Project Vision 21

During my years as a university philosophy professor, I would often ask my students to complete the following exercise: think of a psychological dream they had had, describe that dream in writing, read the text aloud, and, finally, share the dream dialogically with another person. Before long, they discovered that they had created four different realities.

With a little reflection, the students could clearly see that the images of their dreams, as they existed within their minds, were not adequately reflected in the text they themselves had written. At the same time, the text changed when it was read aloud, and later the narrative also differed—sometimes considerably—from the dream, the written text, and the reading.

In some cases, the students were astonished that there could be so many seemingly insurmountable discrepancies among thinking, writing, reading, and narrating. Some of the more perceptive students then began to suspect—quite rightly—that thinking, writing, reading, and narrating do not necessarily bring us closer to reality.

As Kant might put it, the “thing in itself” remains beyond our reach because the conditions that make the objects of experience possible are the same conditions that make our experience of those objects possible. In other words, we do not experience reality itself, but rather what we are capable of perceiving of reality.

And we can go one step further. Some of the students who truly took the time to reflect on these questions discovered that, in writing, reading, and narrating, we were in fact playing with language, without that necessarily meaning that, through language, we were describing anything about “real reality” or moving any closer to it.

Here we have to turn to Wittgenstein and his preoccupation with the difficulties of language. His famous “beetle in the box” thought experiment, presented in his 1953 Philosophical Investigations, questions the idea of a private language and the way we understand inner experiences such as pain—or, in the case of the exercise described above, our own dreams.

Ultimately, whether we like it or not, reality remains beyond our reach. It escapes us; it evaporates. Even as it reveals itself, it conceals more than it reveals. But now, in our hypertechnologized and hyperconnected age, we face yet another level of separation from reality: the omnipresent screens.

The walls covered with shadows in Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave have now become screens filled with memes that, like the prisoners in the cave, have chained us to seeing the “reality” presented to us as though it were the whole of reality. The reduction of reality has become so extreme that we no longer dream, write, read, or narrate.

“We are servants or vassals: techno-vassals, techno-servants,” warned Spanish philosopher Javier Echeverría during a recent conference in Montevideo, emphasizing that our idea of reality “no longer corresponds” to reality itself. “I call this ‘mental techno-colonialism,’” he explained.

The reality that was once unreachable has now become invisible.

I recently had to repair a section of the irrigation system in front of my house because tree roots decided to “strangle” (metaphorically speaking) the plastic pipe carrying the irrigation water. The repairs were simple, but I was struck by the fact that the interaction between root and pipe had been going on for about 20 years before reaching its climax.

I reached this conclusion by considering when the tree was planted and when the irrigation system was installed. Over those two decades, the root and the pipe coexisted in close proximity, slowly drawing nearer to one another until, one day, they made contact. Initially, nothing happened, but over time, the root began to crush the pipe.

The entire drama unfolded underground. No one witnessed the slow approach, the first crack in the pipe, or the moment it snapped in two. The tragic end of the “friendship” between root and pipe only became apparent when water began pooling on the surface, revealing that something had gone wrong.

This situation made me reflect on how (again, metaphorically speaking) similar scenarios play out in real life. We begin to coexist with something or someone, sometimes for decades, drawing ever closer day by day, without realizing we are in danger—that this closeness to “the other,” which we deemed safe, is actually anything but.

Let’s be honest: many of us have experienced someone entering our lives, initially keeping a respectful distance, then becoming a constant presence, only to discover, when it is already too late, that the person harbors truly harmful intentions.

Yet, it is not always about a person. Sometimes it involves a behavior or a habit that initially seems normal and harmless; over time, it very slowly gains our trust until one day—without us even noticing—it begins to crush us, eventually “suffocating” us (so to speak). And in this instance, the damage can rarely be undone.

While examples abound, they are unnecessary here. We have all known or experienced situations where something—initially appearing harmless, positive, or even appealing—draws close, wins our trust, and becomes part of our lives, only to eventually (whether intentionally or not) reveal its true nature.

In some cases, this “revelation” occurs quickly—sometimes within minutes—such as at the end of a sales pitch or when someone says, “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.” In other instances, decades may pass before a person or a habit makes it clear that, from the very start, they harbored specific plans that did not take our well-being into account.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that we should constantly distrust every relationship or habit. However, we must not mistake “closeness” for safety or good intentions.

I recently overheard a woman recounting how, after talking for several hours with two other women she barely knew, the three of them became friends. The reason, she said, is surprisingly simple: each listened to the others without interruption or changing the subject.

During the conversation, they sometimes laughed, sometimes talked, and there were even moments of tears and confessions. On more than one occasion, no one said anything. That silence didn't mean the conversation had ended. Nor did the need arise to fill it with words. They simply remained silent.

According to the woman, there were no screens involved during that entire time. No one looked at their phone while another was talking. No one momentarily disappeared behind a notification, a message, a photograph, or a conversation happening elsewhere. During those hours, the three of them remained there.

Thinking about that story reminded me of an ancient Greek word: megalopsychia , which is often translated as "greatness of soul." Aristotle speaks of the megalopsychos , the person who considers themselves worthy of great things and truly is. Opposite them are both vanity and mikropsychia , smallness of soul.

Naturally, it wouldn't make sense to simply transfer a philosophical category from ancient Greece to a conversation between three women in the 21st century. But perhaps we can use it to ask a question: What does it mean today to have a "great soul"?

We might immediately think of grand aspirations, power, prestige, money, or recognition. However, a person can possess all these things and still live permanently closed off within themselves; in other words, it's possible to have an enormous ego and a small soul.

Apuleius (writer and philosopher, 2nd century) linked the good life to an ordered soul that became less and less dependent on external things. The greatness of the soul, then, consisted not simply in accumulating more, but also in needing less in order to be fully oneself.

In other words, perhaps the smallness of the soul does not consist only in aspiring to little, but in not having inner space for anything other than oneself, thus rethinking how many of our opinions, worries, stories, wounds, answers, needs and reactions are really our own.

From that perspective, the conversation of those three women suggests, then, that a person can be "big" enough (metaphorically speaking) to make room for another.

That's what it means to listen deeply: to allow someone to finish a story without rushing them, to give an emotion the time it needs, and to allow an incomplete idea to develop before being judged. Sometimes it also means not responding. Perhaps that's why the silence of those women is so important.

It wasn't about empathy understood as immediately stating, "I know exactly how you feel," but about allowing the other person's experience to truly remain their own, without immediately turning it into a story about ourselves, even if it resonated with us. That skill develops over time.

Perhaps a “great soul” is one who offers presence, hospitality, and friendship even in the troubled 21st century.

The abundance of new laws, decrees, and ordinances at every level of government is a clear demonstration that the legal and judicial system is constantly playing catch-up in its effort to keep pace with the profound technological, social, and cultural changes of our time. At the same time, that abundance reveals something else: the decline of civic coexistence.

Several years ago, Argentine philosopher Darío Sztajnszrajber argued—this is not a direct quotation—that we have 19th-century schools, with 20th-century teachers, teaching 21st-century students. The same idea could be applied to justice: we have 19th-century laws, 20th-century judges, and 21st-century citizens. That discrepancy, I believe, contributes to the proliferation of laws.

But there is something more. As Horace warned centuries ago (Odes, III.24.35–36), Quid leges sine moribus / vanae proficiunt? (“What good are empty laws without morals?”). In other words, laws, decrees, and ordinances proliferate when decency and civic coexistence disappear, overwhelmed by a sea of individualism and narcissism.

In this context, the concept of mores is important because it does not refer simply to private “morality” in the modern sense. It encompasses customs, habits, social norms, inherited practices, and civic character. Put differently, Horace is asking: what can laws accomplish when the civic ethos necessary to sustain them has disappeared?

The question answers itself, as the facts of everyday life also demonstrate.

Tacitus, for his part, adds another warning in Annals III.27, similar to Horace’s but from a different perspective: Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges (“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”). The proliferation of laws, then, reveals not only a mismatch between law and reality and the loss of civic ethos, but also the degree of corruption within the state.

Far from being a remedy, the multiplication of laws may instead be a symptom of the deterioration of civic and moral order. When fundamental norms—customs, character, and civic discipline, however they may be understood and practiced—have eroded, multiplying laws does not necessarily restore social coexistence.

This situation led me to think about what Hegel wrote in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History: “Peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”

The key phrase is “principles deduced from it.” Hegel is not suggesting that humanity is condemned simply to repeat the same empty mistakes. Rather, he meant that every historical epoch is unique and that the general lessons of the past cannot be directly applied to present crises, because those crises are different.

There is, therefore, one crucial factor in human life that neither an abundance of laws nor the lessons of the past can restore: love. Kierkegaard expressed it in the epilogue to Fear and Trembling: “No generation has learned from another how to love.”