Opinion Sur
Since this December, the Catholic Church is celebrating the Jubilee of Loving Kindness; Opinion Sur decided to reprint two related articles. The first one, written in April 2013, stated that loving kindness (which Francisco strongly stressed) gets stronger with understanding. The second one extracts some paragraphs from the Evangelii Gaudium Encyclical delivered in December of the same year, which is the best answer given by the Pope that we could have imagined. It is worth noting that Francisco does not know Opinion Sur but, miraculously or not, there was a wonderful synchronicity.
Loving kindness and understanding
Opinion Sur April 2013, by Roberto Sansón Mizrahi
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. 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 (See A country for all, 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.
Pope Francis’ socioeconomic considerations
In a recent document, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis raises important socioeconomic considerations regarding contemporary reality. Opinion Sur has selected some of the most significant paragraphs to share with its readers. The document’s purpose is to improve the evangelist action and to indicate paths for the Church trajectory in years to come, matters that are not covered by Opinion Sur. So it is worth clarifying that the socioeconomic appreciations were used to place that task within the context of the current world. The complete text can be read following this link.
(i) Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.
(ii) In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
(iii) The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person! While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. Debt and the accumulation of interest also make it difficult for countries to realize the potential of their own economies and keep citizens from enjoying their real purchasing power. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.
(iv) Behind this attitude lurk a rejection of ethics and a rejection of God. Ethics has come to be viewed with a certain scornful derision. It is seen as counterproductive, too human, because it makes money and power relative. It is felt to be a threat, since it condemns the manipulation and debasement of the person.
(v) Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence. The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence, yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode. When a society – whether local, national or global – is willing to leave a part of itself on the fringes, no political programmes or resources spent on law enforcement or surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility. This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root. Just as goodness tends to spread, the toleration of evil, which is injustice, tends to expand its baneful influence and quietly to undermine any political and social system, no matter how solid it may appear. If every action has its consequences, an evil embedded in the structures of a society has a constant potential for disintegration and death. It is evil crystallized in unjust social structures, which cannot be the basis of hope for a better future.
(vi) Today’s economic mechanisms promote inordinate consumption, yet it is evident that unbridled consumerism combined with inequality proves doubly damaging to the social fabric. Inequality eventually engenders a violence which recourse to arms cannot and never will be able to resolve. It serves only to offer false hopes to those clamoring for heightened security, even though nowadays we know that weapons and violence, rather than providing solutions, create new and more serious conflicts. Some simply content themselves with blaming the poor and the poorer countries themselves for their troubles; indulging in unwarranted generalizations, they claim that the solution is an “education” that would tranquilize them, making them tame and harmless. All this becomes even more exasperating for the marginalized in the light of the widespread and deeply rooted corruption found in many countries – in their governments, businesses and institutions – whatever the political ideology of their leaders.
(vii) In the prevailing culture, priority is given to the outward, the immediate, the visible, the quick, the superficial and the provisional. What is real gives way to appearances. In many countries globalization has meant a hastened deterioration of their own cultural roots and the invasion of ways of thinking and acting proper to other cultures which are economically advanced but ethically debilitated.
(viii) On the one hand, there are people who have the means needed to develop their personal and family lives, but there are also many “non-citizens”, “half citizens” and “urban remnants”. Cities create a sort of permanent ambivalence because, while they offer their residents countless possibilities, they also present many people with any number of obstacles to the full development of their lives. This contrast causes painful suffering. In many parts of the world, cities are the scene of mass protests where thousands of people call for freedom, a voice in public life, justice and a variety of other demands which, if not properly understood, will not be silenced by force. What could be significant places of encounter and solidarity often become places of isolation and mutual distrust? Houses and neighborhoods are more often built to isolate and protect than to connect and integrate.
(ix) Solidarity is a spontaneous reaction by those who recognize that the social function of property and the universal destination of goods are realities which come before private property. The private ownership of goods is justified by the need to protect and increase them, so that they can better serve the common good; for this reason, solidarity must be lived as the decision to restore to the poor what belongs to them. These convictions and habits of solidarity, when they are put into practice, open the way to other structural transformations and make them possible. Changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure that those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual.
(x) Sometimes it is a matter of hearing the cry of entire peoples, the poorest peoples of the earth, since “peace is founded not only on respect for human rights, but also on respect for the rights of peoples”. Sadly, even human rights can be used as a justification for an inordinate defense of individual rights or the rights of the richer peoples. With due respect for the autonomy and culture of every nation, we must never forget that the planet belongs to all mankind and is meant for all mankind; the mere fact that some people are born in places with fewer resources or less development does not justify the fact that they are living with less dignity. It must be reiterated that “the more fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods more generously at the service of others”. To speak properly of our own rights, we need to broaden our perspective and to hear the plea of other peoples and other regions than those of our own country. We need to grow in a solidarity which “would allow all peoples to become the artisans of their destiny”, since “every person is called to self-fulfillment”.
(xi) The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed, not only for the pragmatic reason of its urgency for the good order of society, but because society needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening and frustrating it, and which can only lead to new crises. Welfare projects, which meet certain urgent needs, should be considered merely temporary responses. As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.
(xii) The dignity of each human person and the pursuit of the common good are concerns which ought to shape all economic policies. At times, however, they seem to be a mere addendum imported from without in order to fill out a political discourse lacking in perspectives or plans for true and integral development. How many words prove irksome to this system! It is irksome when the question of ethics is raised, when global solidarity is invoked, when the distribution of goods is mentioned, when reference is made to protecting labor and defending the dignity of the powerless, when allusion is made to a God who demands a commitment to justice.
(xiii) We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market. Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it requires decisions, programs, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality. I am far from proposing an irresponsible populism, but the economy can no longer turn to remedies that are a new poison, such as attempting to increase profits by reducing the work force and thereby adding to the ranks of the excluded.
(xiv) Economy, as the very word indicates, should be the art of achieving a fitting management of our common home, which is the world as a whole. Each meaningful economic decision made in one part of the world has repercussions everywhere else; consequently, no government can act without regard for shared responsibility. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find local solutions for enormous global problems which overwhelm local politics with difficulties to resolve. If we really want to achieve a healthy world economy, what is needed at this juncture of history is a more efficient way of interacting which, with due regard for the sovereignty of each nation, ensures the economic well-being of all countries, not just of a few.
(xv) I have always been distressed at the lot of those who are victims of various kinds of human trafficking. How I wish that all of us would hear God’s cry: “Where is your brother?” Where is your brother or sister who is enslaved? Where are the brother and sister whom you are killing each day in clandestine warehouses, in rings of prostitution, in children used for begging, in exploiting undocumented labor? Let us not look the other way. There is greater complicity than we think. The issue involves everyone! This infamous network of crime is now well established in our cities, and many people have blood on their hands as a result of their comfortable and silent complicity.
(xvi) Peace in society cannot be understood as pacification or the mere absence of violence resulting from the domination of one part of society over others. Nor does true peace act as a pretext for justifying a social structure which silences or appeases the poor, so that the more affluent can placidly support their lifestyle while others have to make do as they can. Demands involving the distribution of wealth, concern for the poor and human rights cannot be suppressed under the guise of creating a consensus on paper or a transient peace for a contented minority. The dignity of the human person and the common good rank higher than the comfort of those who refuse to renounce their privileges. When these values are threatened, a prophetic voice must be raised.
(xvii) A peace which is not the result of integral development will be doomed; it will always spawn new conflicts and various forms of violence. When conflict arises, some people simply look at it and go their way as if nothing happened; they wash their hands of it and get on with their lives. Others embrace it in such a way that they become its prisoners; they lose their bearings, project onto institutions their own confusion and dissatisfaction and thus make unity impossible. But there is also a third way, and it is the best way to deal with conflict. It is the willingness to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process. “Blessed are the peacemakers!”
(xviii) In a culture which privileges dialogue as a form of encounter, it is time to devise a means for building consensus and agreement while seeking the goal of a just, responsive and inclusive society. The principal author, the historic subject of this process, is the people as a whole and their culture, and not a single class, minority, group or elite. We do not need plans drawn up by a few for the few, or an enlightened or outspoken minority which claims to speak for everyone. It is about agreeing to live together, a social and cultural pact.
