitute direct contact with reality and "face to face". When the individual allows himself to be colonized by ICT, he substitutes his real life for the one that comes to him through the screen of whatever type and becomes a simple spectator. If you reduce your genuine activity, you take refuge in an unreal world. Even free and creative leisure is canceled. If today there is only what we see on TV and social networks, the rest is unknown. All ICTs thus become agents of culture, decisive and impoverishing. Disasters and disasters become mere information; something far away that neither affects you nor implies you.Imagination is not necessary; a “clip” is sufficient. The visual information reaches directly, without barriers of protection, to the sensitivity and affectivity and is fixed intensely; It has a sudden impact. Without its own criteria, the fictional reality colonizes the mind and the fictional becomes real and occupies its own life and causes dependency. One ends up not distinguishing the true from the false, the important from the secondary, and indifference to the truth appears. That is exactly the myth of Plato's cave.One ends up not distinguishing the true from the false, the important from the secondary, and indifference to the truth appears. That is exactly the myth of Plato's cave.One ends up not distinguishing the true from the false, the important from the secondary, and indifference to the truth appears. That is exactly the myth of Plato's cave.
They are means and end up becoming ends. Communication is an act of dialogue interpersonal relationship in which something is shared. Rhetoric is the art of presenting the truth convincingly, although today rhetoric is understood as hollow talk. We always beat around the bush with reality. And although our naked reality is brutal, we must accept it and agree with it without rejecting it. Humanize it. Accompany her. The truth, as it is, is weak and needy and must be presented well dressed to appear what it really is (rhetoric). Language moves people, creates states of opinion.Language is power. Create reality. It influences others. Sophistry is the art of making the false plausible. When freedom is understood as doing what one likes, the increase in moral evil is inevitable. Nothing, neither politics, nor economics, nor authority should be separated from ethics.
13.- The Time of Human Life
The man sees his life in advance. He is able to anticipate the future, set future goals and order things in relation to his goals. He is a being open to the future, capable of projecting himself and living his own life according to that project. It's not really that he's capable; it is something that is necessary. The future is a place we are headed for. So there is the hope to grow and be happy. The moment, more than a chronological unit (how long it lasts) is a vital and biographical unit; more than moments, a life with meaning is lived by events, by things that happen to us. Only the primitive or unpromoted animal or man lives "at times". The animal is not in a hurry. Living at times is a pathological way of living. In addition, one always ends up defeated in the fight against time.
A culture that instrumentalizes man takes place when speed affects the natural biorhythms of the body and the psyche. It is an exhausting way of working based on haste and speed forced to be competitive and thus survive. It is about “doing a resume” to demonstrate how much you have done in a short time. This is a current form of alienation that requires doping in order to artificially increase performance capacity and that ends in stress, divorce, exhaustion and taking pain relievers.
Once the truth and dignity of the person and the correct orientation of work are known, the task of reorganizing life and a certain type of moral conduct is imposed. Rest, for example, is necessary; When he sleeps, man trusts his body to stop carrying the burden of his own life.
On leisure and work, it is important to start by saying that you cannot be idle without having worked before. If this order is reversed, dirty work, corruption, and cheating appear. First is the serious; then playful. And both are accurate, but in that order. The classical sense of leisure meant detaching oneself from necessity and interest in order to rise freely and creatively to the territory of beauty, festivity and art, and to find human fulfillment there. Today it means "disengagement", "free time", "fun" and "entertainment". The proper attitude towards leisure is not idle or lazy, but contemplation to reflect and learn with silence and observation; put an ear attentive to the being of things. It also implies an increase in culture by originating enrichment of the spirit and cultivation of interiority. Leisure was the classic concept of the "liberal arts" as opposed to the "servile arts" that only sought utility. The ideal is to live work as a game. But when culture is oppressive at work, at leisure all you want is an "escape."
The real leisure is reading good books, recreating yourself in works of art, cultivating philosophy somewhat. Listening and reading music, realizing the feelings it arouses,… In a word, dealing with the marvelous, with the worthy of admiration, with the non-immediate, with the ultimate meaning of things, with the great truths. Philosophy, "love of wisdom", was once the most "idle" activity. When the end of leisure is fun, we fall into a non-authentic form of existence, in which we flee from boredom and from ourselves because we are empty: we seek fun to dispel boredom. Whoever is not interested in anything or anyone logically gets bored and needs to have fun, and is forced to look outside for what is not inside.
External activism or absence of interiority is triviality, superficiality, inconsequence, living installed on the surface of life. It does not manifest anything intimate; it is mask and appearance; inability to dialogue, to make themselves known, because there is nothing to make known. Inside there is an emptiness, frivolity and life in hollow. He lives not on reasons but on whims. It gives importance to what it does not have and does not give it to what it has. The possibility of compromise disappears. It's a Carpe diem !! poor. He is a spectator always looking for a spectacle, unable to truly communicate with others. Since life is poorly integrated, fun is a numbing remedy and ends up looking for the new, amazing and then the abnormal. Even absurd risk can be a bungee jump. The balance of all this is the loss of happiness,discomfort and lack of meaning. Education is the domestication and discipline of the lower passions of the soul… but forming and informing them in an artistic way. Educating is not lecturing or repressing but providing a natural continuity between what one feels and what one can and should become.
Dyonisos was the pagan god of the sap of life, the flow of blood, excitement, the mystery of sex and nature: the god of ecstasy. Well, hard rock music and mechanics is a Dionysian religion to uncover irrational sources through strong sensory stimulation, which creates an euphoric environment that causes hallucinations and very different types of drunkenness.
14.- Pain. The Limits of Man
The temptation is great to affirm that "all life is pain" (Job) since in the long run failure is insurmountable. However, life has meaning and suffering also. Pain does not have the last word. Our message is optimistic. Pain exists because we are living and is something intrinsic to beings composed of living matter. If we were to exclude suffering it would be necessary to suppress life itself. Faced with the various species of suffering: sadness, anguish, anxiety, anguish, fear, despair, etc., the logical reaction is to flee. Health is not only a condition of the body, but of the whole person; Health implies being free also from moral ills. We are in a culture where suffering has a bad press. Today pain is a dis- courage.There seems to be no reason to endure it but technical means to combat it. It is a culture that does not want to see it: it covers it, ignores it, hides it, trivializes it, wants to replace it with pleasure. Suffering is something that should not happen; and whoever suffers it becomes a victim.
The reality is that whoever overcomes pain rises higher (rises above himself). He turns the painful fact into a task: to reorganize his own life, counting on that dramatic truth. The disease is given as a task, before which one has the responsibility to see what he does with it. It is the test bed of human existence. For a fragile man, it doesn't make sense and it crumbles him; it makes the strong stronger. One is not free to reject imposed suffering, but one is free to adopt a positive or negative attitude towards it. In fact, acceptance means internalization, growth and maturation. Education. It makes you better distinguish between what is truly important and what is not. It purifies you. Relativizes the importance of satisfactions that he believed cannot be waived.We stop the nonsense and focus on the truly serious. Pain elevates man above himself and teaches him to distance himself from his desire.
The person who has suffered and assumed suffering has a more real and deeper awareness of himself and his surroundings and is vaccinated against folly. She is more in control of herself. Suffering to make sense cannot be an end in itself but must go beyond it. It must be transcended. Becoming a sacrifice. Only love can make sense of it. But that depends on the own meaning that we give to life. "When man has a reason to live, he endures any how" (Nietzsche). Triumph understood as social recognition puts the individual in danger of relying too much on his own strength and away from reality. It must be balanced by senseless failures. By the way, those who love a lot suffer a lot; pain transforms it into an act of donation. When man acts, failure is inevitable.And failure is painful. Life is risky. Courage and strength are necessary to take the risk and face it, dominating it. The obsession with security, which is an intimate distress, is only weakness. Success and failure mature us. They are something very relative and being free before them presupposes the previous acceptance of oneself, of the situation that he has had to live and that of the task that he must carry out. It is liberating to laugh at your own success, failure, and even at yourself. One must dare to be who he is even if he must suffer for it. In short: coherence, freedom and maturity allow one to overcome his pain and be worthy of his suffering.it's just weakness. Success and failure mature us. They are something very relative and being free before them presupposes the previous acceptance of oneself, of the situation that he has had to live and that of the task that he must carry out. It is liberating to laugh at your own success, failure, and even at yourself. One must dare to be who he is even if he must suffer for it. In short: coherence, freedom and maturity allow one to overcome his pain and be worthy of his suffering.it's just weakness. Success and failure mature us. They are something very relative and being free before them presupposes the previous acceptance of oneself, of the situation that he has had to live and that of the task that he must carry out. It is liberating to laugh at your own success, failure, and even at yourself. One must dare to be who he is even if he must suffer for it. In short: coherence, freedom and maturity allow one to overcome his pain and be worthy of his suffering.freedom and maturity allow one to overcome his pain and be worthy of his suffering.freedom and maturity allow one to overcome his pain and be worthy of his suffering.
For a materialist only what is useful is true. Man is just someone who works; it produces. A success harvester who moves only out of interest. It has no inner spiritual core. It lacks precisely what is humanly distinctive. Therefore, materialism is brutal with the weak or the abandoned of fortune. They are a hindrance and it is better that they stop being it or disappear. Here rationality has been lost. Faced with suffering, the only thing that occurs to the materialist is to apply the techniques so that it disappears, avoid it or prevent it. Accepting it or giving it meaning is meaningless to him. Man is responsible for most of the suffering that exists in the world and it is his task and responsibility to diminish it. In fact, the integral man treats all things in the world with benevolence and care;they are living beings or not. In acting, he respects everything as if it were an end; not a means. But above all, who deserves care as something irreplaceable is the human person for being worthy in itself. To care, you need to understand. That is only possible when you love. These are the only remedies and, by the way, they are radical. Nothing removes fear of someone more than the company of another. When the boss-collaborator relationship becomes depersonalized, the attending Client is faced with a complex organization, staffed by an anonymous and ever-changing crowd of professionals who simply fulfill their role and for whom the Client is a stranger. In the hospital institution, the doctor-patient relationship is especially important. These meetings must always be personal. If not, the individual as a person is lost sight of.Moral evil does not always hurt. The human being is capable of feeling satisfied with himself even if he is a perfect scoundrel. Many times we are not aware of the moral evil that we commit.
15.- Destiny and Religion
Humanity finds in religion a reliable and comforting answer to the question of fate and death. Intelligence is characterized by its inability to understand life. When something happens in relation to death near ourselves, we resist believing it; the logical and the psychological (intelligence and heart) work against each other. There is in man a spiritual nucleus that is not destroyed by death, but survives beyond. This is easy to prove philosophically or rationally, without relying on a religious belief to be taken for granted. Many of the notes that define the person and that are essential, have a spiritual, immaterial character. The very ability to know the truth is strictly spiritual.
The natural and proper thing of man is to reach his end, which is to perfect his intelligence and will to the maximum. They are truth (for reason) and good (for will). Therefore, the natural thing in man is to achieve truth and good. The disappearance of religious values from the public scene tends to weaken the moral values of a society. The claim of a secular morality has turned out to be a mirage, because it cuts the roots from which the tree of moral sense springs. Where morality is thrown into the private realm, the strength is lacking to create a community and hold it together. God has said to each stone, tree, bird and especially each person: "It is good that you exist and be what you are !!".
