A new way to change the world?

Michael Panao
25 de ago. de 2016
4 min de leitura

For several occasions I said we exist as relational beings. Relationality is at the core of the universe story and is essential to understand it. However, with all the conflicts around the world, human culture is not taking advantage of his treasure. At least, not yet.

There’s this book by an Italian psychologist Pietro Cavaliere “Vivere con l’altro’ (“Live with the other”) that is a literary pearl on understanding a culture of relation. In the first pages, he says

“in the complex context of a western world subjugated by the omnipotence of scientific and technological knowledge, only a culture of relation can help contemporary humans rediscover and bequeath the necessary “competences” that allow the “production” of that precious, and rare good that is the relational good.”

In a consumerist society why not consume relational good? What is a relational good? Since we were children, remember babies opening their arms to their parents, we’re “hungry” for recognition, for the relation with the other. We desire his attention and his look upon us. Our identity is defined by the relation with the other. Therefore, we don’t exist without relationships with other people.

Cavalieri says

“Relation is for the psyche as oxygen is for the body.”

Therefore, the relationship with the other is a relational good essential to our living. However, it’s something you take possession, grasp, an object. Examples of relational goods are communities, language, cultural models.

Since youth we learn how to read and write, use a computer, now tablet and smartphone, but within a culture of relation, sometimes we act as illiterate people relatively to the _relational alphabet_. What are the rules of this alphabet? Cavaliere proposes six:

awareness of your emotions and of others;
be in the state of “reading” you own intentions and of others;
express congruent actions;
promote and sustain relations of reciprocity;
know how to “decode” and manage conflicts;
recognize the “times” of relationship.

EMOTIONS

For developing a relational life we need to pay attention to our emotions, and the emotions of the other. Unless we are explicit in our feelings, and - with indirect questions, for example - know what the other is feeling, we may fall into a confusion or symbiosis of feelings.

INTENTIONALITY

Intentions give relations direction. Know what we want. Know what the other wants. This grammatical rule will help to guide the relational good we share.

ACT CONGRUENTLY

There should be no distance between what we do and what we are. But, what are we? If we’re relational being, it implies being a gift of ourselves to the other. Being a “gift” often implies renouncing, but this is founded on gratuity and freedom to choose. If we say something and do another; express a feeling or intention and then contradict those with incoherent attitudes and behaviors; this bring ambiguity and a manipulative side to our relationships. We need to avoid those to ensure a high degree of congruence.

RECIPROCITY

Be together, meeting, is an experience we most often make and publicize in our society. Once I hear an American philosopher saying that, while in the USA we take coffee-to-go, in Europe he found that people have coffee-to-stay. Being together is something vital to us. However, there are several kinds of “being together”. How often do you see friends around a coffee table, each looking at his/her smartphone instead of looking at each other? When we live in reciprocity, it is the other that brings me into existence.

MANAGING CONFLICTS

Conflicts emerge from our limitations and the desire to overcome them at all cost. Often at the cost of others. Those limitations are always a way for others to misunderstand me. However, in a relational grammar, that finitude, those limitations are, precisely, what enables “self-giving” and a greater openness to the other. We should fear vulnerability, but embrace it reciprocally. We all have wounds. From those wounds borns an authentic openness to the other in a reciprocal dynamics that binds us to each other. Managing conflict means transforming a frustrating experience of negativity into a unique occasion of personal growth and “discovery” of the other.

TIMES OF RELATION

Finally, recognizing the “times” of relation. These are three: before; during; and after.

"Before" is a time of strong emotions. We see he other mostly through the positive aspects of his/her personality.

"During" a relationship is a delicate and hard time. It is a period where our dreams vanish, our expectations are frustrated and our common projects seem to... die. Resilience is the key to endure this time because after the storm comes the calm.

"After" is a time of re-foundation of our relations. "Before" and "during" are essential times to fully experience the other. If we don't pass through those times, we never reach the last one. A time to reborn. A time we're able to assume our needs and respond maturely in a direct and responsible way. In this final time, relationships are based on a full and authentic communion with the other. All relational diseases come from disregarding the times of relation.