A prospective essay: from watchful fear to powerful joy

Abstract

Proposes an exercise of reflection and imagination based on questions such as: what would be other possibilities for the future? What discourses would replace neoliberal reason? If today we are focused on individualistic desire and competition, what futures could we imagine with their opposites: collaboration, empathy and care? Our common thread will be the concepts of Affection and Feeling, which involve biological and social variables carried out by the body and in human societies. We present the concepts of happy and sad affects of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza and the idea of a search for the Conatus. From philosophy, we arrive at the development of scientific knowledge about human emotions with Freud's psychiatry, when he built his theory of Life Impulses and Death Impulses. We have reached the 21st century with the neuroscience of Damásio, who rescues Spinoza in his work, bringing again the reasons for our actions based on emotions capable of making us feel pleasure or pain. When discussing the images of futures that we want, we can think about their close connection with formal, informal and non-formal educational processes, constituting the field of education as a privileged space for the formation of other mentalities and the circulation of shared feelings. Therefore, we begin to present our vision from a joyful and powerful perspective of educational processes. Let us propose another possibility for the future, from vigilant fear to powerful joy, focusing our actions on the search for joyful affections and powerful encounters.