Opinion articles

The permanent connection with different technological devices is one of the characteristics that define us as individuals and societies today. It is dramatic, since many of us have developed evident syndromes of absolute dependence on what can be published on social networks, on the internet or in any media, like disoriented surfers in the immensity of computer chatter that, by the mere fact of being the repository of everything, it seduces us even to the alienated degradation represented by the fusion with the thoughtless mass captured by the technological mirage.

In addition to the frenzy unleashed by human baseness within everyone's reach, there in the network, there is also the exalted and sophisticated, the simple and transcendent, science and poetry, art, literature, pain, suffering and exultant joy so human and vital. There is all the music on the planet, history and the current geographic, climatic, cultural, economic reality and the expectations of the always uncertain future. There are the notables from all over the world whom we can have at home, like never before through virtual platforms, to share their knowledge, their dreams and hopes.

This is a subject on which I have written some ideas that recall other times in which radio stations were undisputed protagonists in people's lives, such as those of the previous century when families from Ecuador and the world came together daily to listen radio broadcasts that touched on all aspects of social life, reporting on the news that was produced, generating artistic spaces for musicians to interpret their compositions and songs or broadcasting the famous radio soap operas that captured the collective and enthusiastic attention of the citizenry.

They were Radio days, Woody Allen's splendid autobiographical film, produced in 1987, which recounts his own childhood in New York City and his passion for jazz that he discovered precisely through that medium. It was the times of Aunt Julia and the Scribe, a work written by Mario Vargas Llosa, published in 1977, also in some way a fictionalized autograph of the life of the great Peruvian writer, in which an important part of the plot addresses his friendship with the Bolivian librettist of radio soap operas from a Lima station.

Historically, societies produce norms that regulate the coexistence of their members. Not all are of the same nature because some define social relationships, others those of individuals with God, others the behaviors in certain associations, others the moral behaviors accepted as a group and individually, others the behaviors legally required, prohibited or permitted, and so on. all human scenarios, and it can be argued that there are as many rules of coexistence as there are groups.

In none of the aforementioned systems of norms, with the exception of the legal system, are sanctions imposed on a mandatory basis by the State. The law is the dogmatic system and rules of behavior that requires its compliance and, in the case of not being given, the power to apply the sanctions provided for those cases is attributed ... the penalty for the commission of crimes or others for incurring in situations that deserve the coercive reaction of organized society. The general and compulsory sanction is not found in the other regulations.

The use of the word ethics to analyze situations is common in our time. There is talk of ethics of suffering, of solidarity, of a public or private one, among many others, because each human action can be examined in the light of compliance with its moral foundations. Works dedicated to people have also been written, the best known was by Aristotle for his son, Nicomachean Ethics, and in these times, Fernando Savater published his well-known Ethics for Amador. Among us, the book by Eduardo Peña Triviño stands out, Proposal of a secular ethics.

In this scenario and in the political situation of our country, I write thinking about the group of public officials who are part of the new Government and the new Assembly that will lead our society in the coming years. I do so reflecting on the human condition and its circumstances and with respect for all and for them, aware that what I translate here as a text, on this occasion and always, has allowed me to verify my own precariousness in the face of the possibilities of excellence. I am not writing because I consider myself exemplary –unimaginable pretense– but because I adhere to what ethics represents as a way of life that maintains that virtues enhance sustainability and errors threaten it.

This adjective is not used frequently among us, perhaps because the concept of republic As a form of government, in practice, it is distant from us even though it discursively defines us, affirming that sovereignty resides in the people and is exercised through a legal system that regulates a political form of operation of the State based on respect to human rights.

The constitutional law that addresses these issues is nothing but the instrumentalized product of values ​​and ways of thinking about social coexistence. It is not and cannot be the original source of any regulation, as it is the result of ideas and the changing recognized social thought and that by the legal dogmatics itself must be respected by all other branches of law that in turn require the same treatment constituting this obligation the great legal category known as rule of law, which does not mean the rule of law, but of law, considered in its breadth as a normative system, social reality and principles that underpin it. Respect for the law is the supreme social value. Resistance, disagreement and rejection of the norm are regulated and must be exercised within its limits. However, some think that the legal system should not always be obeyed, because they do not feel identified and instead position their own individual vision of coexistence. Among us, recently, some of these attitudes are called incivilities… With good reason.

Internationally, the acceptance and allowance of abortion spreads throughout the world because it is considered as an advance of humanity. Those who defend it feel inspired by a moral cause that has at the center the defense of the interests of women and their right to dispose of their bodies, including the conceived child. The embryo, for these groups, is nothing but a part of the female organism and if it is not wanted by the mother for various reasons, these arguments should be enough to interrupt the pregnancy and kill the fetus, thus specifying the desire or need of the aborts. Obviously, despite certain grotesque manifestations that are unrepeatable as such, this action of destroying the unborn and unwanted - due to various circumstances - is also an act of pain and trauma for those who carry it out, feelings that in themselves have a dimension different from that of claiming the right to be able to do so. To destroy, shedding blood and destroying the body of the unborn, is for all and surely for those who make it a dramatic and indelible event in their lives. Otherwise, if this act is assumed as one of moral fulfillment, it would be a sample of insensitivity, clearly pathological and perverted. Abortion is not pleasant for anyone and even less for those who practice it.