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Towards the middle of the last century, millions of people from all over the world (sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, intellectuals, communicators, artists…) enthusiastically joined a new current of thought that put Communication on the cusp of our practices and knowledge. “Everything communicates” became the new slogan governing the world. According to this concept, everything human beings do, feel, and think, translates into behaviors that communicate something to someone.
That new current was part of a historical moment. As the journalist and essayist John Higgs reminds us in his book Alternative History of the Twentieth Century, since the late nineteenth century, one by one, all the beliefs, practices, knowledge, traditions (in short, all the cultural axes) that with great patience (and for tranquility) humanity had erected for centuries came into question. Thus have been falling God, scientific certainty, military honor, moral order, the value of art, the hope of education, the sacredness of the family, the golden materiality of money… Everything central, every “axis of the world,” was lost in just a few decades. Even the individual consciousness plunged into the abysses of the subconscious and risked disappearing.
Thus, when social scientists in Palo Alto, California, announced that everything in this world is communication, millions of people clung to that resounding truth, finding the solution to their growing anguish. Communication! Something so everyday, universal, and ancient, continued functioning. The miracle was precisely that communication is an activity that dispenses with every center; it is the very reflection of “off-center,” what comes and goes, what happens from one thing to another, one mind to another, in a continuous flow. In 1934, the famous Danish writer Isak Dinesen put the following words in one of her characters’ minds: “How difficult it is to know the truth! I would like to know if it is possible to tell the truth when you are alone. In my understanding, truth is an idea that is born and depends on human conversation and communication.” Literature became a supporter of the new consciousness.
The sixties gave the resounding YES to that liberation that established human contact as the world’s axis. With “hippyism,” men and women let their hair down as the first symbol of what flies away from the center. They said that anyone could detach from the individual body and “travel” to other human beings and the cosmos and feel one with them. “In order for me to be, I have to be another, to get out of myself, to look for myself among others. The others do not exist if I do not; the others give me full existence,” the Mexican poet Octavio Paz published in 1960.
This new way of thinking was not unique to that famous and spontaneous youth movement (perhaps the most spontaneous in history, according to the distinguished Arnold J. Toynbee). Also, in the narrow circles of academia, a new way of thinking began to prevail. From the perspective of philosophy, the center did not exist, neither in reality nor knowledge. All was uncentered, and the only thing that existed was thought, speaking, writing (discourse, in short), which could not be fixed to any point but which could be woven and frayed like a skein, and also allowed strange jumps of encounter with “the other.”
Thus, the processes of communication (and the media of communication!) began restoring trust. It was proclaimed that everyone had the right to speak. Thinkers at the altitude of Karl Jaspers, Erich Fromm, and Ludwig Habermas saw in communication the means to repair the social fabric, so convalescent, so tattered here and there, broken in all places where before there had been a “center.” Finally, in1986, the great French psychoanalyst and educator Francoise Doltó assured that the human mission in this world is to communicate with one another. Her assertion foreshadowed the imminent arrival of a global communication tool that would put everyone in contact.
In this context, the school institution turned to experiment with new practices and modify the old vision of education as a discipline contingent on “progress.” (According to this vision, each generation had the right and obligation to transmit its achievements and knowledge to the next). With the new perspective, everything was interchange and mutual understanding. The schools were innovative the more they encouraged teamwork and the more that the teacher relinquished control over the student. The teacher became an active interlocutor and finally a valid constructor of students’ personality and knowledge, not in solitude but through tools shared in a learning community.
Finally, with the arrival of the internet and social media networks, the communication boom advanced throughout the entire planet. Suddenly, we all had a camera on hand to record what was happening to us (and around us). This was judged a voyeuristic obsession or a distancing from the environment, but in reality, it was as if we wanted to confirm at all times the old philosophical maxim, “I am me and my circumstance.” In effect, I not only was me but also what was happening around me, what I saw and what saw me, what I heard and what heard me.
Not only were we more interconnected than ever and had access to more information, but getting in touch with other people also took on new value. Francoise Doltó (who, as we saw, predicted the arrival of the internet) died before a tsunami of selfies flooded the world. Still, it is very likely that her mind, as sharp as it was generous, would not have seen them as a narcissistic manifestation (as has been so often proclaimed) but a new form of communication, based on daring to share oneself, at last. The idea is bold, but it makes sense. As John Higgs says in his book cited above, these self-portraits are not pure self-contemplation and complacency. “…They are not mere attempts to reinforce a personal concept of the individual ‘me,’ but exist to be observed (by others) and, in this way, strengthen the relationships that form through the web. Those photos only make sense when they are shared.”
Suppose we want to continue with the apology for social networks. In that case, we could speak about how they have served to evidence the amount of artistic talent in the world and how they have democratized public expression of the arts, previously so elitist. As never before, people read and write poetry, express ideas, sing, dance, do magic, seduce, tell jokes, express pain, and fear…
This forceful way of experiencing and proclaiming that I am me and my world comes accompanied by social movements that demand the immediate recognition of human diversity and respect for differences. This unprecedented advance is an achievement of communication that is a practice of identity. Language (which is perhaps the most personal and common thing that human beings share) is being subjected to revision (we could say a real revolution, sometimes violent) to become more inclusive, universal, with more elements to identify each person.
In most countries, the demand is incipient. However, there are already many places where I can at least claim that others address me as I wish, without reducing me to a generality but, on the contrary, opening up to my singularities. (I think that extreme cases are but eloquent detonations of this trend: I have heard of a person who asks to be considered not he, she, or it, but
they, thus, in the plural: “Call me ‘they,’” he requests.)
(To be continued)
Translation by Daniel Wetta.
Disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The viewpoints expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints, and official policies of Tecnológico de Monterrey.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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