Buenos Aires, April, 2012.

First Part: Our Situation.

My incursion in history has the same essential purpose as the rest of my work: to integrate and expand awareness. Far from the fruitless task of memorizing past events, this consists in rescuing the example given by individuals and peoples that knew how to carry out this task.

It is true that for about 150 years men have known how to change their circumstances. However, these are immediate and practical, in the sense that they only cover basic needs.

The other needs and circumstances -that is mediate and spiritual- have not changed. Men find themselves and must find infinite space and time, within which they must resolve what to do considering their tiny size and extremely brief life span. Death has haunted them ever since they have become aware of its existence and, after death, the panorama appears to be so uncertain as what lies beyond space and time.

As far as this is concerned, we are just like we were at the dawn of homo sapiens. Ever since, each one of us must give shape to their own awareness according to those boundaries, a kind of magic circle that separates them from the Transcendent, about which men must also form an idea.

The logical thing for human beings to do today would be to have a clearer idea of these mediate circumstances and that their spiritual needs should be better solved. But this is not the case. Men have done nothing else than to confirm the infinity of space and they have proved the inexorable passage of time. This has produced desperation, anxiousness and even nausea in some thinkers.

After having deviated the natural course of Western history, the religion that became imposed in the Western World has not succeeded in filling that void, in responding spiritual needs.

Philosophy itself has lost its North and wanders around the undergrowth of fruitless reasoning. One of my aims is to get philosophy back on the track of life and life on the track of philosophy. In my first book, which I wrote about twenty years ago, I already enticed men to Return to the Sources.

Skepticism has invaded well-cultured people in general, who have ended up deserting and turning their interest towards immediate needs. This has led to an unquestionable material progress but I would not say a spiritual backward movement, as this would mean to return, like in the Reformation, to obsolete schemes. Nevertheless, it has caused men to become detached, alienated from spiritual reality. Alienated because this reality continues to be part of their own awareness.

Therefore, I have defined materialism as the result of an alienation process.

Skepticism with regard to a transcendent reality, in unitive factors that provide unity and coherence to Nature and sense to life, has made men withdraw into themselves and become secluded in their own individuality.

Socialism emerged as an answer to individualism. Though founded on very deficient doctrines from the philosophical, historical and psychological points of view, it has helped reestablish social awareness, at least in Europe. This social awareness, another great Hellenic discovery, which is a necessary stage in the civilization process, has not awakened in the Latin American peoples yet. The chronic disarticulation of these countries may be attributed to this fact.

Nevertheless, western men still remain far from overcoming their individual or egocentric perspective. And it is from this point of view that they have decided to transform Nature in the name of a so-called ‘indefinite progress’, without defining the destiny of this enterprise and without taking into consideration the damage this may cause. In this case, the end justifies the means but the end is unknown. This is progress for the sake of progress, which represents a never-ending series of means.

It is within this process that modern life unfolds and men have expanded their power but not their conscience. Thus, the human ant nest has grown and men have been trapped in it. It is becoming more and more unusual for men to stick out their heads from the ant nest in order to behold and reflect upon the infinite or the transcendent.

I will not stop to make a point on this matter, which would lead us to metaphysical reflections. I have dealt with them more thoroughly in my treaties. I consider it more appropriate, due to the place where I am standing, to say some words about culture and education.

Second part: Culture and Education.

Considering the above-mentioned, the matter may be summarized as follows: Is education aimed at expanding our awareness or at restricting ourselves to that domestic reality that secludes us more and more in our specialty to bury ourselves progressively in the human ant nest, to perpetuate the primitive stage of survival?

It is true that at present we have an unprecedented information scope, as evidenced precisely by this fair. However, it is also true that today more than ever we must develop a certain selective criteria that will be determined by our aims. If we have lost track of our aims, where shall we begin? How shall we make a selection?

The topics upon which we must make our reflections as regards what is decisive in life are not many.

Men’s awareness is not exalted by the amount of knowledge but by the quality of their understanding.

History of philosophy itself has always gravitated on the same essential topics. For such reason, I believe that philosophy, when well-guided, may be a significant contribution in these days of chaos and confusion.

If we use the Philosophy of History, for instance (see The Spirit in History), we will discover periods of zenith and decline whose characteristics may teach us valuable concepts.

We discover in them a kind of confrontation between the freedom of the individual and culture, a problem that becomes worse in times of decline, like nowadays. In declining times, personal freedom prevails disregarding culture. Ascending times, on the other hand, imply culture itself as one of the most efficient paths towards freedom.

In the first case, freedom is selfish, whimsical, anarchic and, accordingly, chaotic. In the second case, culture is understood as the highest expression of a civilization.

The key for this matter of education had been given by Schiller in a letter to the Duke of Weimar: “Give the people what they need, not what they want”.

And this is not what is happening. We are witnessing what I have come to call a process of inversion of culture, by means of which culture stops playing its role and becomes adapted to popular taste and values, which distorts its very essence, thus creating a popular pseudo-culture.

This process is not generated only by the masses, for these, as stated by Ortega, are not creative. On the contrary, it is encouraged by merchants and opportunists that have access to the culture mass media. This never happened in the days of Schiller.

As the spirit decays and culture is dragged, the decline process is already happening. And it is established when the well-cultured people yield and become adapted to the taste of the masses. This is happening today with pop music (which stands for popular music). This sign of decline had already been noticed by Toynbee.

The education problem becomes more serious in times of decline like today. The confrontation takes place between the freedom of the individual and culture. In declining times, personal freedom prevails disregarding culture. During ascending times, culture itself is understood as the most efficient path to freedom.

In this case, it is not a selfish, whimsical, anarchic and, consequently, chaotic kind of freedom, but it goes in search of the best and grandest human expression through culture understood in a broad sense.

This does not mean that men want to generate chaos during times of decline. It means that they lose sight of the superior instances. It is as if the spirits abandoned men and left them on the ground without any chances to fly. Then, it is applied to worldly things with a naïve naturalness, as they do not decide this as the result of an election but an alienation.

Thus, the matters of the spirit are excluded, neglected in social life and education itself, thrown into oblivion. Education is then reduced to the practical aspects of life. Each one cares for their own immediate needs, secluded in their specialty. Politics and economics, in the best scenario, are aimed at producing more means and culture is also understood in a restricted sense, as a practical means, for instance, as livelihood.

What we observe to be common to all these chores is the lack of aims, of mediate objectives.

Cloistered in our own individual perspective, we are waiting for appliances to give us a broader dimension of things while we, in our essence, remain the same. Appliances are also means that once they are aimed at survival can not only forge war but also become serious threats for all living beings.

Our proposal is a change intrinsic to men through a kind of awareness that will generate a higher perspective that may open a broader horizon for us. Becoming aware would show us the need to renovate the poor values that motivate us today, that promise a kind of happiness that may be bought and that fades away as a mirage once and again. It is essential to wake up in order to escape this domestic nightmare.

Culture must be sustained by glorifying values. Our chores must be ruled by high paradigms.

Throughout history we have found individuals and societies that have lived in accordance to these paradigms. We can learn from them and accordingly assume our own responsibility, for we are making history in the present.

Every aware and responsible person must cooperate with the project of helping men reach their zenith, their universal dimension.

Epilogue.

Beyond what the philosopher of history may say about cultural processes in general, is what is usually not mentioned but lies beneath all actions carried out by men and also determines them: their eternal vices, greed, jealousy, envy, etc., which constantly frustrate every civilizing attempt. As long as we drag those vices around, it will be very difficult to manage understanding among men and the yearned intrinsic change that would let mankind leap into a superior stage would be postponed.