It seems that we always feel – at least since I have been politically and socially aware for many decades – that we are at key points in our history marked by violent controversies to violent confrontations. Nowadays violence is expressed primarily verbally, albeit in a worryingly intensified way.
Society seems caught in an incessant chain of conflicts, in an increasingly belligerent public discourse, in narratives that exclude and in scandals that are always interpreted in the worst possible way. Even at the institutional level, there are many parliamentary blocs that are formed “to block the initiatives of…” regardless of who they come from. It is a path that reveals more struggles of attrition than a calling to encounter.
To make matters worse, social science measures in networks that “confrontation is raging.” This kind of action implies the tacit acceptance that the normal condition of people is war.
“Man is man’s wolf,” said Lucullus (or Hobbes, it doesn’t matter). Christian social thought offers a different vision: enlightened by charity, it understands – rightly – that we are made for love and not war (with a very different tone than the French May slogan). That’s why he proposes a golden binomial for our time: social friendship as the basis of shared life.
Our country’s origins make us a pluralistic society, and our history has shown numerous attempts at national construction. These different visions are not irreducible, but have a common background, the discovery of which requires calm, attention and good will. I practice several elements: individual and social flourishing and harmony; education and culture; safety and health; work and rest. We seek it in different ways, but deep down it is what we all want. All: We call it the common good.
At a conference at the Sorbonne, then-Cardinal Ratzinger recalled the Buddhist parable of the elephant and the blind: A king from northern India gathered all the blind residents of the city and had them touch different parts of an elephant: the head, the ear, the tusks, the trunk, the leg, the back, the hair on the tail. Then he asked her, “What does an elephant look like?” And each answered according to the part he had touched: It is like a barrel, like a plowshare, like a pillar, a broom, a fan… Then, as the parable says, they began to argue and shout, “The elephant is such and such,” until at last they beat each other, to the king’s amusement. In short, he didn’t care about the different opinions, he just laughed about it, because the most important one was his, that of power.
We have an enormous task before us: to build a nation together, with plural and diverse values, but with a common background. A company this large cannot be reduced to one voice that excludes all others, but rather to a path that serves everyone. There are many paths, many pictures: They all reflect something of the whole, and none is the whole in itself. What would happen if blind people established a dialogue in which they shared their experiences in a friendly way? Together they would arrive at a clearer idea of what an elephant is, enriched by each individual’s contribution. Security, progress, growth, economy, poverty, education, respect, democracy… all of these are the elephant.
What would happen if we sat down with each individual’s intensity of beliefs to talk in detail and respectfully about what we want? Wouldn’t we come together to a truth greater than just mine? Sure, things will be left out and we won’t be able to integrate all visions, but the result will be richer than the imposition of a single perspective by those in power.
The essential requirement is a basic social friendship. Friendship, Aristotle said, involves similarity (not sameness), and we have that. And he added: It requires benevolence, i.e. the decision to want the well-being of others. He doesn’t see it as something spontaneous, but as a decision and an effort, and that’s what it is. A few days ago the new Congress was formed. Libertarians, Peronists (of all stripes), radicals, socialists, politicians of all currents in the country, this decision is yours. Building a dialogue out of social friendship and striving for the common good. It doesn’t seem like much to ask, but it’s an old challenge.
Theologian, professor at the Universidad Austral and chaplain at the IAE Business School
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