The Evil of the Century
The expression "evil of the century" was used to designate the radical crisis of beliefs and values of European consciousness in the late nineteenth century: a deep feeling of decay, fatigue and weariness in all spheres of life, manifested in several ways: great injustices and social complexities, the breakdown of the social order by the inequality between rich and poor, the political disappointment, indifferent individualism, the impotence to give a satisfactory answer to the new demands for meaning. Currently, we have similar cultural tendencies that in the worst of cases feel like abandonment or fear of being manipulated. To a certain extent we are manipulated by the mental programming that we have received throughout life. We always have the option of a reset, of a reprogramming of the mental and emotional contents of our mind.
The present crisis of consciousness can be the product of a continuous negativity embedded in our thoughts and emotions, a habit reinforced with the passage of time and preserved by society and culture. It is not about taking an attitude to the positive end that ignores the negative but rather that once the error and negativity is identified, instead of dwelling on it, we move on to constructive thoughts and attitudes. Negativity makes it difficult for us to properly assume the reins of our lives and can lead to the person taking shelter in the comfort zone, losing the opportunity to overcome and develop their potential. As long as we remain in these comfort zones, we will keep in the background a hidden feeling of frustration and impotence. Actually, we all have the strength to change these adverse circumstances and attitudes, we just have to learn how to activate it. The biologist Humberto Maturana, says that we live trapped in constant pain, harboring suffering in different aspects of our lives, although we are experts in hiding it even before our very eyes. [1]
How to handle negativity to serve as a signaling of where we must not venture, is not taught in almost none of the educational fields. Neither is taught how to activate the constructive force. This is also part of the evil of the century. Traditional education only partially addresses development, cramming the information in the memory. It neglects the preparation to live life from all its dimensions and only configures to perform in a way that fits in the model of society and culture. The result is human beings without clear life purposes, drowned in their mental worlds and their personal realities, wanting in the end to overcome all these limitations. That is why it is so important to complement traditional education with the informal education of Integral Human Development.
We usually interpret reality in an egocentric way, without realizing it, by not accepting reality as it is but as we interpret it or as we want it to be; we even get annoyed or become violent when things do not happen according to our thoughts. Hence the need to develop a broader vision that includes other perspectives and ways of seeing things. Reality is presented with multiple facets and a person, given their natural limitations, cannot see them all. Disproportionate feelings such as discontent, anxiety, guilt, depression, boredom, dependence, the desire to escape from insecurity or escape from loneliness may arise. These feelings are not due to personal failure but to the unrealistic expectations that a person can perform a 100% correct reading of reality.
Do we live a life without much sense, feeling that we are going to die without having lived in reality? [2]
The Cure of the Evil of the Century
The study programs of HDA deepen in the identification of the aspects that generate this evil and emphasize the elements that allow its overcoming. If we aspire to build well-being, if we want to achieve greater degrees of satisfaction and fulfillment by developing the potential as existing in everyone, if we want to be competent and productive, loving ourselves and others, we need to establish ourselves on the path of continuous integral human development. This could be represented in the following way.
The principles of freedom of conscience and freedom of thought, enshrined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, accepted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948, regardless of the culture or creed to which we belong, they invite us to lead a life where we can be authentic, not just copies. Allow our internal treasures to flourish, preventing the implanted cultural programming from stopping us from seeing ourselves as we are. This programming automatically manifests itself in our behavior and expressions, as a repetitive feature of our personality, which we want to modify.
The human being approaches freedom when he recognizes the contextual reality in which he lives and learns to accept what he cannot change. What can be done is stop acting like a robot in the world, overcoming the limitations imposed on our growth. You can also learn to have a realistic and objective vision that enables the development of your full potential, your own well-being and that of your family and your community.
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1 Biological Matrix of Human Existence. Biology of Knowing and Biology of Love. Humberto Maturana Matríztica Training Institute, Santiago de Chile, 2005
2 The references to evil of the century, include research conducted by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sheldon B. Kopp and Erich Fromm, among others. To delve into the evil of the century and its ways of improvement, these authors can be consulted in the bibliography.