Silo (Mario Rodríguez)

Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos, better known as Silo (Mendoza, January 6, 1938 – Mendoza, September 16, 2010), was an Argentine writer, founder of the Humanist Movement.

Active lecturer, he wrote books, stories, articles and studies related to politics, society, psychology, spirituality and other topics. Although he defined himself as a writer, many of his readers consider him a thinker.

Biography

Silo was the third and last child of a middle-class family of Spanish descent in Mendoza (Argentina) formed by Rafael Rodríguez (a winemaker from the Andalusian city of Granada) and María Luisa Cobos (Basque, music teacher)., his siblings being Raquel and Guillermo. He attended primary and secondary education in the Marist Brothers with excellent grades, while he practiced artistic gymnastics and specialized in pommel horse, a specialty in which he reached high positions in the regional classifications, becoming champion of Cuyo. He also became involved in various youth organizations and led a very active social and intellectual life. He undertook private studies of languages, such as French and Italian, and philosophy. He also published articles in cultural magazines.

After abandoning law studies at the University of Córdoba, he traveled for six months through Latin America (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia). Later he studied three courses of Political and Social Sciences at the National University of Cuyo, where he began to form research groups on human beings and their existential and social problems.

At the age of 24 he traveled through Europe and upon his return he worked in different jobs. In 1967 ―following "an ordering towards more important truths" According to a newspaper of the time - he began to present his proposals, while he continued forming study groups in Argentina and Chile. In 1969 he organized a public speech with members of these groups, which was initially prohibited by the military dictatorship although later it was allowed in the mountains, far from the towns. On May 4, 1969, Silo (31 years old) spoke before about two hundred people gathered in Punta de Vacas (province of Mendoza), a place in the Andes mountain range near Mount Aconcagua, this being the first public exhibition of the ideas that, over time, would form the bases of the Humanist Movement. In this speech, known as "The Cure of Suffering", he discussed topics such as overcoming pain and suffering, the meaning of life, violence, desire and pleasure. In that place the Historical Park stands today, one of the numerous parks for study and reflection related to his teaching.

He married Ana Luisa Cremaschi, whom he had known since his youth, and later his two children were born, Alejandro and Federico, with whom he would always live in his hometown.

In 1972 he published The Internal View and the initial groups spread to other countries, in part because military dictatorships caused the exile of many of their participants. At the beginning of the seventies, Silo created the current of thought that is currently called New Humanism or Universalist Humanism, and founded the Humanist Movement as an organized group that aims to put said thought into practice. It can be said that this thought encompasses all of existence, not only on a social level but also on a personal level.

Starting in the eighties and with the guidance of Silo, the humanist movement began a stage of expansion in the world with the creation of organizations and action fronts: the Humanist Party with presence in about 30 countries, the Community for the Human Development (cultural association), Convergence of Cultures (civil association), World without Wars and Violence (anti-armament association) and the World Center for Humanist Studies.

During 1981 he was invited to express his proposals in various public events organized by his disciples in European and Asian cities, visiting Madrid, Rome, Berlin, later Bombay (India), and Colombo (Sri Lanka), later returning to Paris, and later San Francisco (California), and Mexico City. He expounds with particular vigor the position of non-violence, manifested in overcoming suffering, humane treatment and the attitude of not looking for blame. These relevant aspects of his thought were compiled in Silo Speaks .

In 1993, the Russian Academy of Sciences distinguished him with an honorary doctorate. At the ceremony, held on October 6 of that year in Moscow, Silo defended his ideas about "predialogue conditions", concluding his presentation with these words: «There will be no full dialogue on the underlying issues of this civilization until we begin, socially, to disbelieve so much illusion fueled by the spectacles of the current system. Meanwhile, the dialogue will continue to be insubstantial and without connection with the deep motivations of society. When the Academy sent me its recognition, I understood that in some latitudes something new has begun to move, something that, starting in a dialogue of specialists, will later occupy the public square.

Recent years

At the beginning of 2002, Silo announced his retirement from the Humanist Movement, after having promoted it for 32 years. He did so by transferring the orientation of the Humanist Movement to an assembly, made up of the general coordinators of said movement. By August 2007 there were around 400 members in this assembly.^{[citation needed]}

In mid-2002 he launched The Message of Silo comprised of a book, an experience and a path. Among his most recent projects is the push for the construction of built complexes called Parks of Study and Reflection in Argentina, Chile, Spain, the United States, Italy, India and Egypt, among other geographic sites. The money to build these parks is obtained from voluntary donations.

During the 2000s he spoke again in Punta de Vacas on several occasions with his proposal of reconciliation, of accessing the depths and sacredness of the human being, accepting invitations to present his message and going to humble places, such as houses. family or neighborhood halls in Mendoza, Greater Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile or Quito. She also attends events organized in Lisbon, Rome, northern Italy and other places. On the other hand, as Message Rooms and Study and Reflection Parks were organized around his work, Silo attended various inaugural events in these places such as La Reja (Buenos Aires), Manantiales (Santiago de Chile), Carcarañá (Rosario, Argentina), Toledo (Spain), Attigliano (Rome, Italy), etc.

One of his last public interventions was made in Berlin on November 11, 2009, invited by the Nobel Peace Prize winners to speak at their 10th World Summit, on the occasion of the passage through that city of the World March for Peace and Nonviolence. On this occasion, with his conference titled & # 34; The meaning of Peace and Non-violence at the current moment. The World March, Silo called for global nuclear disarmament as the main urgency.

His last years were spent in Chacras de Coria, a town near the city of Mendoza. He died at his home on September 16, 2010, after suffering from kidney disease for more than a year.

His figure is controversial, since his followers consider him a spiritual guide, while his critics describe him as a messianic leader (see the Criticisms section below). He referred to himself as a writer and practitioner of what he called an "internal religiosity."

There are few interviews and interventions in the Silo media. However, the most abundant were carried out in Chile at the beginning of the nineties (with the return to democracy) in the main debate programs of the country's television media.

Thought

In psychology

The concept of intentionality of consciousness, which had been taken up by Franz Brentano from medieval scholasticism and developed by Edmund Husserl in Ideas relating to a pure phenomenology and a phenomenological philosophy, gains importance central to Silo's thought. It starts from the differentiation between sensation, perception and image:

We will understand the sensation as the record that is obtained by detecting a stimulus from the external or internal environment and which makes the tone of work of the affected sense. [...] We will understand perception as a structuring of sensations made by consciousness referring to a sense, or to several senses. [...] We prefer to understand the image as a structured and formalized re-presentation of the sensations or perceptions that come or have come from the external or internal environment. The image, therefore, is not “copy” but synthesis, intent, and therefore is not merely passiveness of consciousness. [...] In this work we intend to realize the image as an active way of being consciousness in the world, as a way of being that cannot be independent of spatiality and as a way in which the many functions it performs, depend on the position it assumes in that spatiality. [...] Every perception corresponds to a representation that indefectably modifies the data of “reality”. In other words: the perception-image structure is a behavior of consciousness in the world, whose meaning is the transformation of that world. [...] This way of being consciousness in the world is basically a mode of action in perspective whose immediate spatial reference is the body itself, not only the intrabody. But the body being the object of the world is also the object of the landscape and the object of transformation. The body ends up devining prosthesis of human intentionality. If the images allow to recognize and act, as the landscape is structured into individuals and peoples, as their needs (or whatever their needs are), they will tend to transform the world.

Silo, Psychology of the image - Contributions to thought

Likewise, it rejects the ideas of the unconscious and subconscious as epochal myths whose scientific premises are incorrectly formulated, to focus on the study of copresence, impulses, levels of consciousness, response centers, etc., as part of the psyche and the functioning of consciousness. Silo's thinking is also novel in the definition of the space of representation:

But since all the senses produce their representation and this representation is given in a mental space, this space places an environment in which the representations that have come from different perceptual sources are located. This space is only the set of internal representations of the cenesthesic system itself. So the mental space is a kind of screen that reproduces the impulses of the cenestesia itself. Thus, every phenomenon of perception that reaches the coordination apparatus is placed at some point in the representation screen. It is a sound, a smell or an object that enters visually, in all cases it is placed at some point in the representation space. This space not only has gradation in two planes, but has depth, has volume and reproduces, approximately, to the body itself. It is a “body” of representation, or if you want, of a “space reference background”.

Silo, Psychology II – Psychology notes

In the conception of the human being

Silo further differentiates itself from academic fields in a conception of the human being that led to the formation of the Humanist Movement. In fact, in the definition of the Humanist Movement as the group of people who study and interpret the needs of human beings and establish the conditions to advance from the field of determination to the field of freedom, that is, To overcome pain and suffering, both individually and socially, his idea of the human being is implicit:

Man is the historical being, whose mode of social action transforms his own nature. If I admit the above, I will have to accept that that being can intentionally transform his physical constitution. And so it's happening. It began with the use of instruments that put forward from his body as external “prosthesis” allowed him to stretch his hand, perfect his senses and increase his strength and quality of work. Naturally it was not equipped for the liquid and air media and yet it created conditions to move in them, until it began to emigrate from its natural environment, planet Earth. Today, moreover, he is interning in his own body by changing his organs; intervening in his brain chemistry; fertilizing in vitro and manipulating his genes. If the idea of “nature” has meant to point out the permanent, such an idea is still inappropriate today if it is to apply it to the most objective of the human being, that is, to his body. And in what makes a “natural moral”, a “natural right”, or “natural institutions” we find, opposite, that in that field everything is historical-social and nothing there exists “by nature”.

Silo, Fourth letter to my friends

The action of humanists is not inspired by fanciful theories about God, Nature, Society or History. Part of the life needs that consist of removing pain and approaching pleasure. But human life adds to needs its future forecast based on past experience and the intention of improving the current situation. Its experience is not simply a product of natural and physiological selections or accumulations, as is the case in all species, but it is a social experience and personal experience launched to overcome current pain and avoid it in the future. His work, accumulated in social productions, passes and becomes from generation to generation in continuous struggle to improve the natural conditions, even those of the body itself. For this reason, human beings must be defined as historical and with a way of social action capable of transforming the world and its own nature. And every time an individual or a human group violently imposes on others, it manages to stop history by turning its victims into “natural” objects. Nature has no intention, so it is that by denying the freedom and intentions of others, it becomes natural objects, objects of use.

Silo, Sixth letter to my friends

In the spiritual field

Silo explains his thoughts regarding the spiritual in these terms:

Every human being must have full right to believe or not to believe in immortality and the sacred. The Message gives the greatest importance to the subject of immortality and the sacred because according to how a person is placed in front of this, so will be the orientation of his life. It also assumes the difficulties of openly examining fundamental beliefs by colliding with censorships and self-censorships that inhibit free thinking and good conscience.

In the context of free interpretation, for some immortality it refers to actions carried out in life but that continue in the world despite physical death. For others, the memory that is preserved in loved ones, or even in societies, guarantees persistence after physical death. For others, immortality is accepted as personal persistence at another level of existence. Following free interpretation, some feel the sacred as the deepest affection. For them, children and other very loved ones represent the sacred and possess a maximum value that should not be enviled for any reason. There are those who consider the human being sacred and their universal rights. Others experience divinity as the essence of the sacred.

The different positions in the face of the themes of immortality and the sacred, should not simply be “tolerated” but genuinely respected.

Silo, Silo's message

Published books

• 1969: Manual of young power.
• 1979: The inner gaze.
• 1981: The internal landscape.
• 1989: Humanize the Earth (consta from The inner gaze, The internal landscape and The human landscape).
• 1989: Guided experiences.
• 1991: Contributions to thought.
• 1991: Universal root myths.
• 1993: Letters to my friends.
• 1993: The day of the winged lion.
• 1996: Dictionary of New Humanism.
• 1996: Silo..
• 1998: Complete Works - Volume I.
• 2002: Complete Works - Volume II.
• 2006: Psychology notes (recollection of conferences 1975, 1976, 1978 and 2006).
• 2008: Silo's message.

His works were translated into several languages.

Criticism and influence

At the beginning of the seventies and from sectors of the Chilean left, Silo was accused of being a fascist and of creating a reactionary movement. At the same time, the Catholic Church accused him of threatening the family and Christian morality, as appears in the Chilean newspapers of the time. According to the Siloists, this campaign would have been a reaction to Silo's growing influence on young people and to the fact that he was actually proposing a new humanist left with a non-Marxist ideology.

On occasions, his detractors have wanted to make him appear as a messianic or sectarian leader. Thus, his career has unfolded among those who study him, understand and disseminate his proposals, and arrests, virulent opposition and not always reliable press. However, he was always able to reach the simple and common people to whom he addressed his message. On June 6, 1986, Silo gave a conference at the Swiss House in Buenos Aires, titled "Silo thinks about religiosity in today's world" in which he clearly explained his philosophy and his most important ideas.

Some institutions - such as the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica - showed recognition of his career in the days after his death.

Silo's influence was reflected in obituaries in the newspaper Página/12 in Argentina and in the newspaper El País in Spain. The latter refers to Silo as "founder of a philosophy that brought together a million followers in more than 100 countries" and "a strange character for the West, but he would not have been if he had been born in the East." He proclaimed a spiritual and social change at the same time for the refoundation of the “human nation.”

Two months after his death, the documentary El Sabio de los Andes and the audiobook Gracias Silo, by Horacio Mesón from Mar del Plata, were presented.