Educate to be ótrico Beings who live a life integrated with their strengths

Abstract

Julio César Arboleda¹
direccion@redipe.org

You educate to Be. Education takes on meaning when its processes are articulated to form the potentials that allow “Being”, to cultivate intertwined life of humans and non-humans, of the other and the other. The carnal being that education must form to lead the care of the vital complex is the “otrico”. The muscle that someone must gain to be ótrico is the “interonomy”.

1. Education for Being

One is educated to Be. To learn to dwell in the socio-natural territory of life, that body endowed with the human other and the non-human other. To be is to act life, to welcome the vulnerable, the other, and the other. You are what you work for.

Who is the vulnerable other and the other? The other human is vulnerable, my fellow human being different from me. He is vulnerable because he is in need. All human beings are needy. Humanity is of the stature of its inhabitants: it rises the more we connect, when we care for each other, when we grow as human beings when we mature to assume the conflict inherent in life, in human relationships, in relationships between different people.

Each human being is singular, and is absolutely “other”. To live together is to live among different people, to exist by living, growing, gaining Being

in difference. Knowing how to live together requires understanding and comprehending the other as different, as a being with its subjectivity, its interests, desires, ideas, knowledge and nonknowledge, tragedies, ghosts, inheritances, burdens, and putting its comprehensions into the work of life, in a welcoming way, in a way of cultivating human life; in an edifying way. He is more human, gains humanity and weaves human life in the bosom of differences.

Whoever learns to coexist, to conquer the Self is as needy, as vulnerable as the oppressor, the victimizer, the toxic, the egoist. The oppressor is needy because he is vulnerable to his ego, to his desire for selfhood, to be introjected by the other; he embodies the tragedy of seeking the other only to maintain himself, to become self-absorbed. He refuses to be - the - other, he gives himself to the task of seducing and adding the other, not to the ethical, human responsibility of respecting the other as other, as different, of taking charge of the other, of being the other. It eternalizes itself in the non-being, it enthrones itself in the self. When it notices that its parasitic calculation, its spell, fails, it deepens its aggression on the other, imposes internalization, its regime of egotism. It inhibits the misfortune in the self, spreading it to the other.

The human also needs the non-human other, nature, things. After all, life, as a primordial ontological value, is socio-natural, it is human and non-human, never in-human, never against nature. Non-human life needs the human, and reciprocally. The body of life needs one and the other, it is - one - and - the other. It is a socionatural life.

2. Be ótrico

Being ótrico is weaving socio-natural life, welcoming the other and the other; to be a welcoming subjectivity. To be the other and the other. Vulnerating humanity and nature is an expression of non-being. Being is gained in the otherness, in the desirable experience of that heteronomy that makes us responsible for the cultivation of intertwined life, for the care of the body of life, being a vital body. In this way, it is genuinely humans who protects the common home.

We are what we do and act, more than what we think and say. We can think and say beautiful things, develop profound reasoning, reflective, critical, and generative thinking, weave discursive figures on the consciousness of being, and nevertheless, live against the grain of Being, inhabiting attachment, the disaffections of the ego, the world of the “same”, the enclosure of the self, the forgetfulness of the -other -and -of- the -other.

We are the decanting of our existence, and a good part of us is inhabited by the erosive ego of the exterior sameness (not only interior), that totality that rules the world, that ontology and religion, that incendiary force that defines what is and must be, and expands before us many of its practices, beliefs, myths, reasons, ghosts and perversities that in turn we extend over our social and socio-natural relations, reproducing the egotheoretical-onto-economic reason that gnaws at life.

The Being inhabits the territory in which we are or are being edification, work of life; in which we gain the inter-nomous, ótricos “power” that makes us less dependent on the totalitarian machine, and which cannot be passed without comprehensive corpulence and without an ethical attitude to live life with it, that is, not without edifying understanding.

3. The being of understanding

Understanding is strengthened when we manage to situate and experience with reflective armor and ethical responsibility the phenomena and entities we seek to clarify, our cognitive, socio-affective, volitional, operative, and other scaffoldings, as well as the perceptions with which we capture one and others; in such a way that the lights become less and less dim, and understanding manifests its being: to inhabit knowing and knowledge, as well as doing and Being.

On the margins of understanding, Being is distant from us, we continue to be receptacles -- even with little or much information and knowledge, knowledge and operative pillar -- of substances that are not definitive to pilot our vulnerability.

The being-understanding that clears the way for us to inhabit Being, life, manifests itself when the subject succeeds in working life in the course of its performances of understanding. Against the current of such a work, understanding would continue to affirm the in-comprehensive subject, without light, or with a lens, perception, or cloudy light, who understands and intuits without building, feels without thinking, thinks without feeling, with disheartened reason, a mode in which knowledge, science, and technology tend to be, a characteristic feature of the hegemonic powers that place these and other powers at their mercy.

In-comprehension distances us from Being. It imposes us to see with the eyes of ideology, through which the abusive power appropriates, blurs our perception; that lens that opaque, replaces or limits the look, that abandons us to look without seeing, to see looking at what the own and external ego, the beliefs, the imaginary are determined to show in reason that we continue being “same”, entity without light, selfabsorbed, aggregated. Me.

4. We are what we do, what we build

We are, more than what we know, understand, and comprehend, what we do with these scopes. We are usually incomprehension: some erosive, others pusillanimous or indifferent. Getting out of misunderstandings, opting for the direction of interonomics, is a bet on Being, which demands senti-thought, experiences based on care, understandings and intuitions that sow life.

It is a matter, then, of educating in the ótrico attitude, if we wish, in the power to act, rather than to do -with-what-we-know or -are-. To provide environments to operate life with our cognitive, comprehensive, affective, volitional, axiological, and operative tools, among others. To build to Be. To be the body of life.

The significance of education results from the work of life, of teaching - educating, of guiding and accompanying the development of formations and their location in the path by which one vibrates in existence. It is not only about gaining the potential to know, to know, to do with what one knows, to develop values and substantive attitudes to exercise in existence the abilities and capacities demanded by the technical and professional competence of the world in which we live. It is a matter of channeling these strengths along the path in which they derive as props for Being, generating education consonant with the radical purpose of education, which is not to prepare for work and productivity demanded by the market world, but to educate for the orb of life, and strengthen the endowments that make work and productivity “goods” by and for life, if it is considered, dwellings. Cultivation of the Self.

The Being manifests itself in presence, in the search/finding of the inner being that imposes us to be conscious and to act in conscience. The Self is revealed in the course of our actions for and through socio-natural life.

The actions exempt from consciousness, the actions that neglect or erode life, constitute obstacles in the face of Being, they distance us from the possibility of finding the Being within us. The challenge for Being is to make life by working, to build with the baggage, with what one knows, knows, does, thinks, feels or understands.

The work that builds is that which responds to the demands of the vital complex: to dis-inhabit selfhood and weave a life, to cultivate integrated existence, Being, that is to welcome, to take care of the other and the other, of the entities that constitute the socio-natural complex: to be ethical.

To be ótricos is a way of being, of being, of (re) constituting oneself, of Being. A way of assuming our pluriversity, that is, the biological, genetic, environmental, and cultural complex of universes, natures, and cosmovisions that, among others, inhabit us and that we inhabit.

5. We Are Singular Beings, Unique Within the Pluriverse

We are singular beings, unique in pluriversity. Another matter is whether or not we lack the (autonomous) force that prevents us from despising or being reduced to one or another of these constituents of each one of us and socionatural life, and that allows us to defy monolithism, to disaggregate ourselves, be ótrico singular.

The sad thing is that someone carries in his roots the diversity of America, Europe, or Africa, and has, as an example, a westernized, totalized, or radically decolonized way of existing, by which he squanders existence, does not feed on the best of each territoriality to inhabit the body of life; or that the West imposes on other latitudes its power, its subjectivities, its interests to reproduce itself as selfhood. It is gloomy an existence populated by ego and selfhood, obscured, without the clarity that allows us to lead our split as singular beings.

We are atomized beings. Although the self constitutes me, the ego is a “counter-wound”, a powerful image of me, which overlaps and forms part of me, configuring a self-absorbed force, that uses the other for its ends, contrary to the minimums of interconnected life; capable of piloting my life and abandoning me to the ungovernability of myself.

Even if we were to succeed in some part in tempering the ego, in stopping its instrumentalization of the other for its own reaffirmation, it would not be enough to gain Being, for Being is acting consciousness, presentiality: gain of otherness and otherness, of responsible attitude towards the human other and the non-human other; it is, likewise, defeat of isolationism, narcissism, ego, satisfactory loss of selfhood, of totality, of self, of individuality, but not of singularity, of what makes me radically different even in the midst of multiculturality, better pluriversity inherent to each one.

To Be, ethically I must inhabit (be) the human other and the non-human other of integrated life, to be the territory of detachment, of renunciation of the self, to be a socio-natural body-tissuebeing. Although I am not my ego, it can dominate me, and affect the ethical process of Being, which needs to care for and cultivate the vital complex. As we know, the ego is the imaginary self, an idealized image of myself, internalized in the self; it is not the real self, which, although its aspiration is not to merge and merge with the ego or the imaginary self, to become the imaginary self, it is generally fragile to seduction and deception, to ambition, supremacism, and vanity of the ego inside and outside of me.

To Be, as a singular subject, absolutely other, I must resist the narcissism of the ego and the selfhood or totality of external power. To become Being requires to divest myself of the fused, totalized self, and to decant as Other, as an ótrico being, to be the other and the other of the interconnected corporeality of life.

Being imposes transcending the ego, dissolving the self, and re-existing by inhabiting the cultivation of common life. To be obsessive. To be life interwoven.

6. The edifying power of the ótrica attitude

Without the presential actions that characterize the ótrico being, the interonomous being, we will hardly be able to make of our pluriverse singularity a non-biased existence, a compassionate, ethical life that responds to the maxims of the socionatural fabric.

In this line of processes for Being, it becomes relevant to educate in interonomy, in the potentials that allow us to gain ótrica musculature to a) face erosive heteronomies such as those of the ego itself and of the renewed “selfhoods” or totalitarian powers that constitute the external ego that governs our existence, and b) cultivate an intertwined life of humans and non-humans, if we prefer to assume the ethical heteronomy that makes us responsible for the other and the non-human other. That is to say, to educate in the ótrica citizenship that each educable subject would have to acquire to proceed as a weaver of life, confronting the inner and outer ego to inhabit the surrender to the other and the other.

At the end of the day, in the deep meaning of education lies the function of generating scenarios to form Beings: beings for life, for the complex of socio-natural life, to strengthen the bonds between the other and the other. In this sense, to gain meaning and educational sense, it is essential to assume differently the generation of knowledge, values, attitudes, competencies, and comprehensions in a way of existence such as today. In a market society such as ours. In a market society like ours, where the economicideological imposes the dynamics of existence, where the human being, nature, and life must be adjusted to the (prevailing) model and not otherwise, such education contributes little or nothing to the educational significance.

Moreover, that mode that singularizes our (disoriented) education obeys, is largely due to the forces of ambition that drive the locomotive that drives and subdues our lives, that assumes nature, and individuals with the acquired baggage, as well as the evil and the human and socio-natural deterioration they provoke, as mere resources to potentiate their wealth; the educational competences vociferate the dominant epistemes as they favor the profitability and maximization of the profits obtained by the oligopolies (pharmaceutical, armament, scientifictechnological, communicational, ontological- theological) which, in turn, favor the profitability and maximization of the profits obtained by the oligopolies (pharmaceutical, armament, scientific-technological, communicational: ontological-theological) that constitute the great power.

The competitive regime that reigns in the processes of teaching, learning, and indoctrination, puts these in economic work, in egotic, erosive work. But not in the work of common life. The discourse, the competential stratagem is totality, it is an external ego by which the educational and business community is aggregated, by which, in general, existence is intoxicated. It is necessary to face it with an active, edifying conscience. Competent dissidence is not about leaving one totality and assimilating into another church. It is not to cultivate ego but to cultivate life, to “incarnate” oneself in the vital plexus, in the “reality” of doing the work of life, that is, to take care of the socio-natural relationships between different humans and between humans and nature, with the other, with things.

The work of life decants the Being, and represents the “capital” that confers authentic meaning to education; it must be, consequently, the nucleus of the educational processes. The relocation of education along the evolutionary path and in the light of the principles of the socio-natural complex that affirm integrated life implies advancing the function of educating in the promotion of consciousness, of the inner light that enlightens us and moves us to the cultivation of life, to the reconnection with being, that allows us to Be. Such a function must accompany the processes of teaching, learning and formation, educational direction, and pedagogical reflections/actions, among others.

In line with what has been expressed, it would perhaps be necessary to educate in epistemic dissidence, in egotic disobedience, as well as in edifying obedience. To diseducate oneself, to armor oneself against doctrinal imposition, against unique truths, against any form of manipulation; to free oneself from totalitarian stalking, from the banality of the ego, of the “same”, of the “self”, of the “sameness”, and to mature as a being for the pluriversity of life.

Educating to the rhythm of educational significance requires the development of an active awareness of shared existence. This is a way of reorienting our education -- crossed by epistemic submission and edifying apathy -- towards a path in which opportunities and capacities are generated to form the potentials that allow the subjects of the educational act to flow into existence with socio-natural greatness. As citizens of life. Optically.

The family, ecclesiastical, communicational, educational, and other institutions of the social order gain significance, and manifest Being, when their actions contribute “properly” to the social fabric, better: socio-natural. The educational act consummates its original purpose when it contributes to the educable entities to develop as beings for life, to proceed with ótrica vocation, with interonomous power. They mature to be the other and the other. To be life. To Be.

It is urgent to reconnect education with its Being, with Being, in such a way that it allows us to recognize ourselves as singular entities of socionatural life, and to gain maturity, coming of age, or pluriverse greatness to take care of it, better: to Be life itself. It is better to inhabit the presential spaces in which we re-exist, even better: in which we are reborn, we experience the edifying birth of existing being ótrico, vibrating, flowing, evolving, starring the new era of the sowing of life, “the reality”, “the truth” of being-life-on-earth. Disseminating life and not ego in our shared existence.

Santiago de Cali, 29 de enero de 2025

¹ Julio César Arboleda, Director Red Iberoamericana de Pedagogía, direccion@redipe.org https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1572-5384 Miembro Grupos de Investigación: “Educación y desarrollo humano” USB; “Pedagogía, formación y conciencia” (PFC); Univ. Autónoma de Madrid; Epistemología, pedagogía y filosofía, REDIPE. Iniciador de la Perspectiva Comprensivo edificadora de la educación, la pedagogía, la didáctica y el discurso, desde 1995