Dénia hosts the second day of its Humanitats Festival

Friday, 28 de October 2022

Dénia Festival de les Humanitats faces its second day with a complete program of debates and cultural activities to try to respond to the central theme of this first edition of the Festival: "Mutations: what awaits us in the near future?"

The first session yesterday afternoon put on the table the concept of The immensity of the human soul, which was discussed by Josep Ramoneda, writer, journalist and academic director of the Dénia Festival de les Humanitats, and the prestigious writer and philosopher of Greek origin and world fame Theodor Kallifatides, who provided phrases to make us all reflect such as "War is the source of all tears and democracy always loses."

Under the title of "The bionic man: can we delegate our luck to our prostheses?" The second session began with top international scientists, such as the neurobiologist Rafael Yuste, the Computational Neuroscience researcher, Gustavo Deco; and moderated by Martha Rodríguez, professor of Ethics and project manager of the ÉTNOR Foundation.

All of them debated the disruptive 4.0 revolution in which today's society is immersed, which is enabling an unprecedented development of biotechnology and, with it, presenting great ethical, political and social challenges. In this sense, Rafael Yuste stated that protection is needed through new human rights, “it is urgent to protect brain activity so that it cannot be manipulated or decoded without permission. Our duty as scientists is to warn society that this can happen."

Today's Friday session began at the Multiespai L'Androna Baleària Port with the presentation "Changes in the human body: illness and evolution", which featured three experts in development and neurology: Mara Dierssen, Ángela Nieto and Tomàs Marquès , with whom thoughts on the evolutionary meaning of diseases have been shared.

In this session, we discussed what diseases are and their relationship with a “flexible and changing genetic system, the driving force of evolution,” as Tomàs Marquès has defined it. While the biochemist and molecular biologist Ángela Nieto has shared with the attendees the latest advances in reactivation of embryonic genes. For her part, the world expert in the field of neurobiology and pharmacology, Mara Dierssen, wanted to take advantage of her intervention to talk about “another of the current pandemics: misinformation.” In this sense, she has advocated for “that our educational system includes subjects on scientific method, critical thinking and that, little by little, we are able to create a society with the capacity to debate, because to debate something you have to know it in depth.”.

The Auditorium of the Social Center of Dénia has also been the scene today, Friday, of interesting presentations, such as the session "Global world, closed borders", where the current period of turbulence and global threats has been analyzed. Phenomena that have abruptly highlighted the interdependence of the world in which we live and the global nature of the challenges we face without having global governance mechanisms with which to respond to them.

The person in charge of moderating this session has been the former Minister of Health, Social Policy and Equality, Leire Pajín, current Director of Global Development at ISGlobal and president of the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development (REDS), who has pointed out that “the “The pandemic has taught us that the impulse to close borders is a mistake, because it is ineffective.”

The French anthropologist Michel Agier has presented interesting reflections on the concept of organic solidarity and the need for life in common, in a global world with closed borders. Muhammad Subat, a journalist specialized in social and political affairs, has pointed out that “the great challenge is to tell the complete truth about immigrants.” Subat has also stated that "Spanish society is more welcoming than we think, the problem is the immigration and reception system."

Reflection based on knowledge of the past has come with the session History: What lessons from the past can serve us? where historians Martin Baumeister, Xosé Manoel Núñez and Heidi Cristina Senante have warned of the risk of taking the 20th century with very little reflection, appealing to knowledge of the past as a tool to understand the present.

In the session Society: How to get out of the patriarchal model?, the writers Remedios Zafra and Najat El Hachmi, together with the psychologist specialized in sexist violence, Alba Alfageme, have analyzed the way to end the patriarchal model through feminisms, a concept that, according to Remedios Zafra, “many use as a social disguise, but that they do not fully understand.” In this sense, Najat El Hachmi has pointed out that “we have the answers to how to end this patriarchy, we just need to apply them consistently and through a global alliance.”