Opinion articles

We Ecuadorians are overwhelmed by the decadent reality of national politics that could well subjugate us, plunging us into a dark abyss of despair in the face of the immediate future and the future that lies ahead. There are so many negative events that are nourished by the vileness of their protagonists, cultivated with treacherous self-confidence, that we run the risk of assimilating ourselves into that environment, feeling that we are as responsible as those of that dark vileness. However, this is not the case, because the vast majority of citizens are honest people who work to live decently, contribute to the development of society and improve their emotional and material conditions of existence.

The scenario of politics, in our case, is so low and painful that it does not deserve that we give it more importance than it has, because despite the fact that it is essential for coexistence, due to its evident moral degradation it could envelop us and suffocate us and, if does not succeed, it could produce the terrible effect of getting us used to those venal behaviors that from that moment would become part of our daily lives, acquiring their atrabiliary actors a space in our lives. A scene of terror! ...if we allow it.

The word bioethics was used for the first time at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. Later, in the seventies, the American scientist and thinker Van Rensselaer Potter definitively positioned the term, which today has a global presence. I always found that its current validity was a kind of renovation of the old ethical word, because the latter is the one that traditionally accounts for the necessary moral reflection inherent to all human action. I considered, and still do, that ethics is broad and that the new term, bioethics, being a new version of it, is also broad, especially because it is related to the life sciences, both those that have to do with the organic, such as biology, ecology or health, as with the social... philosophy, economics, politics; and, of course, with the law, an immense system that regulates human life in all its aspects, both organic and social.

Philosophical reflection on global contemporaneity has as topics of analysis human actions connected with the use of water and soil, scientific research, the application of technology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience and the use and destruction of natural resources. , among many other activities related to life on the planet. For those who maintain, lightly, that the only important thing is to do and achieve the proposed pragmatic objectives, the current reality of systemic precariousness and risk of global extinction represents a colossal denial of that position that defends deterioration and builds an apocalyptic present and future. The moral point of view is inherent to any idea, project or action, because through it we analyze its ethical value from the perspective of maintaining life or contributing to its destruction, of course, in the intricate framework of civilization in which which unfolds all kinds of interests that reflect a human condition drawn both by altruism and by selfishness that does not see or understand the whole, but only objectives that benefit its myopic approaches.

In Ecuador it is the improvement of the living conditions of large social groups, which cannot be conceived without public policies aimed at strengthening a national health system that enables the physical and emotional well-being of all, the construction of a model of education that allows understanding the importance of knowledge oriented to the common good, and without the consistent search to overcome poverty. These are responsibilities that summon the State and individuals, so that from these bases —whose levels of concreteness must be increasing in the social reality of the country— think and act collectively in the unlimited range of possibilities for improvement of individual and group well-being, citizen security, care for the environment and the search for peace, harmony and happiness, great objectives of humanity embodied in declarations of international organizations and countries, from the United Nations to the constitutions of national States.

Willy-nilly! Roadblocks that prevent the free movement of people. Groups of protesters armed with objects to damage the tires of the vehicles of citizens who try to circulate, because they have the right to do so, and they prevent it with treachery that defies and devastates. Sabotage of public and private facilities so that after the warning that threatens and the application of brute force, their administrators do what those angry individuals and groups want, either by delivering the money demanded or by suspending the activities of their companies, businesses or productive enterprises, thus further affecting the precarious coexistence and leading Ecuadorian society into chaos. Kidnappings of people who oppose their violence or members of the public force who, frightened, try to stop the anger and lack of control of the riotous masses that attack and destroy. Systematic intimidation of all those who do not think like them. Aggressions that destroy public goods that are for the use of all. Bulk crimes!

Words have great strength because they allow expressing ideas and the wide range of feelings and emotions.

Impressed by the facts that shape the current national reality in relation to the law, the administration of justice, private and public institutions, and the legal system in general - a complex system that defines and regulates individual and collective life -, I began a process of searching for the word or phrase that can most pertinently account for the decadence in which citizens, lawyers, officials and members of the justice administration system live, in a daily life that cries out its anguish and also fatally accommodates to a reality that uses the law as a suit to disguise its misery and impudence.