mercoledì 15 maggio 2013

il fascino discreto del Tao

Ecco, avete appena visto come non si deve bere un Martini Dry.

Salvador Dalí, Ritratto di Luis Buñuel
olio su tela 70 × 60 cm, 1924
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Bisogna anche capirlo... Maurizio è un uomo del popolo, non ha avuto un'educazione.

martedì 14 maggio 2013

Nel sesto libro della saga di Castaneda, del 1981, prosegue la consapevolezza di Castaneda sugli insegnamenti dei suoi maestri - in assenza di questi dopo la loro scomparsa - insieme agli altri apprendisti di cui ha scoperto l'esistenza e di cui viene riconosciuto come conduttore (il loro "Nagual"). Nel corso di questo e dei successivi racconti Castaneda scopre che le esperienze che aveva vissuto con i suoi maestri, e di cui ha raccontato nei primi quattro libri, sono solo metà della storia, immagazzinata nell'attenzione e memoria consuete - la prima attenzione; l'altra metà è invece a lui completamente sconosciuta perché contenuta nella seconda attenzione. La frequentazione con gli altri apprendisti lo porta a recuperare sempre più pezzi di vita e conoscenze completamente sepolte nell'inconscio, gettando una nuova luce sulle sue esperienze e sui modelli della stregoneria.

PROLOGO

Malgrado sia antropologo, questa non è, strettamente, un'opera di antropologia; ciononostante essa ha le sue radici nell'antropologia culturale, in quanto ebbe inizio, anni fa, come una ricerca sul campo nell'ambito di questa disciplina. A quell'epoca m'interessata lo studio dell'uso delle piante medicinali tra gli indios del Messico del sudovest e del nord.

Con gli anni la mia ricerca mutò direzione per effetto sia del suo stesso impulso sia della mia evoluzione personale. Lo studio delle piante fu sostituito da quello di un sistema di credenze che mi sembrava facesse da ponte tra almeno due culture diverse.

Il responsabile di questo cambiamento d'interessi fu un indio Yaqui del Messico settentrionale, Don Juan Matus, che più tardi mi presentò a Don Genaro Flores, un indio mazateco del Messico centrale. Entrambi esercitavano un'arte ancestrale, nota ai nostri giorni come stregoneria, che si ritiene sia una forma primitiva di scienza medica e psicologica ma che di fatto è una tradizione di praticanti estremamente autodisciplinati e di pratiche estremamente sofisticate.

I due uomini diventarono per me maestri più che informatori, ma io continuavo, procedendo a tentoni, a considerare il mio un compito da antropologo; passai anni a cercare di ricostruire la matrice culturale da questo sistema; perfezionando una tassonomia, uno schema di classificazioni, una ipotesi sulla sua origine e sulla sua espansione. Furono tutti sforzi inutili, poiché alla fine le pressanti forze immanenti in questo sistema sviarono i miei sforzi intellettuali e mi costrinsero a diventare un adepto.

Sotto l'influenza di questi due potenti personalità il mio lavoro si è trasformato in un'autobiografia, nel senso che, dal momento in cui si è operato questo cambiamento, mi sono sentito spinto a riferire tutto quanto mi stava accadendo. E' un'autobiografia particolare, poiché non sto trattando con quello che mi succede come uomo, in essa non descrivo né i fatti giornalieri della mia esistenza di uomo comune, né gli stati soggettivi generati da questo vivere giorno per giorno. Descrivo piuttosto gli eventi che si snodano nella mia vita come risultato dell'adozione di un insieme concatenato di idee e di pratiche aliene. In altre parole, il sistema di credenze che volevo studiare mi ha fagocitato, e per poter continuare la mia ricerca devo pagare un prezzo straordinario: la mia vita di uomo di questo mondo.

Per tali ragioni devo affrontare il difficile problema di spiegare qual è ora la mia attività. Mi sono molto allontanato dalle mie radici di uomo comune occidentale e di antropologo, e devo prima di tutto ripetere che questo non è un racconto di fantasia. Quello che sto per descrivere è un mondo estraneo al nostro; sembra quindi irreale.

Addentrandomi sempre di più nei meandri della stregoneria, quello che inizialmente sembrava un sistema di credenze e di pratiche primitive, risulta ora un mondo vastissimo e complicato. Per capire questo mondo e per poterlo spiegare agli altri devo usare me stesso in modo sempre più complesso e raffinato. Qualsiasi cosa mi succeda, non è più qualcosa che di prevedibile né assimilabile a ciò che gli altri antropologi conoscono sui sistemi di credenze degli indios del Messico. Mi trovo quindi in una difficile situazione; tutto quello che posso fare basso in queste circostanze è raccontare quello che mi è successo, così come mi è successo. Non posso fornire nessuna garanzia della mia buona fede se non riaffermando che non conduco una doppia vita e che mi sono impegnato a seguire i principi del sistema di Don Juan nella mia esistenza quotidiana.

Dopo che Don Juan Matus e Don Genaro Flores, i due stregoni indios che mi iniziarono ai loro segreti, furono soddisfatti del sapere che mi avevano infuso, mi salutarono e se ne andarono. Capii che dal quel momento era mio compito portare avanti quello che da loro avevo appreso.

Nell'adempimento di questo compito ritornai in Messico e trovai che Don Juan e Don Genaro avevano altri nove apprendisti stregoni: cinque donne e quattro uomini. La donna più anziana si chiamava Soledad; veniva poi María Elena, soprannominata "la Gorda"; le altre tre, Lydia, Rosa e Josefina, erano più giovani ed erano chiamate "le sorelline." I quattro uomini erano, in ordine di età, Eligio, Benigno, Nestor e Pablito: gli ultimi tre erano chiamati "i Genaros" poiché erano molto intimi di Don Genaro.

Sapevo già che Néstor, Pablito ed Eligio, che non si vedeva più in giro, erano apprendisti, ma ero stato portato a credere che le quattro ragazze fossero sorelle di Pablito e Soledad la loro madre. in quegli anni frequentai poco Soledad e la chiamai sempre "dona Soledad", in segno di rispetto, poiché era la più vicina a Don Juan per età. Anche Lydia e Rosa mi erano state presentate, ma la nostra conoscenza era stata troppo breve e casuale per permettermi di capire chi fossero realmente. la Gorda e Josefina le conoscevo solo di nome. Avevo già incontrato Benigno, ma ignoravo completamente i suoi rapporti con Don Juan e Don Genaro.

Per motivi che non riuscivo a capire ragioni sembrava che tutte persone fossero state in attesa del mio ritorno in Messico. Mi dissero che si aspettavano che io dovessi prendere il posto di Don Juan come loro capo, il loro Nagual. Mi informarono che Don Juan e Don Genaro erano spariti della faccia della Terra e altrettanto aveva fatto Eligio. Sia gli uomini che le donne credevano che nessuno dei tre fosse morto: erano solo passati in un altro mondo, differente dal nostro solito, pur tuttavia non meno reale.

Le donne - specie dona Soledad – si scontrarono violentemente con me fin dal primo incontro. Tuttavia furono lo strumento di una catarsi che si produsse dentro di me. Il contatto con loro provocò una misteriosa effervescenza misteriosa nella mia vita. Da quando le conobbi il mio modo di pensare e di capire le cose subì un drastico cambiamento. Tutto questo non accadde però a un livello di coscienza: anzi, dopo la mia prima visita mi trovai più confuso che mai e tuttavia nel mezzo di questo caos scopersi una base molto solida. Nell'impatto del nostro scontro scoprii in me stesso risorse che non avevo mai immaginato di possedere.

La Gorda e le tre sorelline erano esperte sognatrici; me ne diedero prova spontaneamente e mi mostrarono volontariamente mi diedero consigli e mi mostrarono la loro abilità. Don Juan mi aveva descritto l'arte del sognare come la capacità di utilizzare i propri sogni ordinari e trasformarli in una consapevolezza controllata in virtù di una speciale forma di attenzione che lui e Don Genaro chiamavano la seconda attenzione.

Mi aspettavo che i tre Genaros si mettessero a mostrarmi le loro abilità in un altro capitolo dell'insegnamento di Don Juan e Don Genaro, "l'arte dell’agguato". Mi era stata descritta come un insieme di pratiche e di attitudini che permettevano a una persona di ricavare il massimo beneficio da qualsiasi situazione immaginabile. Ma tutto quello che i Genaros mi dissero sull’agguato non aveva né la forza né la coerenza che mi ero aspettato. Conclusi che quelle persone non erano affatto esperte in quell'arte o che semplicemente non volevano rivelarmela.

Interruppi la mia indagine perché si sentissero a loro agio con me, ma tutti, uomini e donne, si erano rasserenati visto che non favevo più domande, certi che mi stessi infine comportando da Nagual. Ciascuno mi chiese guida e consiglio.

Per soddisfarli fui obbligato a iniziare un completo riesame di tutto quello che Don Juan e don Genaro mi avevano insegnato, per penetrare ancora a fondo nell'arte della stregoneria.

venerdì 10 maggio 2013

il Tao del villaggio

Mosammat Taslima Begum (left), representing Grameen Bank, and Muhammad Yunus
pose with their Nobel Peace Prize Medals and Diplomas.
Copyright © The Norwegian Nobel Institute 2006
Photo: Ken Opprann

The Nobel Peace Prize 2006 was awarded jointly to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below"

Nobel Lecture, Oslo, December 10, 2006.

Poverty is a Threat to Peace

Ladies and Gentlemen:

By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace.

World's income distribution gives a very telling story. Ninety four percent of the world income goes to 40 percent of the population while sixty percent of people live on only 6 per cent of world income. Half of the world population lives on two dollars a day. Over one billion people live on less than a dollar a day. This is no formula for peace.

The new millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size. But then came September 11 and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream, with the attention of world leaders shifting from the war on poverty to the war on terrorism. Till now over $ 530 billion has been spent on the war in Iraq by the USA alone.

I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action. Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest language. We must stand solidly against it, and find all the means to end it. We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns.

Poverty is Denial of All Human Rights

Peace should be understood in a human way − in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives.

The creation of opportunities for the majority of people − the poor − is at the heart of the work that we have dedicated ourselves to during the past 30 years.

Grameen Bank

I became involved in the poverty issue not as a policymaker or a researcher. I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I could not turn away from it. In 1974, I found it difficult to teach elegant theories of economics in the university classroom, in the backdrop of a terrible famine in Bangladesh. Suddenly, I felt the emptiness of those theories in the face of crushing hunger and poverty. I wanted to do something immediate to help people around me, even if it was just one human being, to get through another day with a little more ease. That brought me face to face with poor people's struggle to find the tiniest amounts of money to support their efforts to eke out a living. I was shocked to discover a woman in the village, borrowing less than a dollar from the money-lender, on the condition that he would have the exclusive right to buy all she produces at the price he decides. This, to me, was a way of recruiting slave labor.

I decided to make a list of the victims of this money-lending "business" in the village next door to our campus.

When my list was done, it had the names of 42 victims who borrowed a total amount of US $27. I offered US $27 from my own pocket to get these victims out of the clutches of those money-lenders. The excitement that was created among the people by this small action got me further involved in it. If I could make so many people so happy with such a tiny amount of money, why not do more of it?

That is what I have been trying to do ever since. The first thing I did was to try to persuade the bank located in the campus to lend money to the poor. But that did not work. The bank said that the poor were not creditworthy. After all my efforts, over several months, failed I offered to become a guarantor for the loans to the poor. I was stunned by the result. The poor paid back their loans, on time, every time! But still I kept confronting difficulties in expanding the program through the existing banks. That was when I decided to create a separate bank for the poor, and in 1983, I finally succeeded in doing that. I named it Grameen Bank or Village bank.

Today, Grameen Bank gives loans to nearly 7.0 million poor people, 97 per cent of whom are women, in 73,000 villages in Bangladesh. Grameen Bank gives collateral-free income generating, housing, student and micro-enterprise loans to the poor families and offers a host of attractive savings, pension funds and insurance products for its members. Since it introduced them in 1984, housing loans have been used to construct 640,000 houses. The legal ownership of these houses belongs to the women themselves. We focused on women because we found giving loans to women always brought more benefits to the family.

In a cumulative way the bank has given out loans totaling about US $6.0 billion. The repayment rate is 99%. Grameen Bank routinely makes profit. Financially, it is self-reliant and has not taken donor money since 1995. Deposits and own resources of Grameen Bank today amount to 143 per cent of all outstanding loans. According to Grameen Bank's internal survey, 58 per cent of our borrowers have crossed the poverty line.

Grameen Bank was born as a tiny homegrown project run with the help of several of my students, all local girls and boys. Three of these students are still with me in Grameen Bank, after all these years, as its topmost executives. They are here today to receive this honour you give us.

This idea, which began in Jobra, a small village in Bangladesh, has spread around the world and there are now Grameen type programs in almost every country.

Second Generation

It is 30 years now since we began. We keep looking at the children of our borrowers to see what has been the impact of our work on their lives. The women who are our borrowers always gave topmost priority to the children. One of the Sixteen Decisions developed and followed by them was to send children to school. Grameen Bank encouraged them, and before long all the children were going to school. Many of these children made it to the top of their class. We wanted to celebrate that, so we introduced scholarships for talented students. Grameen Bank now gives 30,000 scholarships every year.

Many of the children went on to higher education to become doctors, engineers, college teachers and other professionals. We introduced student loans to make it easy for Grameen students to complete higher education. Now some of them have PhD's. There are 13,000 students on student loans. Over 7,000 students are now added to this number annually.

We are creating a completely new generation that will be well equipped to take their families way out of the reach of poverty. We want to make a break in the historical continuation of poverty.

Beggars Can Turn to Business

In Bangladesh 80 percent of the poor families have already been reached with microcredit. We are hoping that by 2010, 100 per cent of the poor families will be reached.

Three years ago we started an exclusive programme focusing on the beggars. None of Grameen Bank's rules apply to them. Loans are interest-free; they can pay whatever amount they wish, whenever they wish. We gave them the idea to carry small merchandise such as snacks, toys or household items, when they went from house to house for begging. The idea worked. There are now 85,000 beggars in the program. About 5,000 of them have already stopped begging completely. Typical loan to a beggar is $12.

We encourage and support every conceivable intervention to help the poor fight out of poverty. We always advocate microcredit in addition to all other interventions, arguing that microcredit makes those interventions work better.

Information Technology for the Poor

Information and communication technology (ICT) is quickly changing the world, creating distanceless, borderless world of instantaneous communications. Increasingly, it is becoming less and less costly. I saw an opportunity for the poor people to change their lives if this technology could be brought to them to meet their needs.

As a first step to bring ICT to the poor we created a mobile phone company, Grameen Phone. We gave loans from Grameen Bank to the poor women to buy mobile phones to sell phone services in the villages. We saw the synergy between microcredit and ICT.

The phone business was a success and became a coveted enterprise for Grameen borrowers. Telephone-ladies quickly learned and innovated the ropes of the telephone business, and it has become the quickest way to get out of poverty and to earn social respectability. Today there are nearly 300,000 telephone ladies providing telephone service in all the villages of Bangladesh . Grameen Phone has more than 10 million subscribers, and is the largest mobile phone company in the country. Although the number of telephone-ladies is only a small fraction of the total number of subscribers, they generate 19 per cent of the revenue of the company. Out of the nine board members who are attending this grand ceremony today 4 are telephone-ladies.

Grameen Phone is a joint-venture company owned by Telenor of Norway and Grameen Telecom of Bangladesh. Telenor owns 62 per cent share of the company, Grameen Telecom owns 38 per cent. Our vision was to ultimately convert this company into a social business by giving majority ownership to the poor women of Grameen Bank. We are working towards that goal. Someday Grameen Phone will become another example of a big enterprise owned by the poor.

Free Market Economy

Capitalism centers on the free market. It is claimed that the freer the market, the better is the result of capitalism in solving the questions of what, how, and for whom. It is also claimed that the individual search for personal gains brings collective optimal result.

I am in favor of strengthening the freedom of the market. At the same time, I am very unhappy about the conceptual restrictions imposed on the players in the market. This originates from the assumption that entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to one mission in their business lives − to maximize profit. This interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the very essentials of human life.

Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.

Many of the world's problems exist because of this restriction on the players of free-market. The world has not resolved the problem of crushing poverty that half of its population suffers. Healthcare remains out of the reach of the majority of the world population. The country with the richest and freest market fails to provide healthcare for one-fifth of its population.

We have remained so impressed by the success of the free-market that we never dared to express any doubt about our basic assumption. To make it worse, we worked extra hard to transform ourselves, as closely as possible, into the one-dimensional human beings as conceptualized in the theory, to allow smooth functioning of free market mechanism.

By defining "entrepreneur" in a broader way we can change the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market. Let us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of motivation (such as, maximizing profit), now has two sources of motivation, which are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling − a) maximization of profit and b) doing good to people and the world.

Each type of motivation will lead to a separate kind of business. Let us call the first type of business a profit-maximizing business, and the second type of business as social business.

Social business will be a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world. Investors in the social business could get back their investment, but will not take any dividend from the company. Profit would be ploughed back into the company to expand its outreach and improve the quality of its product or service. A social business will be a non-loss, non-dividend company.

Once social business is recognized in law, many existing companies will come forward to create social businesses in addition to their foundation activities. Many activists from the non-profit sector will also find this an attractive option. Unlike the non-profit sector where one needs to collect donations to keep activities going, a social business will be self-sustaining and create surplus for expansion since it is a non-loss enterprise. Social business will go into a new type of capital market of its own, to raise capital.

Young people all around the world, particularly in rich countries, will find the concept of social business very appealing since it will give them a challenge to make a difference by using their creative talent. Many young people today feel frustrated because they cannot see any worthy challenge, which excites them, within the present capitalist world. Socialism gave them a dream to fight for. Young people dream about creating a perfect world of their own.

Almost all social and economic problems of the world will be addressed through social businesses. The challenge is to innovate business models and apply them to produce desired social results cost-effectively and efficiently. Healthcare for the poor, financial services for the poor, information technology for the poor, education and training for the poor, marketing for the poor, renewable energy − these are all exciting areas for social businesses.

Social business is important because it addresses very vital concerns of mankind. It can change the lives of the bottom 60 per cent of world population and help them to get out of poverty.

Grameen's Social Business

Even profit maximizing companies can be designed as social businesses by giving full or majority ownership to the poor. This constitutes a second type of social business. Grameen Bank falls under this category of social business.

The poor could get the shares of these companies as gifts by donors, or they could buy the shares with their own money. The borrowers with their own money buy Grameen Bank shares, which cannot be transferred to non-borrowers. A committed professional team does the day-to-day running of the bank.

Bilateral and multi-lateral donors could easily create this type of social business. When a donor gives a loan or a grant to build a bridge in the recipient country, it could create a "bridge company" owned by the local poor. A committed management company could be given the responsibility of running the company. Profit of the company will go to the local poor as dividend, and towards building more bridges. Many infrastructure projects, like roads, highways, airports, seaports, utility companies could all be built in this manner.

Grameen has created two social businesses of the first type. One is a yogurt factory, to produce fortified yogurt to bring nutrition to malnourished children, in a joint venture with Danone. It will continue to expand until all malnourished children of Bangladesh are reached with this yogurt. Another is a chain of eye-care hospitals. Each hospital will undertake 10,000 cataract surgeries per year at differentiated prices to the rich and the poor.

Social Stock Market

To connect investors with social businesses, we need to create social stock market where only the shares of social businesses will be traded. An investor will come to this stock-exchange with a clear intention of finding a social business, which has a mission of his liking. Anyone who wants to make money will go to the existing stock-market.

To enable a social stock-exchange to perform properly, we will need to create rating agencies, standardization of terminology, definitions, impact measurement tools, reporting formats, and new financial publications, such as, The Social Wall Street Journal. Business schools will offer courses and business management degrees on social businesses to train young managers how to manage social business enterprises in the most efficient manner, and, most of all, to inspire them to become social business entrepreneurs themselves.

Role of Social Businesses in Globalization

I support globalization and believe it can bring more benefits to the poor than its alternative. But it must be the right kind of globalization. To me, globalization is like a hundred-lane highway criss-crossing the world. If it is a free-for-all highway, its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies. Bangladeshi rickshaw will be thrown off the highway. In order to have a win-win globalization we must have traffic rules, traffic police, and traffic authority for this global highway. Rule of "strongest takes it all" must be replaced by rules that ensure that the poorest have a place and piece of the action, without being elbowed out by the strong. Globalization must not become financial imperialism. Powerful multi-national social businesses can be created to retain the benefit of globalization for the poor people and poor countries. Social businesses will either bring ownership to the poor people, or keep the profit within the poor countries, since taking dividends will not be their objective. Direct foreign investment by foreign social businesses will be exciting news for recipient countries. Building strong economies in the poor countries by protecting their national interest from plundering companies will be a major area of interest for the social businesses.

We Create What We Want

We get what we want, or what we don't refuse. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.

We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it. We create what we want.

What we want and how we get to it depends on our mindsets. It is extremely difficult to change mindsets once they are formed. We create the world in accordance with our mindset. We need to invent ways to change our perspective continually and reconfigure our mindset quickly as new knowledge emerges. We can reconfigure our world if we can reconfigure our mindset.

We Can Put Poverty in the Museums

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.

Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts, which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit- worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment) or developing institutions, which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.

I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.

A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well being of the world as a whole. Some get the chance to explore their potential to some degree, but many others never get any opportunity, during their lifetime, to unwrap the wonderful gift they were born with. They die unexplored and the world remains deprived of their creativity, and their contribution.

Grameen has given me an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human beings. This has led me to believe that human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty.

To me poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.

Let us join hands to give every human being a fair chance to unleash their energy and creativity.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me conclude by expressing my deep gratitude to the Norwegian Nobel Committee for recognizing that poor people, and especially poor women, have both the potential and the right to live a decent life, and that microcredit helps to unleash that potential.
I believe this honor that you give us will inspire many more bold initiatives around the world to make a historical breakthrough in ending global poverty.
Thank you very much.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2006

venerdì 3 maggio 2013

il Tao ansioso di Cartesio

La ricerca di una via di mezzo alla descrizione della coscienza nella prospettiva enazionista si fronteggia con due estremi che provocano l'ansia cartesiana della ricerca di un fondamento assoluto di rappresentazione: una piccola isola che rappresenta il territorio delle certezza della verità fondata su basi solide, circondata da un oceano di oscurità e confusione, il territorio delle illusioni:

Steps to a Middle Way

The Cartesian Anxiety

The nervousness that we feel is rooted in what, following Richard Bernstein, we can call lithe Cartesian anxiety." We mean "anxiety" in a loosely Freudian sense, and we call it "Cartesian" simply because Descartes articulated it rigorously and dramatically in his Meditations. The anxiety is best put as a dilemma: either we have a fixed and stable foundation for knowledge, a point where knowledge starts, is grounded, and rests, or we cannot escape some sort of darkness, chaos, and confusion. Either there is an absolute ground or foundation, or everything falls apart.

There is a marvelous passage from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that conveys the power of the Cartesian anxiety. Throughout the Critique Kant builds the edifice of his theory of knowledge by arguing that we have a priori or given, innate categories, which are the foundations of knowledge. Toward the end of his discussion of the "Transcendental Analytic" he writes,

We have now not merely explored the territory of pure understanding [the a priori categories] and carefully surveyed every part of it, but have also measured its extent and assigned to everything in it its rightful place. This domain is an island, enclosed by nature itself with unalterable limits. It is the land of truth-an enchanting name!-surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the native home of illusion, where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with empty hopes, and engaging him in enterprises which he can never abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion.

Here we have the two extremes, the either-or of the Cartesian anxiety: There is the enchanting land of truth where everything is clear and ultimately grounded. But beyond that small island there is the wide and stormy ocean of darkness and confusion, the native home of illusion.

This feeling of anxiety arises from the craving for an absolute ground. When this craving cannot be satisfied, the only other possibility seems to be nihilism or anarchy. The search for a ground can take many forms, but given the basic logic of representationism, the tendency is to search either for an outer ground in the world or an inner ground in the mind. By treating mind and world as opposed subjective and objective poles, the Cartesian anxiety oscillates endlessly between the two in search of a ground.

It is important to realize that this opposition between subject and object is not given and ready-made; it is an idea that belongs to the human history of mind and nature that we mentioned. For example, prior to Descartes, the term idea was used only for the contents of the mind of God; Descartes was one of the first to take this term and apply it to the workings of the human mind. This linguistic and conceptual shift is just one aspect of what Richard Rorty describes as the "invention of the mind as a mirror of nature," an invention that was' the result of patching together heterogeneous images, conceptions, and linguistic usages.

These Cartesian roots become quite obvious when we have reason to doubt the appropriateness of this metaphor of mirroring. As we set out in search of other ways of thinking, the Cartesian anxiety arises to dog us at every step. Yet our contemporary situation is also unique, for we have become increasingly skeptical about the possibility of discerning any ultimate ground. Thus when the anxiety arises today, we seem unable to avoid the turn toward nihilism, for we have not learned to let go of the forms of thinking, behavior, and experience that lead us to desire a ground.

We saw in our previous discussion that cognitive science is not immune from this nihilistic tendency. For example, the link between nihilism and the Cartesian anxiety can be seen very clearly in The Society of Mind when Minsky confronts our inability to find a fully independent world. As he notes, the world is not an object, event, or process inside the world. Indeed the world is more like a background- a setting of and field for all of our experience, but one that cannot be found apart from our structure, behavior, and cognition. For this reason, what we say about the world tells us as much about ourselves as it does about the world.

Minsky's response to this realization is a mixed one, in a way that is similar to his response to the lack of a Self. He writes, "Whatever you purport to say about a thing, you're only expressing your own beliefs. Yet even that gloomy thought suggests an insight. Even if our models of the world cannot yield good answers about the world as a whole, and even though their other answers are frequently wrong, they can tell us something about ourselves." On the one hand, Minsky uses the impossibility of finding a fully independent and pregiven world as an opportunity for developing insight into ourselves. But on the other hand, this insight is based in a feeling of gloominess about our situation. Why should this be?

We have been portraying these ideas through the words of Minsky because he is an outstanding modem cognitive scientist and has actually taken the time to articulate his ideas clearly. But he is not alone. When pressed to discuss this issue, many people would accept that we do not really have knowledge of the world; we have knowledge only of our representations of the world. Yet we seem condemned by our constitution to treat these representations as if they were the world, for our everyday experience feels as if it were of a given and immediate world.

Such a situation does indeed seem gloomy. But notice that such gloominess would make sense only if there were a pregiven, independent world-an outer ground-but one that we could never know. Given such a situation, we would have no choice but to fall back on our inner representations and treat them as if they provided a stable ground.

This mood of gloominess arises, then, from the Cartesian anxiety and its ideal of the mind as a mirror of nature. According to this ideal, knowledge should be of an independent, pregiven world, and this knowledge should be attained in the precision of a representation.

When this ideal cannot be satisfied, we fall back upon ourselves in search of an inner ground. This oscillation is apparent in Minsky's remark that whatever one purports to say is only an expression of one's beliefs. To say that what one thinks is a only a matter of subjective representation is precisely to fall back upon the idea of an inner ground, a solitary Cartesian ego that is walled in by the privacy of its representations. This particular tum is all the more ironic, since Minsky does not believe that there exists a self that could serve as an inner ground in the first place. In the end, then, Minsky's entanglement in the Cartesian anxiety requires not only that we believe in a self that we know cannot be found but also that we believe in a world to which we have no access. And once again, the logic of such a predicament leads inevitably to a condition of nihilism.

giovedì 2 maggio 2013

Tao in crisi

Qual è il contributo della filosofia alla formazione del pensiero europeo?
«Credo i contributi siano tre: la filosofia della storia, la filosofia del diritto e la filosofia della conoscenza o della scienza. E, in primo luogo, dal punto di vista della filosofia della storia mi pare che l'Europa sia il luogo in cui è più viva la consapevolezza di possedere un'antichità. Nelle altre culture non c'è antichità, cioè una rottura netta tra una civiltà morta e una civiltà che ricomincia. E, quindi, in Europa, c'è una duplice fonte: quella dell'antichità greco-latina da un lato e, dall'altro, della tradizione giudeo-cristiana che le succede. E nell'idea che ha formato l'intelletto europeo, mi pare che ci sia quest'idea di biforcazione: un'antichità da un lato e poi, dall'altro, un cambiamento di direzione; non è più l'antichità greco-latina, diventerà quella giudeo-cristiana, pur conservando l'apporto greco e latino. Cioè, appunto, una biforcazione ma, al contempo, la conservazione di ciò che vi è stato in precedenza.
Questo, per quanto riguarda la filosofia della storia. Poi, relativamente alla filosofia della conoscenza, nella tradizione greco-latina c'è l'idea del logos greco, dell'astrazione greca. E quest'idea di astrazione proseguirà a lungo nella filosofia. Ma d'altra parte, però, con il Rinascimento, in Europa assistiamo all'invenzione della fisica sperimentale. Quindi, quest'astrazione si proietterà nella concretezza, con una sorta di nuovo concetto che associa al contempo astratto e concreto. E anche questa è una caratteristica tipicamente europea. Infine, nella filosofia del diritto, la cosa più importante è vedere che in Europa c'è una dualità tra i paesi di diritto romano e i paesi che potremmo definire come di diritto anglosassone, cioè di diritto consuetudinario. E anche in questo caso troviamo da un lato l'idea di un logos astratto, di un'astrazione e dall'altro un'applicazione alla realtà».

Questo per il passato. Ma oggi, la filosofia può ancora al pensiero sull'Europa?
«Credo che la particolarità dell'Europa sia di aver inventato qualcosa che ci riguarda in modo molto concreto, nel senso che credo che sia stata l'Europa a inventare la nozione di "individuo". Questa nozione è già in parte presente nei Greci, in parte nel diritto romano di cui ho parlato prima, ma è distintamente presente nel pensiero a partire dal Rinascimento. Il Rinascimento costituisce nuovamente una biforcazione rispetto al Medioevo, in cui si manifesta un tratto tipicamente europeo, l'idea d'inventività e insieme la capacità di inventare l'individuo. Il processo avviato con il Rinascimento dura ancora oggi, cioè in un periodo in cui l'individuo è veramente nato: con le nuove tecnologie, ad esempio, si vede benissimo che c'è una sorta di creazione di un nuovo individuo, in un quadro di trasformazioni radicali. Oggi parliamo molto della crisi economica senza accorgerci che la crisi economica forse è solo un fenomeno prodotto da crisi molto più profonde. Per esempio, in paesi come l'Italia, la Francia, la Germania o l'Inghilterra, all'inizio del Novecento, la metà degli abitanti erano contadini. Oggi abbiamo solo lo 0,8% di contadini.
Quindi, nel ventesimo secolo, assistiamo a una crisi enorme a livello di rapporto con il mondo, di rapporto con la natura. In secondo luogo, quando sono nato io, il mondo aveva un miliardo e mezzo di abitanti. Oggi siamo sette miliardi e mezzo di persone. Di conseguenza, per i contadini non è più lo stesso mondo, per la democrazia mondiale non sono più le stesse persone. E oggi la speranza di vita è di 84 anni per le nostre compagne e, di 77 anni, credo, per gli uomini. Ma, solo cent'anni fa, la speranza di vita era di 50 anni e duecento anni fa era di 40 anni. Quindi, non è più lo stesso pianeta. Ne consegue, che la filosofia oggi deve individuare dei concetti nuovi, relativi non solo all'economia ma al posto dell'uomo nel mondo. In particolare, la filosofia può aiutare una futura Europa interrogandosi sul modo in cui gli individui si costituiranno in nuove comunità, e chiedendosi se ci sono nuove comunità da inventare. Questa è filosofia politica, un ambito in cui l'Europa è stata estremamente fertile nell'Ottocento, mentre lo è stata molto meno nel Novecento. Credo che bisognerebbe rilanciare l'idea di filosofia politica inventando nuove appartenenze ed è questo che, un po' alla cieca, sta cercando l'individuo moderno».

Quindi, biforcazione, individuo, comunità sono i concetti centrali di un'Europa filosofica. Oltre ai concetti, le chiedo se esistono degli oggetti che esprimono l'Europa nel modo più completo.
«Il suo è un indovinello... A prima vista, direi che è un oggetto enorme, la cattedrale. Perché le cattedrali sono presenti in Inghilterra, in Francia, naturalmente, a Colonia, in Germania, a Milano, ovunque in Europa. La prima è forse Santa Sofia, a Costantinopoli. Dunque la cattedrale simbolizza bene l'Europa, ma è un oggetto di un'altra epoca. Ma sono state inventate nuove cattedrali, come il Cern, a Ginevra: ecco un'istituzione europea, una comunità europea, la costruzione di una cattedrale straordinaria e qualcosa, dal punto di vista scientifico, di prettamente europeo. Non contempla minimamente di applicare la scienza e di applicarla a interessi economici. Si tratta solo di ricerca pura, di ricerca disinteressata e questo è tipicamente tedesco, tipicamente francese, tipicamente italiano. Sì, il Cern è una buona idea, è una nuova cattedrale».

Qual è la via che i giovani devono o dovrebbero percorrere per arrivare a un nuovo pensiero europeo?
«La mia prima risposta è consistita nel dire: ciò che c'è di originale nel pensiero europeo è la biforcazione rispetto all'antichità, la biforcazione rinascimentale rispetto al Medioevo, cioè l'idea che l'avvenire è imprevisto, che è inventivo, che è inatteso. Anche oggi ha luogo una biforcazione. Come dicevo, oggi siamo degli individui, siamo meno tedeschi di una volta, meno italiani di una volta, meno francesi di una volta perché sappiamo che la nazione ci è costata milioni di morti e, dunque, non ne abbiamo più bisogno. E stiamo pensando che le comunità antiche sono un po' desuete, un po' obsolete. Ora, l'idea su cui, credo, bisognerebbe un lavorare sarebbe quella di chiedersi in che modo degli individui, siano essi di Cosenza, di Berlino o di Parigi, potrebbero riuscire a inventare una nuova comunità politica che non sia dominata da istituzioni antiche, concepite in un'epoca in cui il mondo non era ciò che è diventato. Ci sono dei matematici che, una decina di anni fa, si sono posti la seguente domanda: con quante telefonate un abitante di Cosenza può raggiungere un abitante di Berlino o di Parigi? Una persona qualsiasi che chiama un'altra persona qualsiasi. Hanno fatto dei calcoli e si sono accorti che con sette telefonate chiunque sul pianeta può chiamare chiunque altro. Ma alcuni mesi fa il calcolo è stato rettificato perché ci si è accorti che con le grandi reti presenti sul web si poteva scendere a quattro. E quindi, chiunque nel mondo, tenendo in mano il cellulare, può chiamare chiunque altro con quattro telefonate. I matematici hanno chiamato questo teorema, "teorema del mondo piccolo", un mondo in cui posso chiamare chiunque altro, virtualmente, con quattro [sei] telefonate. Il che dimostra che abbiamo cambiato completamente spazio.

Nel corso della storia, chi avrebbe potuto dire "ora, tenendo in mano il mondo..."? Forse Augusto, l'imperatore romano. Possiamo immaginare un'epoca della storia in cui avrebbero potuto esserci miliardi di Augusto?».

E quasi settant'anni di pace, almeno in buona parte dell'Europa.
«Sono abbastanza vecchio per sapere che l'Europa è un miracolo, perché ho conosciuto le guerre e il fatto che non ci siano più frontiere mi pare una cosa miracolosa. E quali che siano le critiche che si possono muovere all'Europa, non bisogna dimenticare che tutti i libri di storia ci dicono che le guerre sono sempre causate da una crisi economica. Ora, ormai da vent'anni siamo in una crisi economica e, che io sappia, non ci sono state guerre. Quindi, l'Europa è perfettamente efficace a livello di istituzioni visto che è in corso una crisi, una crisi comune che, però, non ha scatenato carneficine come nel caso delle crisi precedenti».

intervista con Kurt Hilgenberg, Repubblica

non è un Tao per vecchi

Tao Paradoxico-Philosophicus 1-2

    Un dieu donne le feu
     Pour faire l'enfer;
    Un diable, le miel
   Pour faire le ciel.

TRACTATUS PARADOXICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

1	Postulate nothing: no observer, no distinction (e.g., object, event), not even dimensions (e.g., space, time).
1.1	Processes: consider changes (not towards the same), transformations (towards the same but different) or computations (changes or transformations in symbolic structures).
1.2	Recurrence: consider processes that continuously interact, changing, transforming or computing themselves.
1.3	Organization: consider a network of interacting processes.
1.4	Open Organization: consider an organization that does not close on itself so that it cannot maintain the activity of its processes.
1.5	Closed Organization: consider an organization that closes on itself so that any activity among its processes leads to further activity among its processes.
1.51	For the activity of a closed organization, “inside” or “outside” blend into “inside and outside”, leaving no room for “inputs”, “outputs”, “time”, or “space”.
1.52	A closed organization maintains its activity, but it does neither define nor maintain itself (its processes).

2	Organizationally closed organization (self-organized organization): consider an organization that recurrently defines and maintains itself.
2.01	This organization closes on itself so that its processes continuously regenerate the same network of processes.
2.02	This organization defines itself as a dynamically stable unity called Organizationally Closed Unity.
2.03	From the perspective of an organizationally closed unity, “inside” or “outside” blend into “inside and outside”, leaving no room for “inputs”, “outputs”, “time”, or “space”.
2.1	Self-organization: consider the recurrent regeneration of processes that allows organizationally closed unities to continuously change, transform or compute themselves, thus maintaining their organizational closure.
2.11	Since processes and open and closed organizations neither define nor maintain themselves they may only form, inextricably, part of organizationally closed unities.