Opinion Sur
Processes bearing strongly on contemporary reality are surfacing: among others, the crises in affluent countries, where there are fierce domestic struggles as to how burdens are to be distributed and what courses are to be chosen; the emergence of China, India, Brazil and other Southern Hemisphere economies as new driving forces of global development; turmoil in Arab countries, which are seeking long-repressed changes; promising political and economic transformations in Latin America and some African countries; booming technological development in the fields of communications and social networks, which enthrones simultaneity and immediacy and allows wire-fences to be jumped over. Other processes become more wide-spread as well, such as the armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Irak, Yemen, among other hot spots; dangerous criminal organizations crawling into national states; extended hypocrisy on operating rules and regulations; the crisis of representation, with corruption and impunity becoming embedded in decision-making systems. Inequity grows in most countries, with the Southern Hemisphere nations afflicted by the additional oppression of intolerable poverty and indigence. In this context, the existential pilgrimage of our peoples persists together with the individual, always singular, quest for purpose and sense.
The forces and circumstances underpinning such processes are multiple and diverse, which makes it difficult to find guiding principles guiding principles, common denominators. Simplistic interpretations convince no one. Yet, there are factors that, although their presence does not necessarily imply that they impact equally on the different trajectories, are present in almost all economic systems: such is the case of concentration-prone economic dynamics, the other side of which is the extended inequity and poverty. Economic concentration rests on a double support base: on the one hand, an almost inevitable process of results accumulation (some legitimately derived from successful production cycles, and other ones illegitimately obtained from cunning appropriation of surpluses) and, on the other hand, the response to accumulation which, generally speaking, anoints the growing social differentiation through economic policies that are regressive in essence. This is not inevitable because (i) there are ways to democratize accumulation without having to do away with large and small-sized businesses, and (ii) there are very diverse and effective redistribution mechanisms that manage to ensure fairness without affecting systemic competitiveness. What prevents this transformation is not the lack of knowledge or scarcity of resources but our incapacity to reach political consensus about new courses and ways of functioning.
A major component of this effort is the adoption of referential utopias that are capable of integrating the wide variety of needs, interests, and emotions of contemporary world, and deriving distant and immediate challenges from them. Challenges that need to be met collectively and, hence, require organizations and institutions that are capable of working them out, as well as personal challenges that must be faced individually from our deepest inner selves, family, neighborhoods.
It is not easy to stand tall in front of challenges, understand what brings about and reproduces difficulties, become organized and act accordingly and, yet, the future of the planet and billions of people depends on that. The articles published by Opinion Sur are intended to contribute, in all modesty, to that collective construction, and they do so from a diversity of perspectives we wish to preserve. We hope you find them interesting.
Cordial greetings.
The Editors
