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2019 A Power AG AS PDF
2019 A Power AG AS PDF
sets the base for a dialogue among communities fostering a new methodology really
effective in the field.
“The more the peacock eats poison, the more its feathers become luminous”
Drubtchok Gualwa Samdrup
INTRODUCTION
major narrative which promotes a convincing story telling motif. Truth has scarce power
to be popular per se because it relates to knowledge and transmission in an independent
and unpopular way. On the contrary, the values of wellbeing and good health are at the
core of the educational process of indigenous communities. In Peru, the Muchik of
Chaparrí and the Asháninka of Mayantuyacu experience as a community traditional and
western medicine as an intertwined concept. The idea of truth is embedded in the landscape
and its ancestral knowledge sets the base for a dialogue among communities fostering a
new bicognitive methodology which proves effectiveness in the field. These practices
identify and are in alignment with Sustainable Development.
In particular the ancestry of Indigenous communities becomes a significant reference
to identify collective resources and define coherent objectives, while adapting to
continuous changes in their society. Bridging gaps and finding common grounds are
traditional practices in the way many different cultures communicate to one another,
especially when they share the same territory. Everywhere on the planet non-urban and
non-rural communities - that is forest cultures - are ancestrally accustomed to store, move,
and transmit information across various cultural paradigms and geographies. This
flexibility generates common ground among different geographies, ethnic groups, and
environmental diversity and ultimately promotes the growth of a society permeable to
plurality and resilient to change. Remotti (2002) and Guerci (2007), noted the idea of
epigenetic factors in evolution changed from the traditional anthropologic approach to an
anthropopoiesis, where the social and cultural practices contribute to the definition of what
is means to be human, whole and complex.
Notions of humanity might be of interest to contemporary western education
perspectives that are in constant of best practices oriented towards the development of
critical thinking, and ways to improve educational outcomes. Solutions and designs about,
but at the core there is a need to recognize students as whole but complex human beings.
This is an important factor in the process of connecting and learning. Otherwise systems
collapse under the inability to forge authentic ways to identify knowledge that is useful to
the teaching and learning enterprise and how to find and transmit it. By exploring two cases
in the Andes and in the Amazon, we aim to shed new light on indigenous traditions
confronting globalized aspects of Western culture in the field of medicine and health and
their responses which highlight effective knowledge transmission strategies which might
be promising for Western minded educator who struggle to connect across difference.
Heritage are typical cultural features generating long lasting identities and a credible
storytelling. The ability to transmit a convincing narrative to which individuals,
communities, and even entire species can relate to, is a key factor in human evolution and
has allowed the progressively accelerated storage and exchange of information
everywhere; that is until hierarchical complex societies took control over such information.
In the Western world this emergence transforms knowledge acquisition and transmission
towards anthropocentric societies, where power becomes the ultimate goal to acquire
knowledge. When individualism overpasses collective awareness and identity, a better
understanding of reality is transformed into the opportunity to control society. However,
power coming from a single or individual source distorts the truth, because it delivers only
one convincing storytelling for everybody, as noted by Sium and Ritskes, (2013).
On the other hand, the authentic research of truth – which animates the accumulation
of knowledge – has scarce power to be popular per se, because it relates to knowledge and
transmission in an independent and unpopular way. Knowledge as truth searching tool –
implies a usefulness not necessarily recognized by the controlling authorities (Kiefer,
2006). In time, Western ways of looking for the truth become individualized. In the
globalized scenario sometimes, they do not reach the mainstream storytelling nor gain the
necessary media exposure to challenge them.
The worldview of traditional societies springs from a different perspective. For
example, forest, desert, and mountain people – neither urban nor rural – do not see nature
as detached from the rest of the biosphere. To the contrary, they conceive a complex biotic
network in which they partake. Their storytelling is the one generated by natural forces and
is translated into analytical deductions and social actions in the territory. Among other
activities, the values of well-being and good health are at the core of the educational process
of indigenous communities. Often scaled as a fractal version of the harmonic rules of the
cosmos, the norms of the natural landscape reflect and connect the organization of human
communities (Gavazzi, 2010). Knowledge is therefore a derived set of the common
understanding of reality, a cloud of concepts ritually transmitted and cyclically evolving
from one generation to the next. Truth searching among indigenous cultures becomes a
conscious and profound interaction with a greater environment, with results comparable to
what westers would call analytical deductions.
Mundy and Lloyd-Laney (1992) analyzed the effectiveness of indigenous
communication with the environment, which takes into consideration plants, animals, and
humans. Re and Ventura (2015) also stress the idea of a coalescence of consciousness
which goes far beyond the limits of the lucid awareness of the present. Knowledge
therefore is more the result of a collective experience than the quest of a single as it requires
the togetherness of more than one state of consciousness. On one side stands the objectivity
of a scientific methodology, on the other the simultaneous presence of an ancestral
knowledge, which requires depth, a cyclical notion of time, and more than one state of
mind to be assessed.
Power or Truth? 5
operations of human stock exchanges together; the territorial maps of pollinating insects
surpass by colors, width, and lines any urban subway. The observation of the multiplicity
of layers of planned activity in one single square meter of a tropical forest shows many
more environmental, biochemical, and physical parameters than any western city master
plan. Such complexity, however, is comprehensible solely to its inhabitants: the network
perpetuates itself through the repetition and adaptation of functional and logical sequences.
In other words, it tells a credible story. Forest people recognize it and learn its rules to
generate order in their own communities. What happens when such a powerful knowledge
base is not appreciated, understood, or recognized? This approach to transmitting
knowledge explains why and how the unique combination of geomorphology, climate,
waters, biotic network, tangible, and intangible heritage in a specific site shows the ability
to restore health. Forest thinking is all about translating the storytelling of nature and using
its tools to evolve within its living system.
a disease or a problem and its solution, revealed both by the mithography and the
biochemistry of plants and their musical harmonies. The disease is transformed during a
healing practice in a ceremonial space orchestrated by the physician, who induces a
metamorphosis of the architectural space into a cosmological space, recreates a local
harmony, and spreads it among patients (Tindall, 2008). The forms of the maloca reproduce
those of the cosmos, factually replicated in the morphology of plants. The will to cure is
ultimately found in the plants, as well as the biochemical ability to heal. The classification
of medical devices of the existing interdisciplinary research with the Chair connects more
elements: Drawings of Juan Flores of the Plant teachers; Photographic record of the plants;
Icaros in association with the plants; Mythical narrations associated to each plant;
Botanical classification of species; Clinical classification of the results; Geophysical
classification of water and geography; Survey of the spaces of worldview and healing; and
Technomorphology of the maloca.
The architectural research focused on the evidence of mythological-morphological
elements embodied in the typology of the central Maloca, in order to generate a digital
reconstruction of its structure and construction process. The successive study of the
landscape has identified the persistence of sacred spaces and their periodic recreation in
ceremonial events, which constitute the central event of the transmission of a worldview
and a stable and harmonious relationship with the Natural landscape. The healing space
generated by the medical, architectural and therapeutic practices are integrated with the
geomorphological environment, the water network and the biotic network of the primary
forest of that specific region of the Amazon. The study of the water, the fitotaxonomy, the
analysis of spaces and the constructive morphology, the medical and musical traditions
require the same attention dedicated to the conservation of the geo hydrological,
ethnographic and symbolic elements: only the orchestrated togetherness of all elements
induces the requested therapeutic effects.
The presence of the forest induces the collection of wild products, which are
successively prepared as food, diets, or drugs in the local laboratory and later processed
with water from the spring. This combination allows, on the one hand, the production of
fresh compounds of wild origin and, on the other, the mixing with waters with mineral
properties. The result is food and medicinal preparations of a quality far superior to those
processed industrially, which are adapted to the individual recipe for each patient. Studying
personalized solutions in a laboratory associated with a vast primary forest collection area
allows the formation of potentially unlimited compounds and at the same time the
opportunity of maintaining and spreading the Ashaninka medical tradition. The center also
offers courses and seminars for researchers, ethnobotanists, and doctors and the possibility
of developing combined medical solutions against diseases scarcely known elsewhere.
Ethno psychiatric implications to this type of research are recognized by Siri, Del Puente,
Matini, & Bragazzi (2017) .
10 Adine Gavazzi and Anna Siri
The work carried out is safeguarded under a Concession for Mayantuyacu emitted in
2017 by the Regional Directorate of Agriculture of Huánuco thus consolidating the
conservation and sustainable management of the primary forest (Ccenta & Quispe 2017).
The existing Plan de Manejo of the community is directed towards the preservation of the
natural resource contributing economic, cultural, and environmental benefits to the region.
The idea of solutions embedded in the forest, that is, truth embedded in the landscape and
its ancestral knowledge, sets the base for a dialogue among communities, fostering a
bicognitive methodology which proves effectiveness in the field. As with Chaparri, these
practices identify and apply Sustainable Development Goal 3 Good health and Well-being
as well as SDG 4 Quality education (Mamun 2018).
CONCLUSION
the one of peacocks: the beauty of their feathers is produced by the spontaneous
metamorphosis of the toxic medicinal plant of black aconite or vatsanabha (Aconitum
ferox), which the bird absorbs by destroying the snakes of ignorance. In the eternal struggle
between the desire for Power and the search for Truth, the acknowledgment of the limits
of human knowing opens a successful path towards healing, transformation and ultimately
evolution. The more the peacock eats poison, the more its feathers become luminous.
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