Silo in Mendoza, July 8 and 9; Milan, July 12 and 13

Considerations made at the “Clausurados” meeting in Mendoza
Mendoza, July 8 and 9; Milan, July 12 and 13

We need to send a strong and clear signal in this particular moment by creating a worldwide reference.

We consider it urgent, in this moment of confusion in which the system is falling apart, to strengthen and project Silo's spiritual leadership. We believe that if the Movement comes out with all its potency, the system—which is stitched together with pins—might, at last, end up collapsing.

A spiritual leadership aims at a change in civilization.

1. Silo, Spiritual leader
A leader is like a magnet, all compasses start pointing in that direction. A leader is not such until he is recognized as a leader by others. A group of people recognizes him as a leader and an agreement is made, there's feedback, they are tuned to the same frequency.

Spiritual leaders have always worked and continue to work in history without paying too much attention to the precise situations of the places where they happen to develop their actions. They are not limited by that space neither are they limited by time. They don't work for today or tomorrow but rather for the day after tomorrow, for future times. They believe in processes, and even though facts may contradict what they state, they don't care. They are working for the future. Their theme is to give direction to everything that helps the human being. They may be very scandalous and sustain a war at the spiritual level. Spiritual leadership tends to be Universal. Everything that improves the condition of the Human Being is their concern and they provide leadership to the spirit in its process. A spiritual leader may emphasize several themes, giving back to the world something better than what the world gave him; irrespective of where he happens to have originated from, without cultural chauvinism. A spiritual leader is not positioned in a particular region but rather in a universal setting.

Mythical backgrounds become articulated based on circumstances and are not the result of planning. They operate through gestures, through insinuations that people complete in their own heads. Things may or may not be but people complete them with particular attributes. We navigate through a field of myths; myths are completed by people, but a leader navigates in ambiguity, what completes the myth is the historical moment. A place may have a particular mythical charge and from there denouncements could be made against concrete unjust situations such as the arms race, or a call could be made to accelerate procedures.

More than highlighting a vision of the world, a spiritual leader may make references to concrete but decisive situations. It is not easy for people today to see structures, nor their composition nor their process. They don't see processes but rather the loose day sheets of a calendar. These are not the times for structures of thought. We can however emphasize concrete situations with a certain degree of dramatic character, with emotional charge, with images that evoke internal registers of commotion. Spiritual leaders concentrate psychic energy in spite of appearing few and far between. They are references of kindness, references of strength, they have their own signature style, sometimes accentuating one aspect and sometimes another. Their aesthetics is based on the image, the story, the narrative. It goes beyond the explanation of a teacher.

Up until now our things have not expressed themselves in that different dimension given by a spiritual leadership. Perhaps the present times need this. We're talking about a different dimension, one that we've had but that was always kept in intimacy. To openly place on the table this new dimension and to extend our perspective so as to set this dimension in motion. If we observe the relations between people we will discover an atmosphere, a certain mysticism that is setting a new and important phenomenon in motion. It's a climate that is difficult to define. This dimension is starting to be incorporated and it could take shape in the Movement, as if it were a Soul.

The leader is referenced to planetization and does not belong to any culture in particular. That does not prevent people from a particular region to highlight those characteristics that make him homogeneous to their region or culture: for Europeans he is a Westerner, for the Asians he may have a Gandhian style, for Latin Americans he comes from their region, for North Americans he is an American and for Africans he is a Third World leader. Let's leave the leader located at a worldwide level while each region highlights particular aspects.

In response to the explicit recognition that “clausurados” made of Silo's spiritual leadership, he replied: “we are very happy. If in addition to this you're going to charge forward with diffusion, so much the better. And if that is accompanied by a big mess, that's even better.”

2. The Movement
The Movement's project has meaning if we go beyond the political and the social. It is in that situation that Silo could come out as a Spiritual Leader or Guide. Siloism is everything that Silo has built. A Humanist may not be a Siloist, and someone who does not recognize himself as being part of Humanism could still consider Silo as his spiritual Guide. If we wanted to support this project we would have to give him the greatest possible visibility. On the other hand the activities that we are presently engaged in (Forums, Action Fronts and Organisms for example) don't have to stop, but instead they could be framed within a greater project. From the Movement, the Action Fronts, the organisms, we could link to and highlight the image of Silo as a spiritual leader. In each manifestation of the Movement or one of the organisms we could charge this image.

Of course all of this needs to fit, it must be sincere. If anyone feels that this doesn't fit, they should not do it.

On the other hand it should have the characteristic of 'insinuation', not something frontal or direct.

If we are going to speak about spiritual things, it means that we're aiming at a change in civilization, we're not simply dealing with a social and political change. What is spiritual is connected to internal religiousness.

It's likely that in these times, these types of inspiring images are more facilitated. This spiritual dimension should clearly be present in all of the Movement's activities. It is the spiritual dimension what gives it its potency and it is because of this dimension that it always had that many of us joined the Movement. This “something more” has to be present in everything.
It is only through what is spiritual that a profound “tunning in” is possible.

We aspire for the Movement to become an increasingly tuned in and synchronized human group in its way of acting. This “tuned in” characteristic among people might allow the formation of a tissue from the present state of separate cells. If there are 20 of us that's better than 10, and 40 is better than 20. For people to join with us is interesting, it is valuable. Many of the actions that were carried out in the past and that brought us in contact with Kaunda, Gorbachev and others, took place because our people took advantage of fortuitous events. It's not like we planned these things to happen but rather that we took advantage of circumstances that presented themselves while we advanced in a particular direction.

Of course we're interested in the Movement developing and taking shape. It would be historically absurd to spend 30 years setting something in motion that then lacks continuity. Esto va!

Sooner or later the world will have to go in the direction that the Humanists have indicated.

3. Nuclear Disarmament
There are many themes to clarify and discuss today, but the priority is to denounce the nuclear weapons buildup.
People are not realizing the imminent danger this represents, while the news media treats the different conflicts as if they were essentially 'diplomatic' issues among countries.

Furthermore, people are confronted with the bombardment of irrelevant news, which makes the capacity of weighing received information a useful thing to learn: to be able to highlight what is important from the secondary issues or aspects that too often dilute it.

A few months ago nuclear blocs were formed: the United States and European countries on the one hand and Russia and China on the other.

Some time ago there was a great power that unilaterally disarmed itself and later its population did not support the government that did that. What are the populations thinking about? It was believed that the nuclear problem was an issue of the cold war era, but today the danger is imminent. We are going to ask for disarmament and we're going to ask for things to turn out badly for those engaged in the preparation of destructive enterprises. We will do so from multiple countries, asking for peace from the public squares. For these things it's important to have volume; we will have to do it through the mass media. We need to hasten the denouncement of arms proliferation. It might be interesting to re-publish World Without Wars.

What needs to happen is a world-wide nuclear disarmament. Countries need to create the conditions for all nuclear weapons to disappear, weapons that are proliferating everywhere and are out of control. Today 10 megaton bombs are being carried in briefcases, with 10 times the destructive capacity of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima.

At the general level the first priority is nuclear disarmament, and at a local level, we must advance in the direction of proportional and progressive disarmament of conventional weapons.

The nuclear weapons situation is out of hand and the only way to prevent a catastrophe, the loss of thousands of human lives, is through world-wide nuclear disarmament; that's what will generate the conditions for the disarmament of organized groups that today also have access to these types of weapons. Terrorism is basically controlled by States, an also by certain organized groups; now even individuals are engaged in it and nuclear proliferation has therefore taken on enormous proportions.

4. Cultures and the process of planetization
Cultural phenomena—as opposed to folklore—are at the foundation of human societies. These are the codes found collectively in people's consciousness: “the ideal of happiness,” the imponderables. This is where spiritual guides have their effect, in cultures.

In the past, cultures distributed in far away geographical zones did not come in contact. Today, however, many cultural codes clash against each other, cultures do not easily complement each other, the process of planetization involves a lot of clash and friction. Globalization imposes one criterion for everyone, in the case of planetization, everyone is influenced by everyone else, and if you throw something at me, I'll throw something back at you. This applies not only to military conflicts but also to cultural codes. Everyone receives everyone else's influence.

The present friction is due to the passage into planetization, we're going towards the universal human nation. This is the first time in history; at other times this has been an ideal, but now we're effectively producing it. We're just now seeing the step prior to this process which is the moment of regionalization. Formerly countries existed, the nation state, at the most what you saw was coalitions of countries, but that was not regionalization. Colonial systems also existed, in which one country dominated entire zones of the globe; but that was not regionalization either. So, from Nation States, to Nation States with anomalies such as coalitions or colonial systems, we're now witnessing the phenomenon of Regionalization. The first case is the regionalization of Europe which provides a reference for Asia, the Middle East, etc.

Today it's the culture of a region what carries the weight. Culture and regionalization go hand in hand. The epicenter of western culture is Europe. When we speak of regions we're referring to a Culture. This carries its own sequel of trouble and conservative mentalities are going to have a problem with this because of the intense differentiations that precedes the complementation of planetization.

Regional Forums should be attended by humanists from other regions; they should not only be present but their points of view should be valued. For Ecuador's upcoming Forum, the most important thing is for the international press to be present—which may catapult the information everywhere—and also the ambassadors.

Immigrants from another continent arrived at America and they swept away the people in America, dismantling the vernacular cultures, some of which were very important. They burned their books, the painted books of the Popol Vuh and Chilam-Balam and they disarticulated those cultures. The ethnic groups remained, which is not the same thing as the cultures, they are a part of, but they are not the culture. Evo Morales positions himself in clash with western culture, which is the same as with Chiapas. It is a subterranean type of dialectics, but they don't have the cultural means, all of Latin America lacks something to respond with. Europe has Christianity, the East has Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism... Latin America has emptiness. In the sky they only have the Southern Cross, it's the place with the least number of stars. Let's think about this emptiness. There are no common values, there are borrowed things that don't fit, they don't fill you, they don't reach inside your lungs, they don't have a profound cenesthetic charge. Altered speeches don't have mysticism. A culture is produced by a mysticism at the base. For example, the Jews were not disarticulated because they did have a mysticism, they were not simply history. Chinese culture did not disappear with the advent of the “comrades;” now “those who believe” are appearing on the scene, the great danger for Chinese communism, there you have the example of the government burning the books of the Buddhist sects. Everything points to profound perturbations in the Chinese psycho-social ambit.

In Latin America, as in Africa, people were disconnected from their nourishing soil, from their profound beliefs. Latin America needs to realize that this is so, that they don't have a culture. Evo tries to create a rooted phenomenon, with all its folklore, with natural gas, with all the resources we can muster. The United States is a subculture that has gained greater identity. They brought people from all over the place and gave them citizenship and have gained in identity. That has not happened in Latin America, there is only the great void and an internal handicap with respect to other cultural forms. The Centers of Cultures could openly support Evo Morale's proposals, as well as Ollanta Humala's, Hugo Chavez', but Latin America is not only Andean, there's also Brazil, Uruguay, etc.

We don't find that this void is being filled here, that the region is being structured somehow. Nor is any direction being given to People. There's a void in art as well. The best we have are the Mexican muralists. But in painting, in the plastic arts, in poetry, Latin America doesn't begin to catch up. The Mexican muralists are so good perhaps because they belong to a border culture that clashes against the North American subculture. Spain is also a border culture between America and Europe; Russia also, between Europe and Asia. Border cultures are interesting forms of dialectics of people who need to find their identity.
Africa is not controlled by Islam as it's commonly believed, Islam is peripheral in Africa. Africa is shamanic. Shamanism is the most widespread religion in the world. Africa was disarticulated in an awful way. Africa and Latin America are very similar from that point of view. What Evo has done so far has stuck a chord not only in Bolivia but also in Peru and Ecuador, and beyond the fact of how will all this end up, something has woken up already in all these places.

What Latin America lacks, is lacking, we need to come to terms with it and build it. We need a mysticism which is not the daughter of the mysticism of other cultures. If we want to awaken culture then we need to generate this mystique. This is also a border phenomenon.

Our hall is empty, inspiring. Other mysticisms originate from the “fullness,” ours, from emptiness. What fills that emptiness? People. What images do we find there? People's images. What kinds of projects are being generated there? People's projects. What is best can be found in humans. Distinct from animals, humans are the only ones who bury their dead and take fire in their hands.

5. People's Situation
The majority of the people today are in doubt. Irrespective of their age, social class, places of origin, the majority has doubts. Perhaps the great majority is astonished, without tone, they have doubts regarding the system's proposals. The mental behavior of people in doubt is increasing. That is the social atmosphere. These are very valuable people and it's interesting to treat them better. They doubt what they're been told through TV, they also have self-doubt. It is a suffering form of existentialism. They doubt the world, those who are close to them and themselves. It's a complicated state of mind. We make it our aim to influence those who doubt, which are the great majority. In today's mass society we're starting to hear talk about individuals, of what happens in the head of each person. In the public square we could begin to develop a discourse that actually reaches the pedestrian.

6. Punta de Vacas
Spiritual leadership is positioned in a Time and a Space. That is what Punta de Vacas is, that's where we're going to say what needs to be said. And we're going to admonish them to stop the wars, violence, etc.

At the end of 2007 we will have the Park completely functioning and from there the spiritual irradiation will be produced. It's not going to be a place for large concentrations of people but rather of circulation of people who come and go, people in movement. It's going to have a cycle-otic character.

The complete project for Punta de Vacas Park is described in a Power Point presentation available not only in silo.net but also in several other web sites that Messengers have put together. It is inspiring to study this presentation as it allows one to know in great detail how this Park will be.

There are referential places. There are many sacred places. For example Compostela, “field of stars.” Aerolites used to fall there and afterwards they started to build cathedrals. Aerolites also used to fall in the Middle East. The black stone around which the pilgrims would place their idols was the point of convergence of the caravans before Islam. Later Mohamed appropriated this just like the Christians appropriated Compostela. Mohamed eliminated the idols and created the reference to the Mecca. They didn't work with visual images but they did use auditory, cenesthetic and kinesthetic images. You can't eliminate images, consciousness would stop, the body would stop, everything would come to a halt.

Our Parks are suggestive, they are referential, the senses can work touching objects, drinking the water, etc.

We materialize these places and those who don't like them don't go to them.

7. Project of Dissemination through TV
Setting in motion the projection of Silo's spiritual leadership, we start with the following project of dissemination:
By way of a context, in the present mass society, the appropriate thing is to advertise through TV. These are not the times of Luther in which the whole population was informed by nailing proclamations to the church's doors.

Journalism is one thing and mass media is another. Journalism deforms our message and is of no use to us for the purpose of spiritual leadership. On the other hand it is good for the Movement and its organisms to use the Press. In the case of the spiritual leadership it is better to contract paid advertisement in the mass media so as to prevent our message from being manipulated. If some journalists are able to escape from the long hand of the Press' interests, they may be given interviews.
What will we do? We want to charge forward and make a big mess because the times merit it. It's possible that we're less self-censored by now. The fact is that we're spoiling for an opportunity to charge forward.

During the next 90 days we will do a test of dissemination through TV of an exhortation of Silo for world-wide nuclear disarmament, to be broadcast by the principal worldwide networks (CNN, Al Jazeera, Telesur and a French-speaking African channel). Two 45-second spots that we will broadcast for 10 days in October. We could broadcast them 30 or 40 times on each network (20 times each spot, sequentially). We have to define the plan of which media to use and negotiate with them. We will direct these spots to those who doubt and we will take measures afterwards. This measurement is not going to be easy, how do you measure those who doubt? How do you know whether the message reached them if precisely because they are doubtful they don't express themselves? We need to resolve this. We will also allow viewers to connect with a web site. We will have to create it. We will try to finance the spots with sponsors without the least censorship with respect to who may those be. It could be the State Department or the Bank of Boston, the Coca Cola Company or famous characters such as singers, actors, etc. Anyone. We will include their logos in the broadcast.

We can learn a lot from this experience. We want to learn and detect errors. Therefore we will conduct an evaluation at the end of the campaign in relation to each one of the functions.

Functions and Calendar
Scripts: Alicia will coordinate a team that in 10 days will receive a draft from Silo and images that advertisers contribute, so as to have the script ready in 30 days.

Production: Andrés will coordinate a team that will shoot and edit two spots and have them ready by mid-September.

Media Plan and Financing: Pía will coordinate a team which will begin studying immediately a media plan and different ways of financing the broadcast.

Web: Adolfo will coordinate a team to create a web site that allows the TV viewers to give a signal.

Measurement: Maxi will coordinate a team that will establish the ways of measuring the impact of this sample of diffusion with the predefined target audience.

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