Introducing Marks and Thoughts
A History of Thought on Earth begins by looking for the meaning that the marks of thought have left on planet Earth and, nowadays, even outside it. The process of leaving traces extends beyond the ancient civilizations that began their records on small clay tablets or stone signs more than 5,000 years ago. We propose to show and reflect on part of this heritage of the Earth, left by the various cultures up until now..
The notion of thought is what, in the words of humans themselves, would have differentiated them from other species in Nature and, in this sense, its traces can be found before writing. Stone sculptures, cave paintings, hunting artifacts, counting marks on animal bones, etc. they were the first marks of human thought.
In a sense, the cultures that have arisen on Earth are indeed polyphonic, even though they may, in some cases, have inherited traits from one another. In another sense, however, polyphony bows to the unity of thought as a whole. Human thought is Earth thought.
But, after all, what is thought? Nothing could be more enigmatic and complex to determine. Although we can say how, in part, it works, that is, how our brain moves, how it transmits and occupies certain neuronal regions, then moving on to others, etc., we still do not know with certainty what thought itself is. After all, knowing how it is does not mean knowing what it is.
We don't even know if thinking is the result of the brain or if it is something of another nature that uses the brain to manifest itself. What is certain is that thought leaves marks, and that interests us. While in past times, the marks of thoughts appeared in isolation, as civilizations did not have intense contact with each other, nowadays we can see and hear the whole world in just a few clicks. Not only the present, but also the past.
In real time, we go through the history of the world, the universe and mankind as if it had all happened so quickly. Transformations have been slow over time and today we need transformations that are not only fast, but profound. Developing cognitive categories that are sufficiently structured to give new meanings to what comes to us is, at the very least, reasonable.
It is in this direction that this workspace hopes to contribute to a new vision of earthly society. To present traces of human thought as a unique heritage that reminds us of our origins, brings us back to the present and launches us into the future of the 21st century with new civilizational paradigms.
The civilization of the Earth by humans is one. We are face to face with our own diversities, but this only shows that we have been dispersed for a long time. There were ways of finding ourselves in distant times and distant spaces. These humans that we saw leave the marks of their thoughts on Earth are not someone else. They are ourselves, in another time, in another space. We need new theories that embrace the diverse in the same.
In this sense, the main reform that must take place in this century is the reform of the understanding of humans. On the one hand, the singularities and particularities of individuals, nations and civilizations are intensifying, because this is what gives us local identity, but at the same time, it's time to create an upper floor within ourselves so that we can deal with the universal of the singularities of peoples.
For me, Brazil, in part, is a good place to start doing this and, I hope, that wherever you are, this is also a good place for it.
I hope also that the Marks and Thoughts website will be one of the tools for reconstructing our perceptions and ideologies for the future, leaving us, too, the marks of our generation, the marks of the thought of the Earth in the 21st century.
São Paulo, March 2011
Miguel Attie Filho