Pope Francis constantly reminds us that we are at brutal levels of crimes against human dignity, of exploitation, impoverishment and discarding of more and more people. The majority of humanity is mired in misery, hunger and violence, in veritable corridors of death. And yet we live as if all this were not happening, as if we were indifferent, as if we were anesthetized, fleeing from suffering, or convinced that we can do nothing in the face of injustice.
It is evident that alone, isolated from each other, we will not emerge from our passivity. Capitalism has been transformed at full speed with the technological revolution. A revolution that has never been guided by solidarity and the common good, but rather by profit and the desire for totalitarian power. Digital capitalism has its main source of wealth in the extraction of all our data and in the control of our behaviors, our habits and our desires. We are objects of economic and political experimentation and testing. If we are not profitable, we are discarded or ruthlessly exterminated.
Our indifference alone is not enough for this system. Intellectual and digital borders are not enough. Walls, tanks and armies are also necessary. Physical borders have been erected to stop the flight of the hungry. The world has ten times more walls than it did 30 years ago. Surrounded by the hungry, the malnourished, the desperate and the humiliated, we erect walls and fences. Does it hurt us? We must be responsible for all humanity.
No one can understand, at this moment of our technological capacity, that millions of people continue to die of hunger, that inhuman forced labor continues to exist, that prostitution and pimps increase, that there are more than 400 million children whose dignity is trampled on, that there are slave markets, wars of extermination, trafficking in organs and people, deaths from perfectly curable diseases, more than 80 million people living in refugee camps, ...and a long etcetera of injustices that seem to hide behind visible walls and those of our indifference.
Most of the time we are unaware of the extent to which our well-being and possibilities rest on the exploitation of people and natural resources, on violence and wars, and on discarding. We are all responsible for each other. Also for the generations to come. It is the moral obligation of all of us to offer new generations a hope built on love for an ideal of justice and solidarity. We have to sow an associated response, in which we are protagonists, a community response, guided by the common good. Young people must discover life in solidarity and partnership as the only response to a system that crushes their ideals.
In the face of the great lie of "a happy world", progressive, in a system that only protects the richest, we have to defend, as Pope Francis asks us, that there will only be fraternal life if we work to free our conscience from addictions, drugs and indifference? with a critical formation, with reading in common, with study, with a sense of responsibility towards others; if we bet on associating and organizing ourselves and committing ourselves seriously to the service of others, in a concrete and not generic way, starting with betting on families that are authentic schools and testimonies of life in solidarity and dedication to the common good; if there are people and groups that are not afraid to defend and work without complexes for the life and dignity of every human being.
Pastor of the parishes of Santa María Reparadora and Santa María de los Ángeles, Santander.
