Global village and Villages Cities
27
Mar
My still short Portuguese experience has already brought a new reflection, a great city
may be a village where there is some anonymity only because of a Western individualism, and there are already global villages, as McLuhan wanted, with global citizens.
The experience of a distance education group in Porto de Mós reflects this a bit, I thought to find students scattered with distant glances, as is almost always common in São Paulo, but I found students engaged, critical and concerned about their own formation, we had to close because the building was closing, and we who had left Lisbon needed to catch the bus, we almost lost.
Curious also because Portugal has genuine villages, it is not the small towns like Porto de Mós, but even villages, where people live from small farms (many wineries here), around a closer common life, but their young people accept peacefully and they call themselves one of the students of Porto de Mós: “I am from the village”.
The reflection goes then to what the big cities have lost, if I had to summarize I would say in a word reminiscent of Edgar Morin: “conviviality”, but I think there is something deeper: the lack of dreams, the excessive labeling, the mistaken preoccupation with the media (they help the villages to be global), more especially a lack of “lived life”.
The fact that it is in Portugal, especially in Lisbon, a life of bars and cafes where “conviviality” is realized and a village life where the life of the world is integrated by the modern means of communication, realizes a new phase of sociability where human values can actually be lived, more than the “relational” theorists who do not “coexist” think.
It is still possible to dream, fall in love, respect values of ethics and solidarity, but mainly to live them, which is essential.
