Opinion Sur
It is not just a question of abating inequality and enhancing the access to opportunities, but also of exalting social, political, environmental responsibility. What would be the point in overcoming the opprobrium of inequality, to then fall into that of social, environmental and political irresponsibility? The passage from inequality to equality is a necessary, yet not sufficient, condition to ensure sustainable development; it must be attained but, in doing so, values and attitudes will have to be changed. Responsibility brings along a new series of criteria that guide and straighten up individual behavior that has nothing to do with launching to the market a new wave of destroyers of the environment, social harmony, respect for the other, and cooperation with the rest.
Fortunately, the notion that it is necessary to abate inequality is ever more present in citizen awareness as well as in the political agenda. This is already a step forward in respect of continuing to live in very unequal societies as though that was something natural, permanent, inevitable. In those societies, citizens act concerned about their own wellbeing, but anesthetized about what happens to the others; they look the other side, ignore the complex relations bonding us all, sensitive ─if they ever are─ only to their families and their closest friends. The rest, that immense universe of other human beings, is considered just a part of the context within which we have to live.
However, anyone who is able to stand above ignorance and stupidity knows that others’ circumstances, in one way or another, directly or indirectly, influence what happens to us. When inequality prevails, not only those who lag behind are abandoned, but also the functioning of society as a whole becomes affected.
In other articles of Opinión Sur we specified how inequality disrupts the benefits of organic growth; how an ever more segmented effective demand becomes out of phase in respect of a vigorous productive supply encouraged by today’s tremendous technological development; how income concentration also expresses itself in the concentration of savings; how investment is deviated from the real economy toward financial speculation; how, in this process, avarice is exacerbated and risks are hidden; how the pattern of consumption becomes ever more superfluous and how advertising spreads it to society as a whole; how the economic system seeks to avoid market strangling by resorting not to improving genuine income but, rather, to consumer indebtedness; how we then fall into a perilous over-indebtedness that leads to the creation of tremendous financial bubbles, until there comes a day when they burst, with devastating effects. We also mentioned that such economic process correlates at the political level by upholding institutions that favor that type of functioning, and that certain strategic think tanks justify the prevailing order ignoring the debacle germinating below the surface.
A growth such as the one described above ─concentration-oriented, anchored to each one’s own interest, successful for some and indifferent to the suffering of others─ generates values, ideas, attitudes, behaviors that render its reproduction possible. The obvious question is how huge majorities can be subjected to that situation and its demolishing effects.
The answers are diverse, as diverse are the circumstances and the history of each specific situation. There are cultures where resignation to the established order, respect for traditional authority, is rooted in beliefs and traditions. There are not few societies where political, economic and communicational power are connected and complement one another functionally. Some communities were disarticulated as such by bloody dictatorships, ethnic conflicts or natural catastrophes; others fled their milieu for economic reasons and are vulnerable migrants in foreign land; a number of them became subjected by minorities with greater coercive power.
In any situation there coexist persons and organizations having very diverse needs, interests, values and emotions; this is always the case. We live in essentially heterogeneous contexts, sometimes with deep and apparently irreconcilable differences, other times, only diverse in terms of nuances. The point is that such diversity exists and, in spite of attempts at eliminating it, it persists and is reproduced with the course of time because it is inherent to the nature of human groups.
It is then difficult to explain how, notwithstanding the lessons taught by the long and painful history of humanity, we keep wanting to eliminate the other one, or force him to be like us, subduing, submitting him, rather than reconciling interests and needs, working to attain convergences, to seek complementarities, to identify synergies and new ways to help, respecting and preserving the diversity of individualities.
When democratic systems, the different types and forms of democracy emerged, a ray of hope was cast. In democracy, differences in interests, conflicts and tensions inherent to the social functioning, are addressed and sought to be resolved by peaceful means, through agreements that are, sometimes, generous and entail detachment and, other times, end up being the result of very tough “give-and-takes”. The problem is that democracies are imperfect, and many times they preserve profound injustices and inequalities within.
This may perhaps correspond to a certain phase in the development of democracies in which they are more formal than full-fledged; democracies where privilege-entrenched interests with considerable means resist changes that might give way to greater equality and social harmony. One of the main challenges of this 21st century is to preserve democracies by deepening them in social and economic terms; to defend individual rights founded on the freedom of conscience that was so hard to conquer, while securing social justice, greater equality of opportunities for all without any discrimination whatsoever.
Today this aspiration lies in abating inequality among and within countries, and in eliminating poverty and indigence altogether wherever they may be found. A goal on which it is easy to agree but the resolution of which raises controversy as, in order to overcome resistance, it is indispensable that we embark on the complex task of aligning those above-mentioned multiple and diverse interests, needs, values and emotions.
Besides, it is not just a question of going from inequality to equality but in addition exalting social, political, environmental responsibility. What would be the point in overcoming the opprobrium of inequality, to then fall into that of social, environmental and political irresponsibility? The passage from inequality to equality is a necessary, yet not sufficient, condition to ensure sustainable development. Certainly, it must be attained but, in doing so, the behavior of persons should also be changed, both of those who benefited from inequality as well as those who will access the opportunities they had been previously deprived of.
Responsibility brings along a new series of criteria that guide and straighten up individual behavior. We would be doing a small favor to sustainable development by launching to the market a new wave of destroyers of the environment, social harmony, respect for the other, and cooperation with the rest.
