Abstract:
Modernity has taught us an instrumental rationality founded on the “ethics of having”, has stolen our autonomy and transformed us into prisoners of the capitalist way of production. It has proposed paradigms based on the adoration of science and the growing valorization of the productivity of capital. In the name of development, it has objectified the land and extracted from it everything which could have value in the market of the economic and social relations, while at the same time it has taken over the knowledges and the rights to self-determination of the peoples. Consequently a society of unfettered profit and consumption has been established and it is now experiencing a crisis of paradigms which is increasingly provoking a generalized state of malaise. Around the decade of the eighties, Latin America, framed, classified and (self)understood as underdeveloped, awoke: it was perceived that to accept the model of development preached by the First World meant accepting a determination of unviable life. Besides this it was also perceived that there were other perspectives, including ones originating and present in Latin America itself, which pointed to alternatives to the current model of development as a concrete possibility. There emerges the idea of Well Living. As a Latin American experience, Well Living, coming from the Andean cosmo-perspective and founded on the concepts of the Sumak Kawsay and of Suma Qamaña, it incorporates and promotes a holistic dimension of life. It represents the concern for our common future, serving as an inspiring principle for our actions and relations, based on the preservation and respect toward all that exists and lives. Well Living is an idea in construction, a perspective which inspires the possibility of imagining other worlds. It is not an imperative or a global paradigm nor is it a ready and un-debateable proposal. It is a utopia, a critical discourse in constant construction which emerged from the indigenous political proposals and is a result of a historical process which has been in place more than five hundred years. It is an essentially religious perspective which presents great contributions for social transformation, pointing to other ways of relating between human beings, God, nature and the world.
