Development Cooperation Handbook/The video resources linked to this handbook/The Documentary Story/Beyond the Monomyth (towards the narration of the dialogical journey)

Beyond the monomyth (towards the narration of the dialogical journey)

The lesson I learnt from the way Fausto and Gauri edited the Millennium Village and the KFI  was that from now on no more "lectures" but "stories"; no more "descriptions of facts", but "participation to ongoing adventures".

Still I wanted to find a different narration pattern from what is commonly used in media and that is made typical in the "monomyth" (see also hero's journey). That Hollywood style hero journey is always stereotyped with the needs of putting the "good guys" (that are us) against the bad guys (that are the others). We could not use that pattern for the challenge of creating cooperation amongst we and the others!

When two years later I re-edited the material collected into Eugad to make them into the stories of the Vrinda project documentary, I confronted the different view in the issues  we discovered that confronting ideas is also a narration of an adventure. Because a real dialogue is always a journey. And a journey which is not a dialogue is a sad process of inward isolation. So, I believe, art and philosophy are always dialogues and are always journeys. And we were trying to use the journey we conducted as the narration of a process of reciprocal understanding.

The only knowledge that can really share is the description of the itinerary we have taken in order to frame our mental categories. Then concepts are no longer opinions, because they are reached overcoming the reciprocal opinions until a shared vision is reached. They are still our personal way to comprehend the coherence of the universe: but is a personalization of a dialogical process with the others, and so it is also "history" and it is also a form of "universality". Knowledge is always a subjective realization. But on the way of self realization, we proceed on patterns that are as illuminating as they are commonly shared with people of different contexts and different cultures. And the quest for knowledge is really joyful only when shared with trusted travel companions

When statements of truth are not narrations of temporary achievements of ongoing dialogues, then they are only dogmatic outbursts. But news makers like them so much! And by watching television one gets the impression that the world is made of clashing dogmas. Dialogue is silenced by media. Intolerance is instead amplified. How can we then ever cross over to the public with this documentation of a cooperating world?

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