SS_07/14 → Notes from Conversas Vadias #7 – Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Cáceres Monteiro
Notes from Conversas Vadias #7
Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Cáceres Monteiro
Originally broadcast by RTP on 19 April 1990.
Available through the RTP Archives.
There are ideas that become more provocative with time.
This is one of them.
At one point, Agostinho is asked why he doesn’t collect royalties from his books.
His answer is astonishing.
I’m not sure I’m the author.
He smiles.
Then continues.
I’m certain I typed the words.
I’m certain I wrote the book.
But I’m not certain I created the ideas.
That distinction completely changes the conversation.
Modern culture treats ideas like property.
We protect them.
Patent them.
Copyright them.
Monetise them.
Agostinho questions something much earlier.
What if ideas aren’t produced?
What if they’re discovered?
Or received?
Or simply pass through us?
Whether you agree with him is almost beside the point.
The question itself is enough to unsettle our assumptions.
Because if creativity isn’t ownership…
…perhaps it’s stewardship.
The conversation keeps returning to children.
As it often does throughout this series.
Agostinho imagines a world where children aren’t educated into conformity, but allowed to discover their own way of inhabiting life.
He refuses to prescribe the alternative.
In fact, he says something I found surprisingly refreshing.
I’m not going to tell you what the alternative is.
You’ll create it yourselves.
That sentence says a lot about the kind of thinker he was.
He wasn’t trying to build followers.
He was trying to create conditions for independent thinking.
There’s another distinction that stayed with me.
He contrasts two ways of living.
The monk serves whatever needs serving.
The soldier fulfils whatever duty has been assigned.
He admires both.
But if forced to choose, he prefers service over obedience.
It’s a subtle difference.
Obedience begins with instructions.
Service begins with attention.
One asks,
“What was I told to do?”
The other asks,
“What does this moment need?”
Perhaps that’s why Agostinho never seemed interested in certainty.
He wasn’t building systems.
He was cultivating awareness.
And maybe that’s also why he could let go of authorship so easily.
If ideas belong to anyone…
…perhaps they belong to reality itself.
We’re simply fortunate enough to meet some of them before we leave.
Original source
Conversas Vadias — Episode 7 → https://www.fernandomoreira.me/conversas-vadias-episodio-7-com-caceres-monteiro/
Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Cáceres Monteiro.
Broadcast by RTP on 19 April 1990.
Available through the RTP Archives.