TEMPERAMENTVM ISSN 1699-6011

TEMPERAMENTVM ISSN 169-6011

		EDITORIAL
		Nursing responsibility: "to tell our story" Jorge Mínguez Arias Diplomado en Enfermería. Licenciado en Antropología Social y Cultural D.E.A. por La Universidad Pública de Navarra. Centro de Salud Labradores. Logroño (España) Mail delivery: Centro de Salud Labradores. C/Labradores 40. 26005 Logroño (España) Manuscript accepted by 11.05.07 Temperamentvm 2007; 5

How to cite this document
Mínguez Arias, Jorge. Nursing responsability: "to tell our history". Temperamentvm 2007, 5. In <http://www.index-f.com/temperamentum/tn5/t1206e.php> Consulted by

It was in 442 BC when Sofocles precociously described the contradiction between traditional family values and respect for governmental regulations. In his tragedy Antigona¹, Creonte, king of Tebas, condems Antigona's brother, Polineces, to remain unburied after dying during an attack to his city. Antigona's female condition, closed to being a slave at that time², does not allow her to contradict and rebel against the king's wishes, burying her brother. She knows that her behaviour will infuriate Creonte to the point of ordering her own execution. However, she decides to assume the risk knowing that she must first comply with tradition and divine law.

This myth brings face to face the duties of blood and the duties of community life; the breaking-off between the pre-urban ancient world, where the first pre-cities were beginning to appear, and the new cities with the newly created concept of vicinity.

Antigona clearly acknowledges the importance of burying the death in Classical Greece. Remaining unburied after death was equivalent to dying nowhere. It was equivalent to losing that limited area which deletes all signs of our own death on earth. All memories disappear and, therefore, those who might still remember the deceased grow unable to remember them. As a result, one does not only die physically, but also socially.

According to western beliefs, based on Classical Greece, being buried is extremely important. For example, this is the reason why so much effort was put into burying the nurses of Valdedios³: because the act of burying them somehow contributed to recover their historical memory, to socially overcome their being biologically death.

When someone dies and is buried, the place of burial acquires a new, highly significant density. It is not anymore like any other place, it becomes something else as memories flow through it. People leave flowers, a crucifix, a monument, which enclose and determine the event.

This group of significant symbols, namely monuments, acts, discourses, songs, poems, etc., become part of our daily routine, constituting a differentiated succession of events, and creating a number of milestones from which human beings obtain support and orientation. Thanks to these milestones human beings can inhabit the world, with which they can identify themselves and learn where and who they are. Based on these milestones, on these physical references, human beings learn how to make oceans and deserts become habitable. Human beings would be unable to subsist without references; they would get lost and die or disappear.

This is the process through which history is built: a series of facts, although not all of them get passed on. However, some facts do remain or subsist. Usually, they are considered to be more important, more transcendental, they look better, more interesting, or simply they are worth telling⁴. This is the reason why good stories, stories of heroes and heroines, are told, whereas stories about cowardice tend to be forgotten, unless cowardice becomes heroism in the end. Only memorable facts are worth remembering. If, after death, one is not remembered, the limited space of his or her grave will never be marked. However, when someone's death becomes the reason for a group of people to get together, then this person deserves a monument and his achievements in life deserve to be remembered. In fact, these are the stories which are normally told and sung by artists, poets and historians.

If your stories are not told, then you do not exist. According to Ortega y Gasset, we are what we say and what we do. However, this is not sufficient. In order to be remembered, in order to be, we must tell our story, we must communicate it in order to acquire our own social space⁵.

Wittgenstein tells us that there could be no river without its bed, however there could be no river without water either. Let's identify the river's water with ideas and the river's bed with beliefs. We often forget how important the beliefs with which we describe reality are, focusing on ideas instead. Following this argument, it could be suggested that our ideas emerge from our deepest self, from our subjectivity. For this reason, we must know and control from where we are being told⁶. As a consequence, our knowledge of reality is not neutral but full of values and subjectivities; both environments and spaces are constructed on the basis of territorial references.

Assuming a reductionist position and, therefore, assuming the risk of making mistakes, it can be said that humanity's process of evolution involved a first stage where reality became known through animism. During the inauguration of a course on positive philosophy in 1826, Comte proposed the study of scientific thinking and the process of scientific thinking throughout history based on three levels: theological, metaphysical and positivism.

In the theological level, reality is explained through a religious, mythical and fabulist point of view. In fact there is not science, as everything is explained through myths, religious visions, fables, etc. Later on, Descartes would discover the link between myth and logos, where reality is explained through reason: "cogito ergo cum" (I think, therefore I exist).

Positivism reveals reality through observation, through all that which is visible and objective. Reality becomes nothing but what can be weighted, measured and counted, and physics becomes the main science. All other sciences, such as maths and geometry, are relegated to a second place. Therefore, an object becomes positivistic norm⁷.

From this moment on, social entities started to be studied as physical entities, which were observable and quantifiable.

Theory of science scholars realised the vital need to free the scientist from all his beliefs and subjectivity, in order to neutrally assess and observe reality, and be able to see and understand the truth.

Under these circumstances, scholars devoted themselves to discovering new areas. Until then, their starting point had been a subjective observant limited by his values, subjectivity and observed reality. For this reason, they started to question the objects of their actions and the different concepts of reality.

Epistemology is an important methodology which studies philosophical problems derived from the science of knowledge. It defines knowledge, related concepts, sources, criteria, types of knowledge and their validity, as well as the exact relation between the one who knows and the known object. Epistemology comes from the Greek terms episteme, which means knowledge, and logos, which means theory or reason. This is the reason why nurses have started to discover the importance and responsibility of telling their stories in order to exist, and of learning who they are in order to become useful to the community, to clarify what can be expected of them. Consequently, it is paramount to determine from where, how, who and why nurses tell their stories⁸.

In order to be, nurses must realise their own dynamism. Nurses did not remain static throughout the time; nurses are not always the same. Instead, nurses continuously change and evolve, representing the evolution of their daily work. As a social group and in order for their stories to be told, nurses must become part of their own process of evolution. This process involves two antagonistic behaviours: conservative and dynamic. According to this, some objects will remain but also gradually change. This can be observed in acts of agreement and disagreement, which can structure or destroy an organisation without changing what they already are (different from yesterday and different from tomorrow, although they never lose their nursing identity). This apparent contradiction: keeping one's own essence and innovating at the same time, is typical of human beings and human's social organisations. Consequently, it must not be considered as something anomalous but something implicit in the human condition instead⁹.

As a conclusion, through the myth of Antigona human beings show their need to avoid deserts rather focusing on referencing and drawing reality. It must be taken into account that professional history has been determined by different filters throughout the time. History is never neutral; it is full of values, beliefs, interests and subjectivity built around environments and spaces with territorial references. However, it must never be forgotten that we still have the crucial responsibility of telling our own story, in order to avoid a tragic social death.

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