Delia Steinberg Guzman

In general, we understand laziness to be the sluggishness or procrastination of doing things. (Procrastination: to postpone everything for later. Sluggishness: to spend excessive time doing what should have been done immediately.)
It is easy to understand laziness in relation to the movements of our body, with the laxity we confront actions, with the excessive time needed to reach an objective, this is exactly why time, seems distant.

But laziness can be found in all planes of the personality. It doesn’t affect us so much that it paralyzes our feelings and thoughts; but it can be felt and thought in everything that becomes comfortable and agreeable, that doesn’t require effort or perseverance.
Psychological effort is the determining element of this kind of laziness: to avoid any disturbance.
What does a lazy person do? He knows he has various sentimental situations to define or resolve, but he prefers not to see them. He thinks that time will deal with it erasing the clouds of his emotional panorama and that, further on, he will find everything fixed. When there is no other remedy but to confront these situations, he gets agitated, attacking those who dared to show him what he will not accept. Driven by anger a palliative formula is created, for his lack of determination. In the eyes of others, he may appear as a calm person, but his tranquility is a fruit of his inability to confront the challenges that life sets before him in a natural manner. This person makes a lifestyle from comfort. But deep inside, he knows he lives in a bubble that could explode at any moment. He may be an admirer of the spiritual ideals, ethical or esthetic, he likes them, but he is incapable of applying any of them in his life, because in doing so he would have to change his dull tranquility. He would have to introduce changes, battle with difficulties. As all these would require effort, he hides once more behind comfort, continuously, stating that it is impossible for him to change.

The lazy person, however, has a hidden fear that he never confesses: he is afraid of time and of the many things he will never do. In this case, he blames destiny for his bad luck, his lack of opportunities. And he prefers to cry feeling hounded by his bad luck instead of moving a single physical or psychological muscle.

Remedy for laziness: Attention.
Remedy for Procrastinating: Adding value to every single minute.

By Delia Steinberg Guzman

(President of International Organization of New Acropolis)

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Philosophy, Man and Nature

Delia Steinberg Guzman

What is the connection between philosophy and nature?
If we understand philosophy in its widest possible sense as the love of wisdom, we must include in that wisdom all the laws of nature. So we cannot disregard those laws; what we should do is get to know them, try to understand them deeply. This desire to understand things deeply implies love - not love as an emotional reaction, but love as understanding, as acceptance of those laws and, above all, as a way of working with those laws.

Do you mean that philosophy is not only concerned with abstractions?
Absolutely. That is why we have taken up the concept of love of wisdom that existed in the classical world. In that concept, love of wisdom is not just about studying, but studying and participating in all the things that we study. Abstract concepts distance us from the world, from our environment, they distance us from people, even from ourselves; so philosophy should be active as well.
What is philosophy concerned with? Everything: as soon as it focuses on man, his reality and his possibilities, how can the field of philosophy be restricted? It must, therefore, be the broadest of all sciences and the broadest of all arts.

What is man's place within this living world, within Nature?
If it were up to us, we would try to find a privileged place - the best and most outstanding position - because we have become accustomed to thinking that man is at the peak of all possible evolution.
I don't deny that if we compare ourselves with the animal, vegetable or mineral worlds, man displays more developed characteristics. But we should not take that place in Nature out of vanity - because we feel we are the best, the only ones at the highest point of evolution - but precisely because, if we see that we are different to the minerals, the plants and the animals, that give us a greater responsibility.
What is our place in Nature? That of the highest responsibility: what a mineral cannot do, what a tree cannot do, what an animal cannot do, we can do. And that is man's place: the ability to think, to put ourselves in harmony with nature and work with her, instead of breaking her laws.
I would give man, from a philosophical point of view, a role of support and responsibility, never of destruction and exploitation.

How can one understand and act according to nature's laws? What laws?
We see that every day there is a sun which appears on the horizon and disappears in the evening into the West. We are used to the seasons, the course of the seasons; we are used to storms, the results of storms, a volcano suddenly erupting, the sea rising and devastating the shores. Do we think that all of this happens for no reason? Would we think that our digestion, or the acceleration of our pulse, or the fact that sometimes our heart seems to want to leap out of our mouth, happens for no reason?
I understand laws to mean discovering how and why Nature operates. This has to be based on a philosophical type of observation. In other words, rather than merely wanting to know "what", it is about wanting to know "why".
For that, we have to have an attitude of patience, careful observation and respect for everything we see; it is not simply about observing a series of experiences and seeing how often they repeat themselves, but about realizing that the things that happen do not happen by chance. This is to understand Nature. It is to discover certain laws, a systematic way of acting, just as we accept it for other living beings.

So this leads us not only to understand, but also to act.
To act.
To understand alone would be to adopt an attitude of a passive receiver, an observer of Nature; but, as I said before, the human being is endowed with responsibility, and someone who is responsible does not just stand by and watch. If we just watch, we are not doing anything. Whereas if we are part of Nature and if Nature is alive, is moving and evolving, we have to be alive, we have to move and we have to evolve. This to act in and as part of Nature.

So do you think that life evolves with a purpose and is not therefore the product of chance?
It is impossible that the grandeur which we see around us every day on the earth and in the sky is the product of chance.
It would be a waste if it were mere chance, and it would be by "chance" that the human being, who has been studying the universe and Nature around us so much recently, is unable by "chance" to create similar things. Something which, before our very eyes, clearly and precisely demonstrates that it has cycles, that those cycles repeat themselves but are never exactly the same, demonstrates that it is leading towards a goal. The fact that we do not fully understand the goal does not mean that it has to be chance. We should do away with the concept of chance and look instead for the causes.
If there is a goal, why don't I understand it? If I don't understand it, is it possible for me to understand it? If everything taking place around me reveals a harmony and a permanent direction, what gives me the right to think about chance? Wouldn't it be better if I tried to find the reason behind all of these things?
It is not really a question of belief, it is a question of logic. What we see has a direction and everything that has a direction has a purpose. Chance, on the other hand, is a number of things inharmoniously combined, and only human beings generate chance events, and even then not always…

The thing is that today man is deeply imbued with the term culture, and has largely separated the term culture, and his own culture, from his view of Nature as a whole. What, from the philosophical point of view, would the relationship be between man, nature and culture, between culture and nature?
Culture has been transformed into a term that is almost as meaningless as philosophy, a philosophy which is abstract enough not to study anything, except for the remains that are left over from the other sciences.
What is not covered by any science, what no science can explain, it leaves to philosophy, to see how it can solve it with a few empty definitions. And I think that with culture we are doing the same.
What is culture but the product of the inner man, of what he thinks and feels? Can man feel and think by abstracting himself completely from Nature? Impossible, we are immersed in Nature. Can we create a culture that abstracts itself from Nature, can we create an abstract culture? I think it would be difficult.
I see it as being as difficult as thinking that the world exists by chance. Is there a science that can abstract itself from Nature? Is there an art that can abstract itself from Nature? Is there a philosophy that can abstract itself from Nature? Is there an inner concept of human evolution, of human development that can abstract itself from Nature? No.
So, if culture is the expression of everything that we experience, in a form that can be transmitted to other generations, either as science or as art, as philosophy, as different forms of thought or belief, this culture is necessarily linked to the world around us, the environment in which we live. To abstract it from that is to empty it of meaning, it would no longer be culture.

Many people think that by wanting so much to become part of Nature, man would lose his defining characteristics. How can we become part of it without ceasing to be men, human beings?
To become part of it while continuing to think, to become part of Nature intelligently, is a way of combining both integration and identity. Man can, and in fact does form part of Nature, but he can also think it, understand it, he can take part in it intelligently. How then could he lose his identity?
If I were now to bend down and pick up a leaf, or a snail which a few moments ago was crawling along the ground and must now be hidden behind a shrub, has this snail lost its identity because of the fact of being hidden behind some leaves? Does a leaf like these ones lose its identity, can I confuse it with a horse, or a dog? Nevertheless, it is so harmoniously at one with Nature, that I believe that its way of being is, precisely, to form part of Nature and to be naturally what it is.
Man believes that in order not to lose his identity he has to be different, but I think that man has to be, rather than be different. When man is able to understand himself, to be truly what he is, he will find his true place in Nature and no one will confuse him with either a stone, a leaf, or a horse.

Thank you very much.
Thank you.

An interview with Delia Steinberg Guzman
(President of International Organization of New Acropolis)