Familia Utopia Manifesto, ClujNapoca,Romania ( English version )

7/30/2019 Familia Utopia Manifesto, ClujNapoca,Romania ( English version )

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Famila Utopia (Utopic Family) is an experiment initiated by a group of student from Cluj Napoca,

and you are welcome to be part of this project. Familia Utopia aims to establish as a

non-governmental organization. This is the manifesto, its baptism, this is our approach to make

visible our spiritual intentions and material needs.

The concept

The Utopia Family is an indeterminate society; it is the place where anyone can come, no

matter his age, ethnicity, profession, gender, sexual orientation, political or financial status. It is the

place where anyone can be anyone, the place where we know how to make the difference between

the roles and those who play them. The Utopia Family tries to redefine the bond between the

individual and the alterity; it tries to put the cornerstone of a trust-funded, mutual help relationship

while perpetuating these principles outwards, since it is an open society.

The Utopia Family wants to problematize the anthropological difficulties of identity and alterity in

the context of both inter human relationships and those between individuals and the world, using

cultural interaction as method. The Utopia Family represents our window to the world which we try

to capture in its horizon, in all its splendor.

We are exploiting the creative potential existing in everybody, we believe in the ascetic value of

work, a work which among art has beside the liberating process of catharsis the character of human

binder, because a Family- in other words a Society, a microcosm- is about the collaboration between

its members, achieving cohesion. We try to let go our irrational fears, to find the orderliness and the

freedom of expressing ourselves; we dissipate the routine with refreshing, yet soliciting activities on

the intellectual and imaginative area.


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The Argument

We are interested in the condition of human beings and contemporary society since we see

so many troubles, issues, worries and necessities among us; unhappy, almost desperate people, who

struggle and run to survive. We are totally aware of the negative impact of contemporary man on

biodiversity, which comes from its actual survival techniques, his urbanocentric lifestyle, his

consumerist culture term which became defining for this poque in which the informational

phenomena is global; Blue Planet and humanity are facing globalization .

We want to know where do these problems come from, whether they were as burdening as they are

today in different moments in history, and were asking ourselves how to solve them. This can be

done by adventuring in the land of cultures, studying the cultural diversity in different historical

poques and geographical spaces, problematizing the axiological discourses descending from the

individual-society relationship, having also in view the unity of our species and of the human spirit,

seeing humanity as a whole, a situation in cosmos.

Aims/ Attitude

We wish to give life to some unused places, transforming them into spots where people, projects

and ideas meet, improvised cultural spaces. Our proposal is a cultural program which offers people a

free environment for creation and idea diffusion in both social and artistic domain.

The Utopia Family project reunites thinkers and activists, simple and creative people, craftsmen,

cultural specialists, contemporary art galleries and active cultural organizations oriented in fields

such as: philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, ecology, non-formal education,

art-therapy in public spaces (labyrinth and sensorial theatre, contemporary dance, visual art, music)

etc. .

We intend to initiate an interdisciplinary program open to the large public through which we can

involve various communities in socio-cultural collaboration activities, interaction and both emotional

and cognitive interchange. Our goal is to create a priory educative environment, while shaping a

non-formal education platform. We are not contesting formal education as method, but its

development directions and its degree of adaptability in the socio-cultural context of contemporary

society.


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*Crowfunding* The cultural association The Utopia Family needs your spiritual and material

support.

If youre facing the problems mentioned before, if our ideas incite, impulse and enthuse you, if

they seem creative and sustainable, worthy of consideration, dont hesitate to contact us! This is a

solidarizing manifesto. This is our yell. This is our voice, this is our spirit. We need resources in order

to establish this cultural association. We need your support for acquiring and transforming spaces for

living and making our activities happen.

Activists of the world, unite!

Support and sharing

Contact: Grig Vulpe (0745070774) / Raluca Vladu (0741610298)

[email protected] / http://familiautopia.org

NEODADA MANIFESTO

FAMILIA UTOPIA.org

The 31th of May, Cluj Napoca, Romania

Authors: Grig Vulpe, Raluca Vladu

1. Creation, not consumption

2. No children were ever born homophobic

3. Take me out of statistic, reintegrate me in the Cosmos
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Ffamiliautopia.org%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGnDWcw2fnrYTLKy8PgFENNXgYWcwhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Ffamiliautopia.org%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGnDWcw2fnrYTLKy8PgFENNXgYWcw


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4. Every human being has the right of living the moment, the right of inner peace and

cardiac massage, silence and rest, noise and speed deprivation, the right to sleep and to

die, so then it can liberated rebirth.

These days, privacy costs. The spirit is not allowed to breathe, its glance being

capriciously caught by the quotidian aggressive, tumultuous, killing and dehumanizing

wave. The human being has the right of womb, the right to contemplate and to touch the

sunshine, the right of center, of his own center, of his own rhythm, of his harmony with

the great cosmic rhythms. The great cosmic rhythms surpass our immediate perceptions

and even our thought. Logically, abstractly considered, the great rhythms have no shape.

They remain an image which we can imagine in front of our attentive eyes. (Constantin

Noica)

Being aware of the great cosmic animal and of our great gifts- sense, imagination and

intellect, that is the dare- is the wisdom.

We may be spirit. We are universal emotional capacity; after all, the way we stand, divided

in this world, we are rhythms. Let the rhythms solidarize. If there is something we expect

from culture, that is making us escape the shame of standing outside the rhythms.

(Constantin Noica)

Today, the human being has no more time for himself, being caught in the utilitarian rat

race, a race for that the biological body which needs resources and energy can resume the

cycle, to run more and more, to make profit or to make oneself profitable, to continue

ignoring the spirit. The man doesnt have respite to see the sky, to think, to live the

moment, to let himself rapt by the wind. It is a race with no finish line, a bottomless pit, a

marathon for subsistence. The contemporary man is caught in this marathon with no guns,

not tools nor techniques, not fire nor stones, without the soul or the time through which

he could have known (himself), he could become, or he could be. These are the conditions

of our existence, and man is, besides all, an animal; having no reason, being full of

dilemmas.

The problem is even more serious. The man isnt allowed to scream and shout, to cry or


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to fall anymore. He has not the right to revolt, nor the strength and the guts to do it...or

maybe he has no reasons to do it, doesnt know how to or he is simply afraid. He isnt

allowed to roar nor to bite, to hit, nor to grime with its own blood or with mud because it

is not politically correctfor the poque, for the boulevard, for the concrete and the salon,

for the exigencies ofmodern spirit , which pretending to be ripe enough, passing through

life and lives, declares itself capable of offering solutions to the most intimate human

needs, may them be basic or cultural, animal and of subsistence primary, and only then

the superior ones, helping people to discover their spirit and faith, and after that, legit and

somehow obvious to spur them to manners, sobriety and civilization. This is a false

assumption.

Even though the contemporary poque hardly offers a decent path to subsistence, the

man refuses to revolt. Despite of being repressed, the man seems to have no reaction. Man

loses his animalism which could somehow awake his spirit, bring him back to life.

The consumerist culture seems to be a kid exploited by narrow-minded people, who only

have material needs. This issue highlights a handicap occurred in the axiological scheme of

humanity. However, this culture must assume this type of individuals and ask itself

whether if he has done his homework, if he have solved his problems, if he has found an

answer to his own struggles.

Maybe education and enculturation-which is the process of passing forward the essence

of that typical cultures wisdom- means just guiding your children, your neighbors, helping

them not to fall, maintaining their verticality, offering answers to the eternal questions,

offering them a model of united humanity, a spiritual one, draught by a transcendental

thirst. Did the age, the direction and the solutions of culture- which in time had become

organic- constituted a friendly fundament foundation, did it value enough life, had it

been sacred enough or it had profaned the spirit? Were talking about ontological depths,

both cultural and individual. The present tendency is centrifuged- we are furthering of our

center, of the great rhythms, of the environment and of the spirit.

Does the spirit of the poque-through its reflections to the world, through its mirrors and


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force- still defend the sacred and appreciate life? Mass culture doesnt need spirit,

creativity, lucidity, unity. After all, it only avoids the forces which might betray it, which

might surpass and destroy it, blaming it for hypocrisy and suicidal unconsciousness.

Solidarity is not global; the World has apparently closed after Columbus.

By nature men are similar; by practice men are wide apart. (Confucius)

Culture starts where animal evolution stops. From this viewpoint, culture grows on

minus. Culture takes us far from the nature, but this is an illusion because man is nature.

Man can whether destroy or contemplate the nature, the organic matter, but he cannot

create it. In order to survive, he needs to preserve it. Modern man declares himself

landlord and master over this planet, while he is just a passenger, a cosmic traveller,dependent on the biosphere, the ecosystem, and the air.

Therefore, if nature means unity of the human race and man tends to further from

nature means that he is furthering from unity. But does not culture mean unity? At least,

this is its eternal wish: universality.

In other words, man tries to give away his animal unity and searches through culture to

fulfill his other unity: the spiritual one.

Nature represents that common noun, a given on which we depend, we can say that

somehow, nature does not belong to us; we havent chosen it. Man is human only on the

soil of culture; only there he can call himself free, feel like a creator, and only through

culture the true unity of human race, the voluntary one, is being shaped.

Lets defend then nature through culture!

What is left from the contemporary man?

Contemporary man seems to lack spirituality, rationality and animalism. He is lost

among social and cultural constrains, deprived of freedom, dependent on the

supermarket, in the middle of uniforming globalization, he is confused by the frantic

rhythm of the poque, caught in the crowd with no landmarks .For him, the Time declares

itself as real and pressing while waiting in the station or at the airport, when in fact there


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is no such thing, only rhythms, now become alert. Man doesnt seem emancipated at all, as

if he was a newborn. Contemporary man is minor.

Typically for the situation of man in the world is the fact that he finds himself thrown in it.

(Martin Heidegger)

How does our life start? Through an expel outside the comfortable, nutritious and protective

maternal womb. Mans first experience in the world is waking up outside. He did not ask for

it. It is a situation in which you wake up, not knowing why, not having been asked before, not

knowing where youre heading to, but that is it, you are suddenly thrown away outside.

(Gabriel Liiceanu)

To the outsiders, we kindly address and ask them in, to safe place and warmth, in the

primordial womb. Here we celebrate the coming of age of the being. Here, playing, we create

and destroy worlds. Here, we rethink the society, its values, here we defend our traditions

which state that the paths are already beaten (Rene Descartes). Here we embrace people,

we enjoy life. Here we give birth to cultures, we metaphysically recognize the spirit and

give it the chance to affirm itself, here we take care of the Blue Planet, we fly through the

cosmos, we enjoy the moment, we imagine.

5. The Utopia Family - axiological perspective

The concept of value consists of two main functions. The indicatory of global cultural

identitiesfunction shows which are the specific ideals and criteria which operate in the space

of different poques and cultures of humanity, it shows which representations, beliefs and

attitudes define certain societies, cultures, and nations. The critical function sets the criteria

of performance inside a named culture, delimiting the values from the non-values. (Btlan

Ion)

The problematizaton and afterwards the automatisation of values are a significant

indicator of social progress, while for us, it becomes a necessity, a starting point, a dare.

We underline both the importance and the influence of social and cultural environment


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in the process of human development. We concentrate on the process of enculturation

and plead for cosmocentric pedagogy. Each pedagogy implies certain anthropology. We

are against anthropocentrism, therefore against anthropocentric anthropologies. Man is

neither the center nor the purpose of the universe. The immanent philosophies amuse us.

Applied to individual, the concept of immanence leads to anthropocentrism. This is the

trap in which the spirit, believing itself indeterminate, thinking that it is a demiurge when

in fact it is imperfect and under determinations by its human, animal, corporal, instinctual,

sexual and mortal nature, risks falling. We are aware of the human need of landmarks

and we believe that truly important for man is life, and the point of reference- the mystery

of the indeterminate revealed by the spatial conscience of the cosmic experience ( which

means the fact that we are a part of the cosmos- somewhere on one of the planets part of

one of the millions of planetary systems, part of the billons of galaxies) and by the fact

that we are a product of the cosmos, that the idea of cosmos exists beyond man and

reason.

What is more, people do not live alone on this planet. They are part of the biosphere

and share this space with a diversity of other forms of life. Man is actually the result of acomplex process which took place in billions of years. Man is just one of the billions of

living species of this planet. Were talking about man and Earth- even his attitude towards

this spring of life has changed. In fact, once with the modern times, mans attitude towards

nature has become measurable in terms of profit. From here starts the attention we give

to the negative impact of contemporary man and his lifestyle on biodiversity.


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We are against adultcentrism and against the common sense belief that grownups are

superior to children. Lets not forget that the adults are those who promote and give

social and cultural examples, most of the time irrational and wrong (or at least

questionable), coming from political reasons. So isnt the duty of children to problematize,

clarify and therefore fight for the commission of normality, the enthronement of

democracy beyond cultural, social, historical, etic or biographical determinations?

Freedom= the dose of indeterminate

We are against urbanocentrism and we underline the microbe, the plague, the illusionand the idea corresponding to which life cannot be lived outside the urban centers.

Moreover, we are about to introduce the concept of Sensitive human hypnosis. Not

blinding is the contemporary problem, but the quotidian hypnosis (dazzling by its

tremendously fast flux of information, the high noise of urban agglomerations, the

mechanised phonic and visual pollution) which represents the temptation and the trap of


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attention, and even worse, the illusion of lucidity. Not blinding or the sleep itself is the

problem, but the fact of not questioning our state of spirit.

The poverty of time is boundless. Now, this miserable time cannot even acknowledge its

own poverty. (Martin Heidegger)

It is foolish to rip out the eye which made you sin, wise is to

cover it

We criticize egoism, anthropocentrism, xenophobia, sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, the

vanity of elitist culture whether is it academic or artistic, and we contest the dogmatic

intellectualism, the consumptionist culture and the modern society which feeds-at least

passively- the crisis of contemporary man. We promote and stimulate at the same time

creativity in order to form critical and reflexive consciences through both theoretic and

practical methods.

Concerning the theory, we wish to essentialise, debate and diffuse concepts such as:

sociologic imagination, ideographic, alterity, cultural relativism, multiculturalism, globalization,

capitalism, work market, enculturation, anthroposophy, praxeology, time management, project

management, civic conscience, global university, food not bombs, etc..

We promote moral, cultural and axiological relativism. However, we try to stay away from

the trap of radical relativism. We instigate to political emancipation and reflect on the idea of

life without masters. On an artistic basis, we sustain the rehabilitation of the creative function

of imagination, sensibility and intuition, the freedom of expression and arts right of having its

own autonomous truth. In what concerns the practice, we adopt formulas and activities such

as: non-formal education, physical education, art therapy -through theatre, poetry,

cinematography-, experimental and sensorial art, labyrinth theatre, gastronomy,

brainstorming sessions, and permaculture.


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6) The actualization in conscience ofthe Illuminist project: the meliorating role of knowledge

What kind of reason allows the nuclear bombardment, pollution, crimes or ignorance,

mediocrity and the oppression of different forms of life? We cannot talk about reason in this

case. This is a false reason of which we have to divest. This is an anthropocentric reason

which suffocates us. We are sweating. We must use reason as to adapt and democratize our

sight.

From our viewpoint, talking about a global task and implicitly of a wish of progress and

illumination risen from the faith in humanity, its role is to develop global solidarity (between

man and the other forms of life and interhuman) in order to stimulate creative, critic and

reflexive consciences. The purpose of knowledge, science and research cannot be other than

social amelioration, therefore cultural emancipation. In terms of cultural politics, we promote a

qualitative- axiological spread of diversity, underlining the unity. Globalization must truly

become social and cultural, and not remain just industrial or technological. Starting from the

industrialization, cities have become tentacled, extending and modifying the relationships

between individuals and those between individuals and society. The personal-impersonal

rapport has been reversed despite the fact that people are placed in spatial proximity, their

relationships tend to have a purely professional or circumstantial character, therefore

impersonal. What we think about cultural globalization is that it should give up the industry

and the cities, at least in their present (urbanocentric) form, since we are aware of mans

negative impact on biodiversity. Cultural emancipation nowadays is propagated by Transition

Movement through permaculture and the idea of eco-villages and The Venus Project.

Through these steps we are having in view the reintegration of man in the cosmic structures of

existence.

The whole text was translated from Romanian language by Raluca Vladu. Thanks
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thevenusproject.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEAzeTMWYFOvPCTVYZ_0ZpkhhFwFAhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thevenusproject.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEAzeTMWYFOvPCTVYZ_0ZpkhhFwFAhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transitionnetwork.org%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNENIdEIfR2qRtQD0xnaKXn-HCO9JAhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transitionnetwork.org%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNENIdEIfR2qRtQD0xnaKXn-HCO9JAhttp://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.transitionnetwork.org%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNENIdEIfR2qRtQD0xnaKXn-HCO9JA


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ABCTerms and concepts

alterity= the state or quality of being other a being otherwise.

anthropocentrism = an inclination to evaluate reality exclusively in terms of human values

anthropology= the scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural

development of humans.

biodiversity=the variability among living organisms on the earth, including the variability within and

between species and within and between ecosystems.

creative=having the ability to create

critical=judging and analysing

egocentrism= the philosophy or attitude of considering oneself the center of the universe the state orquality of being self-centered

emancipation=the act of freeing or state of being freed liberation informal freedom from inhibition and

convention

enculturation=the process by which a person adapts to and assimilates the culture in which he lives.

ethnocentrism=belief in the intrinsic superiority of the nation, culture, or group to which one belongs,

often accompanied by feelings of dislike for other groups

immanence= the quality of being contained within, or remaining within the boundaries of a person, of

the world, or of the mind of a mental act performed entirely within the mind

solidarity=solidarity is unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of

interests, objectives, and standards t refers to the ties in a society that bind people together as one

cohesion, unity, bond.

urbanocentrism= the domination of urban space over the rural areas, the masses attraction to urban

areas

xenophobia=an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers, or of that which is foreign or

strange.


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Familia Utopia Manifesto, ClujNapoca,Romania ( English version )

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