After the postmodernity — Intro
”The cooperative economy, if it is authentic, if it wants to play a powerful social role, if it wants to be the protagonist of the future of a nation and of each local community, must seek transparent and clear objectives. The economy of honesty must be promoted! A healing economy in the insidious sea of the global economy. A true economy supported by people who have only the common good in their hearts and minds “. Pope Francis
Harmony and progress in appearance. Dispute and dystopia in essence.
The dramatic and unresponsive situation that the world is experiencing at this very moment reveals the lack of collective cohesion and requires principles of solidarity and cooperation as an amalgamation of our relations.
Such a condition exposes society to its economic and social consequences, which tied hands and feet, reminds us of a simple, but famous phrase: “Planting is optional, but harvesting is mandatory.
Yes, we are reaping! Harvesting bitter fruit for neglecting the social asphyxiation of this authoritarianism that ignores the growing complexity of society and economic systems, something that has accompanied human history and the central diversification in its development practically pari passu.
Ambiguity
Men are bound to live under the aegis of a collective sphere that protects, which is intimate, but at the same time hostile. Since birth and interdependence, emancipation and autonomy — the rituals of approach and distance are repeated.
However, the economy, this globally present misshapen being, until recently was considered healthy only if some parameters of effectiveness and stability were obeyed so that, in the end, they could be measured and compared. Although the benefits of such a ubiquitous and rigid uniformity were touted as sufficient so that their harm would be considered insignificant.
The price paid for the unrestrained promotion of competitiveness and efficiency as ultimate values turned out to be not only too inhumane, but especially high for the planet on which we live.
Now, we must understand economies, plural as each society in which they are sustained sounds, as necessarily effective as long as they are sustainable, which is based both on balance as a necessary goal, and on longevity as a possible horizon.
This change has become prominent in view of the numerous sociological and ecological issues that have gained centrality in the discourse about our future and of many other species threatened by the voracity inherent in mercantile capitalism, the main propellant of this dominant view.
Denial of science and, above all, human demographic and cognitive crises, constitute our greatest financial and social risks worldwide.
“We see that the iconoclasts, accused of despising and denying images, were those who gave them their fair value, unlike the iconolaters, who only saw reflections and were content to venerate God in filigree.” Baudrillard
Uniqueness
There is nothing more opportune than rescuing conceptual formulations of applications in an empirical reality that denies the dissociation of natural and social sciences. That develops the unifying principle that vertically crosses the particulars of these — the one.
The world is a big cosmic web. The mechanistic view, as opposed to the view that everything is just God, even endeavored to fragment the complex systems of the universe in an attempt to better understand each of the parts, but neglects their interdependence and mutational capacity of a model that calls for decisions, that consider their multiplicities and are free from prejudice, recognizing that the current economic model works only for a small portion of society. Today, then, an even smaller portion.
Between the cross and the sword, only solidarity and cooperation can dialogue with both sides. An amalgamation that unifies the public and private sectors in the light of anomalies based on self-interest.
The coupling between system and environment proposes a systemic look through biology for answers in the social field and questions ambivalences and dichotomies in an existential burden that has always been trapped in the blindness of opposites.
It may seem obvious, however, the way that living beings transform and are transformed by the environment creates a relationship of interdependence and intimacy — but in the vanity of precipitating, the anomalies of the reflex of life or unexpected movement are born — that in search of cure, it demands unexpected losses from us for not paying due attention to the domestications of the past. We need to see visceral disengagement with the dogmas here, so that we can start a new form of engagement.
It is precisely in the coupling between theory and practice, which does not occur in the current context of radical transformations in the economic panorama, in a context in which even a fierce dispute between the tools available for dominance as deciphering keys for its operation is absent. And, as is known, phenomena without an analytical interpretation are the result of a reality devoid of parameters that can be contained within an explanatory key. But, as we well know, every gap is an opportunity. This is no exception.
Existence
In addition to being healthy or sustainable, why don’t we turn to something more basic and essential between us as individuals? Why not pay attention to the most elementary in what keeps societies alive and markets active? Why not focus our efforts on each interaction that makes up the great economic mosaic? Why don’t we base this new approach on an element that can account for the necessary predictability of transactions and the cohesion essential to the system? Why not go beyond honesty as an abstract value and make it an operational principle?
It is worth noting that this condition, punctuated by so many ruptures and continuities, accompanies a corresponding epistemological narrative with which it maintains profound ideological intimacy, as well as its exact opposite — highly centralized policies in the state.
This historical fact is further proof that we must also be concerned with problems that are far from our navels.
Communication, Technology and Sustainability.
Regardless of the reason, the moment seems auspicious for an innovative praxis that can unite a new proposal fully focused on a common future that has in mind both the resources at our disposal and the challenges at our doorstep. It is essentially more profound and enduring than a simple inversion of values or what, in an underlying or evident way, a revolution propagates and proposes as its purpose.
What we are presenting is a reframing of what honesty can be and a reiteration of what an economy should do. In synthesizing all these practices, here we propose a triad based on: communication, technology and sustainability — for a confrontation in the cultural sphere, in the promotion of more inclusive economic and social technologies, in decentralized philanthropy and in the generation of resources with less impact of destruction of the planet.
This is the first in a series of 4 articles in which we will address in detail a vision of how the pillars presented can build a path of global prosperity in facing our current challenges.
