A LO 20/20
PechaKucha
A LO 20/20 is a project that seeks to measure the impact that a space for debate and reflection can cause in the different personal opinions about controversial issues. Through the PechaKucha technique, six visions will be presented about Karl Marx's premise "religion is the opium of the people" by different personalities with diverse religions, professions and ideologies. It is a meeting of knowledge that seeks to determine how different speakers when expressing their vision of Marx's phrase can inform and change the opinion of an audience that believes they have the answer to the phrase based on their experience and perception of the world. nowadays. The project will bring to the room themes that we thought we had lost or were simply forgotten about, such as religion.
ÓSCAR MARTÍNEZ
Host
ALEXANDER HART
Speaker
Teacher of Judaism
GABRIEL GUTIÉRREZ
Speaker
Philosophy Teacher
TULIO MONSALVE
Speaker
Sociologist
FRANCISCO COELLO
Speaker
Sociologist
ANDREA RONDÓN
Image Subtitle
Lawyer
CECILIA MINASHES
Giving the Speech
SPEECH
By Cecilia Minashes
Your truth? No, the truth;
and come with me to look for it.
Save yours.
- Antonio Machado
Many will wonder what was the purpose of this particular event. The truth is that the idea of this entire final degree project was for you to come and listen to experts so that you could each formulate your own opinion. What is the purpose of the University? The Monteávila University has at last the search for the truth. From different angles, through different opinions. To bring different points of view so that you, and now, go home, and sit down to formulate the truth. The truth of all. And, in fact, it is the people, different from us, that make us grow.
If we surround ourselves with people with the same points of view as we do, we get closer and closer to extremes. A LO 20/20 seeks to renew these face-to-face meetings with people who do not share the same vision on a particular topic. We have to do this to realize that we can disagree and continue to shape society. In fact, every time we reach out in friendship to someone whose class or creed or color is different from ours, we heal one of the fractures in our wounded world.
After a couple of centuries, we can find religion as a set of endless repetitions, of words that mean nothing to us. Increasing, and settling because "someone has asked us." Holding on to jealously guarded doctrine. We are faced with the dilemma between how religion can remain relevant to a generation of young people who seem completely disinterested in religion itself.
However, the current purpose is to revive the essence of what religion is. Recognizing that all our traditions contain the raw material to justify violence and extremism, and contain the raw material to justify compassion, coexistence and goodness. That when some choose to read the texts as guidelines for hatred and revenge, we can choose to read those texts as directives of love and forgiveness.
We find communities so varied, that they cross the world with a message of justice and peace, that there is a shared religious ethic. And while theologies and practices vary greatly between these autonomous communities, what we can see are common points, consistent between them.
One of the most relevant principles when talking about religion is hope. Hope is not naive. It does not cloud your vision, it is not opium. Hope may be the only great act of defiance against a policy of pessimism and against a culture of despair. Because hope removes us from the support that sustains us and compresses us against the outside, and says: “you can dream and think expansively again. Nothing has absolute control over you. "
Religion is about giving people back a sense of purpose. A sense of hope, a sense that every one matters, in this world that tells us otherwise.
In a world that conspires to make us believe that we are invisible and powerless, religious communities and religious rituals can remind us that for the time we have here on earth the gifts and blessings they gave us, the resources we have, we can and we must use them, to try to make the world a little more just and with a little more love.
We are all in this together. We must recognize faith as a turn toward love, toward justice, toward equality, and toward dignity for all.
I am the daughter of European Jewish immigrants. My mom and my grandparents came to this country in the sixties. This is what my father did in the same way from the then Soviet Ukraine, escaping the aftermath of one of the most terrifying episodes in the history of humanity. In Venezuela, my family found a new rebirth. A new home where they could practice their culture without fear of being persecuted for it. For something we call it "the land of opportunities".
Venezuela was not afraid of the stranger. We speak of a nation so strong in its identity that it could receive the stranger and say: "come and share your life, share your stories, your aspirations and your dreams."
In these times of crisis, we must remember that we all share the collective responsibility for our collective future. The truth is that the only ones who can save us are us, united. Thus, we can face any future, without fear, if we know that we will not face it alone.
When we begin to have empathy for the other and to recognize him as an equal, we will feel the power of one of the most moving phrases in all religious literature:
"Even though I pass through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will not fear any evil, because you will be with me;
Your rod and staff, they comfort me. "