A-Infos (en) Italy, FdCA, IL CANTIERE #37 - “I WOULD LIKE TO LEARN TO DRAW LIKE A CHILD” (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

Pablo Picasso said: “I learned to paint like Raphael, now I must learn 
to draw like a child.” I found this quote pertinent to what the most 
advanced research in human biology has revealed about the evolutionary 
stages of a child's development, starting from birth. My intention is to 
insist on the hope of a better world, born from the certainty of the 
potential of the human species, and how man, from birth and throughout 
childhood, is more inclined to creativity than to destructiveness. On 
the other hand, we are immersed in a totally reactionary way of 
thinking, which tends to prevent us even from imagining a society 
different from this one, to the point of arguing, even by illustrious 
philosophers, that the war and destructiveness we are witnessing are 
inherent in the human soul and therefore impossible to change. A 
powerful reactionary thought is precisely that of the immutability of 
the status quo, which, in my opinion, must be historicized as a thought 
historically present in the strategies of a violent power. Pyotr A. 
Kropotkin said of free agreement: "Accustomed as we are, by hereditary 
prejudices, by an absolutely false education and instruction, to see 
everywhere only government, legislation, and the judiciary, we come to 
believe that men would bite one another like wild beasts." Since 
"believing" is not "thinking," let us seek to reclaim the ability to 
think as human beings, starting from the fascinating discoveries about 
the human capacity to think from birth. We know that in the first six 
months of life, babies are able to perceive all the stimuli arriving 
from the outside world through their sensory abilities, particularly 
hearing and touch. Sight will emerge around six months with the 
sharpness of shapes. These are stimuli of a thousand types: color, 
shape, perceived movement, sound waves that activate the eardrum and 
auditory system, or even the simple force of pressure that creates a 
tactile stimulus. From birth to six months, babies do not reproduce all 
these stimuli, but TRANSFORM them into an internal image, even if 
unconsciously, in the sense that they lack conscious awareness of the 
memory. This would be a process represented by the transformation of a 
"material" stimulus, because it activates the body's 
anatomical-physiological apparatus, into something psychic or "mental 
fact." In other words, from birth to six months, babies begin to think 
about sensory stimuli, transforming a material stimulus into something 
nonmaterial. Turning to the animal world, animals' conscious memory is 
well known, and they have the ability to create images, or perhaps just 
figures, through the perception of colors, shapes, and sounds. A lion 
that sees an antelope and moves to eat it has an 
anatomical-physiological reaction of movement and aggression. However, 
we don't know whether this intentionality can be called "thought," since 
it could be a physiological mechanism of reflexive movement with 
reality, a perception that triggers an immediate response. But what 
happens when we consider human living matter? The reaction of human 
living matter certainly leads to the elaboration of a figure, but it 
goes further, creating an image that we can define as internal, or the 
ability to imagine, and reaches the point of being verbalized, with the 
emergence of language. Not all images are the same, and it is possible 
to distinguish figure, form, and content. It is clear that the figure is 
what is recalled to mind of an object perceived as it is. If, however, 
the mental reproduction of perception is limited to the recollection of 
a volume, a color, or a line, without being able to define it as a 
figure, we can speak of form. But if, beyond any possible verbal 
definition, a six-month-old infant can "feel" another's emotion, such as 
fear, love, desire, affection, or anger, then we can speak of content 
and merge this word, no longer separated from figure and form, with the 
word image. Therefore, even the emotions perceived by another human 
being can become images, so creating a personal image of a lived 
relationship allows me to make the affective content of that 
relationship accessible to knowledge, precisely by virtue of what is 
perceived. The important human capacity in this case, to be emphasized, 
is that humans can form mental images even from a tactile, gustatory, 
auditory, or olfactory stimulus, even before a visual stimulus. And this 
means “thinking,” which, as can be seen, is not the direct formulation 
of verbal thought, but the formation of images, a sort of interpretation 
of the perceived stimulus.

The natural adjustment of vision after 6 months will allow us to see the 
clear contours of a figure, the lines that delimit objects, and thus a 
fusion will occur between the objectively perceived visual image and the 
image previously created by tactile and auditory perceptions. This 
process will lead the child to recognize himself in the mirror between 9 
and 12 months. All of this will play a fundamental role in the formation 
of verbal thought, which is based on what is called the "internal image" 
or ability to imagine, which begins at birth. How are vague images 
transformed into lines and sounds? Shapes and colors transform over the 
course of a child's development into something absolutely indefinable, 
which is the ability to produce articulated sounds. The sound will then 
be articulated in a modulation that creates spoken language. The 
fascinating discovery of all this is that the verbal language produced 
brings together all the previous experience of thought in the preverbal 
period. This demonstrates that in the first year of life, there is never 
a separation between mind and body. This is why we can be certain that 
humans are born healthy and not prone to destructiveness. It is the kind 
of society we live in that creates monsters by sacrificing human 
capabilities for the predatory profit of a few who hold all of humanity 
in their power.

https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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