Loving kindness and understanding

Loving kindness is strengthened by understanding how the processes that generate and reproduce circumstances of deprivation are born and developed. This way, loving kindness would present itself in two equally valuable dimensions; one of care and direct attention to the ones in need and another of working to remove the causes that generate the situation they are in. Intertwined, loving kindness and understanding can generate a tremendous transformational synergy. That minds and hearts would express loving kindness would largely improve the human relations and what is created by them. Loving kindness can be taught and encouraged through preaching and the example of social, politic and religious referents; also by the people and family members we are surrounded by. Ultimately, it springs inside us as a result of reflection, introspection or a profound inspiration that flows from very diverse roots.

Loving kindness is defined as the disposition to commiserate with other people’s labors and miseries. It manifests as a feeling of sorrow or compassion for those who suffer, which drives people to help or relieve them. It is having a giving heart towards those in need.

By practicing and feeling loving kindness regarding the suffering of other beings it emerges as an outrage the inadmissible poverty and destitution that keeps striking an enormous part of the population. There is no place in contemporary reality for poverty to endure and even worse destitution; there are enough resources and knowledge to end the material poverty of those who suffer from it and the spiritual one of those producing and reproducing it.

Social and religious leaders, people of good will, reaffirm the calling to aid the poor and cover their needs. In that quest sincere loving kindness, not those loving kindness mimicries with which the cynical and hypocrites deceive, is extremely helpful because it creates a crucial space to bring the will to eliminate poverty to all levels of human activities. With it, decisions to preserve the planet and its communities are facilitated.

It is merciful, generous, humanitarian to ease the situation of deprivation of the poor and destitute; it is an action that does not allow delays or preconditions and all that can be done from that space of care and love towards others is not only worth promoting but also invites all of us to become involved. However, loving kindness actions turns out insufficient to solve by itself the uncountable and serious deprivation situations.

Poverty exists and is reproduced over time not as a natural and unavoidable fact but as a result of the course and the way of functioning that prevail in each historic phase. There are interests loaded with greed and selfishness that in their unbridled pursuit of profit generate poverty while others play spectators before the pain of those who suffer. To abolish poverty a very diverse ensemble of factors carry significant weight: from changing values and feelings to transforming the economic way of functioning, going through what silences our conscience and smothers creativity and transformational determination.

If unbridled greed would one day come to disappear and taking care of others would be internalized deep inside us (humanitarian utopia), quite different the world’s trajectory would be. Accomplishing it requires preaching and understanding. Feeling the injustice, the inequity, the depreciation of others as evils to overcome is critical, as critical as comprehending why things happen the way they do and acting accordingly.

Poverty and destitution are the foreseeable and not unexpected outcomes of certain economic processes imposed and sustained by powerful minorities that hold privileges at the expense of others. It is not easy to transform established and consolidated dynamics; those who benefit from them count with institutional mechanisms (political, ideological, media, judiciary) to resist transformations that may affect their interests.

Without removing the causes generating its existence, poverty can be mitigated though not resolved with loving kindness actions. Having the necessary resources and mechanisms to eliminate poverty, loving kindness needs to be strengthened with the knowledge of how the processes that generate and reproduce poverty grow and develop, as to be able then to add directionality to the actions that can be mobilized. Thus, loving kindness would present two equally valuable dimensions; one of direct care and urgent support for those in need, and another of working to remove the causes that generate the situation those who suffer are in.

An important line of understanding focuses in the close relation that links the existence of poverty with how value -the outcome of the productive effort- is generated, distributed and extracted [[[Article Differentiating generation, redistribution and extraction of value->http://opinionsur.org.ar/Differentiating-generation?var_recherche=Article%20Differentiating%20generation%2C%20redistribution%20and%20extraction%20of%20value.%20].]] . According to what that socioeconomic equation ends up being we will have a wealth and income concentration process (with or without growth) or, alternatively, a trajectory of sustainable development. This, certainly, with the differences and singularities that characterize every situation and historic phase.

When the entire planet is threatened by the unscrupulous actions of many of us inhabitants, when our societies are torn apart by the privilege of some at the expense of the rest, when spurious interests sustain aggravated criminal systems, when disorientation is channeled towards nihilism and resorts to addictions, when justice is unfair, inequity prevails, disparity rules, corruption enervates decisions, when politics are intentionally discredited, when media becomes an ally of privilege and the trivialization of life, when education and employment are devalued, when our own existential meaning is at stake, it is in order to question the course we are following and whether the social organization we have carried out is the appropriate one for this collective march in the XXI century. Here is where the convergence of loving kindness and understanding becomes firm ground to face new pursuits: a new systemic course, with solidarity, responsible, fair, and a new way of functioning that meets expectations and needs; where mechanisms are just mechanisms and not goals themselves. Thus markets, investments, savings, competitiveness, technology, all our macro-economy, meso-economy, micro-economy, become crucial mechanisms that we must get to know and use properly in order to align them with the new course and way of functioning we adopt.

Despite that hegemonic thinking has tried to even out perspectives, there is much written, thought and debated on new options and other kind of trajectories, which can be useful to adjust the course, transform our economies, eliminate traps and make our democracies fuller, giving way to a sustainable planet and countries that are truly for all [[[A country for all->http://opinionsur.org.ar/Un-pais-para-todos-Hacia-un], opinion sur collection]].

Loving kindness and understanding, motivation and effectiveness, lead to raising one’s gaze, capturing underlying dynamics, and standing up above disagreements. Intertwined, loving kindness and understanding can generate a tremendous transformational synergy which is not, never was, something reserved for some chosen or privileged groups; it is a calling that involves us all, an effort open to the participation of social, religious, politic and economic forces.

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