Opinion Sur
People’s culture can be the basis for building an inclusive and sustainable referential utopia.
Virtually all leading analysts of the Brazilian nation, beginning with Joaquim Nabuco and culminating with Darcy Ribeiro had their eyes turned towards the past: how this kind of partnership we have with indigenous characteristics, black, Iberian, European and Asian formed. They were retailers, as Gilberto Freyre, but not directed their eyes forward: what utopia moves us and how we will achieve it historically.
All countries affirmed, designed their biggest dream, and it performed well or badly sometimes as European countries, penalizing colonization by other peoples in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Generally, in a context of crisis utopia it is elaborated as a way to find an exit. Celso Furtado, who besides renowned economist was a keen observer of culture told in a book that should be pondered by those who are interested in the future of the country, Brazil: the interrupted construction : “We lack the experience of crucial tests, as they met other people whose survival came to be threatened “(1992, p. 35). Critical situations that would be opportunities to develop our utopia we are not lacking. But the conservative and reactionary forces “were determined to disrupt our historical process of formation of a nation-state” (p. 35) for fear of losing their privileges.
And so we are left only with an imaginary, gentle, the great Brazil, more laughing province of planet Earth, but we prevented the construction of a real Brazil that integrates minimally everyone, multicultural, tolerant and even mystical.
It is time, I believe, it offers us the challenge of building this utopia. What from what basis we will take on this task? It must be from something typically ours, which has roots in our history and represents another software company. This basic level is our culture, especially our popular culture. As Celso Furtado says, “despised by the elites, the values of popular culture come from its amalgamation with significant autonomy from dominant cultures (Long dawn, 1999, p. 65). What makes Brazil be Brazil is the creative autonomy of culture of popular root.
Culture is seen here as a system of values and village projects. The culture moves in the logic of ends and of the great symbols and stories that give meaning to life. It is imbued with the cordial reason and contrasts with the cold logic of the media, inherent in the instrumental-analytic reason you are looking for material accumulation. The latter prevailed and makes us only secondary imitators of the most technically advanced countries. Culture followed another logic, linked to life, which is worth more than the accumulation of material goods.
The philosopher and economist Gianetti, in his works, saw the fruitfulness of our culture to develop the Brazilian dream. But no one better than the social scientist, Luiz Gonzaga de Souza Lima, in his book still unrecognized: The refounding of Brazil: towards the biocentrada society (2011), which systematizes the axis of Brazilian culture as an articulator of utopia Brazil and our national identity.
Our culture, and admired throughout the world, allows us to refound Brazil, which means “to have life as the most important social system … build a social organization that seeks and promotes happiness, joy, solidarity, sharing, common defense, binding on the need, the link, the commitment of everyone’s life, a social organization that includes all its members, to eliminate and prevent the exclusion of all kinds and at all levels “(p. 266).
The solution for Brazil is not in the economy as the dominant system would have us believe, but in the experience of their way to be open, affectionate, and cheerful, friend of life. Instrumental reason helped us create an ever essential basic infrastructure. But the most important thing was to lay the foundations for a biocivilization that celebrates life, which coexists with the plurality of manifestations, endowed with an incredible ability to integrate, synthesize and create spaces where we feel more human.
By culture, not made for the market, but to be lived and celebrated, we can anticipate at least a little, which may be a globalized humanity feels the Earth as Great Mother and Common House. The greatest dream, our utopia is commensality: sit together at the table and enjoy the joy of living together amicably and taste the good fruits of the great and generous Mother Earth.
