ABOUT BEING SENSIBLE OR SENSITIVE

Ronnall Castro Q.

hegerlarx@hotmail.com

Publicado en Capital Letter No. 6

Noviembre de 2004

As classmates (teachers - students) we face extreme situations that force us to reflect daily on our human condition, and specifically our academic WORK. We have to face these situations by making the right decision at the right moment because a word uttered at the wrong moment or an action performed in the wrong place could spoil forever our effort of constructing knowledge for a better society. We can help to create a strong self-confidence in our mates or destroy their capacity to use their strengths appropriately. How do we create and not destroy? How do we get involved in this huge historical process in which humanity has been engaged for twenty-five centuries?

In my opinion, the answer could be found by solving a problem which at first glance is just a linguistic one (1): the difference and relationship between "sensible" and "sensitive" In fact it is a linguistic problem. Both of these words are the same grammatically, but they are different semantically.

Grammatically they are adjectives, but we cannot forget that adjectives are not simply words that qualify nouns. Adjectives are the abstraction we make of a real substantial-substantive attributive relationship between the being in itself and the appearance of that being in reality It means that if we say something of a phenomenon, it can be true or false depending on our correct or incorrect approach to reality. Semantically, sensible is an adjective that WE use to refer to the capacity of having, using or showing good sense or sound judgment and sensitive is an adjective that WE use to refer to the capacity of being readily or excessively affected by external agencies or influences.

Up to this point we already have an important approach: sensible and sensitive are terms which concern things of reality. However, Sensible and Sensitive are adjectives that we do not apply to all phenomena, neither do we apply it to all living things nor all human beings. A sensitive person is the one who can be touched by reality they live in, and sensible is the one who is sensitive. So that, our reflection of reality, which can only be correct by correctly using our senses, is the determining factor in order to acquire sensitivity, but, at the same time, this sensitivity is determined by our sensible (reasonable) conception of reality. On the contrary, a distorted reflection of it will end in chaos.

There is just one way in which we can contribute to creating self-confidence (humanization as individuals) and to get our mates involved in the process of knowledge acquisition(humanization as species) in the classroom: We must be sensible AND sensitive at the same time, and not forget that we are immersed in an inorganic and organic reality, but also, and most importantly, that our direct and primary reality is a SOCIAL one, that we are interacting constantly with human beings who think, suffer, enjoy, laugh, cry, need help, can help, work, feel embarrassed, feel proud, in a nutshell, human beings who live as we do.

1)    I am referring to that conception of Linguistics as a simple abstraction disconnected from reality. ZELENY, ]. (1972) La Estructura Lógica de "El Capital" d.c Marx. Editorial Grijalbo. Madrid. WEBSTER'S ENCYCLOPEDIC UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY OFTHEENGLISH LANGUAGE. (1996) Random House Value Publishing. Cramercy Books. New York. Ibid.