Opinion articles

These days, one of the main values ​​that we must promulgate to the whole of society and of which we must completely immerse ourselves is ethics, and we are not referring only to those effects of false morals and conservative precepts that can make us believe that being Ethical is only a momentary behavior or an attitude towards a certain situation, but we emphasize that particular way of life that must exist in all of us who are part of a society, be it as a father, husband, son, professional or as a member of a given community.

The different civic celebrations serve purposes that have to do with the strengthening of the collective identity as a foundation for improvement and social projection. The city of Cuenca, on the occasion of the two hundred years of its independence from Spain, commemorates this date with a series of activities marked by the love of citizens for their land, their achievements and their culture that allows us to affirm that we are a community that it has built itself thinking of the collective good that is evidenced in its public services, such as drinking water, sewerage, wastewater treatment, garbage processing, telephone service and internet connection, health, education, public transport; and, in their private ventures that have generated wealth shared by their success in various industries, such as white goods, ceramics, furniture and commerce, all defined by the search for professional quality and by the use of technologies and production strategies.

We all know the unstoppable deterioration of environmental conditions on the planet. For so long, so many have said and written it vehemently that this perspective is part of contemporary social opinion. Almost without exception, scientists, thinkers and citizens coincide in this approach that is taken to works of literature, plastic arts, cinema and other forms of expression of a humanity that understands life and sees its future as decadent and dark due to the deterioration of the natural conditions on Earth.

In this precarious and unsustainable scenario, the pandemic caused by COVID-19 was presented, which is but one example of everything that is possible, because we have done so much to destroy that we have achieved it. The conditions are ripe for the equilibrium to be broken and for us to rush helplessly to 'new normalities' that are nothing but decadent forms of life. In the immediate future, new and probable catastrophic events could be represented by the presence of new viruses, fires, thaws, global computer blackouts and other events.

Embarrassed. Fearful With suspicion and fear of showing themselves and showing their identity. With modesty to say what they are and what they represent. Cornered by those who tell them that they cannot speak because dialogue on these issues cannot occur with those who have no right to say anything, because what is involved does not require religious criteria and does require all the others, except those and neither does any other that represents something that they do not want to hear because it is wrong and does not make sense. Because those who shout do not support that their conceptual brilliance is discussed one iota by anyone and less by religious, considered by them as unfit to say what they think on one topic or another. Thus, from that position, little by little a social vision is built that, due to its intolerance, could be expected to consolidate only at one point in history, but would have no future ... unless decadence prevails.

Contemporary heretics are not only religious, they are generally those who dare to express their opinions against criteria based on irrefutable evidence, of course for the owners of the truth. That they are outraged and reject what is different, feeling so safe that they are capable of insulting, excluding, denigrating and later, when they have total control of things, perhaps eliminating the dissidence that hinders. Because they can see and the others, blind and foolish, are in error.

In the processes of analysis and decision-making in the various situations that arise in social life, among us, we often hear and read that the scientific criterion is the one that must determine the position to be adopted. Surely, this point of view responds to the obvious importance of formal logic, the essence of the scientific approach that allows us to understand and describe material phenomena. The vertiginous and unstoppable development of science and its technological applications is the product of the rigor of its analysis. Scientific knowledge is present in all social spheres, often used for charity, but also for devastation, the abusive control of others and the strengthening of political powers that are not always oriented to the common good.

The discovery of the objective functioning of organic life and matter is extraordinary. To a large extent, civilizational development, both for the improvement of living conditions and for the unstoppable forging of conditions that can lead to planetary collapse, is the product of the scientific method. The 1973 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the Austrian Konrad Lorenz, known for his figure of a wise naturalist followed by his beloved geese, in one of his books, He talked to the beasts, the fish and the birds, he jokes when he states that the rigorous observation of the behavior of animals allowed him to dispense with the King Solomon ring that magically allowed this character the possibility of understanding the language of animals and also being understood by them.

Contemporaneity has given up in the search for transcendence and has put the relativity of things in its place. Young people and many of us, faced with a matter of moral judgment, respond almost unanimously with stereotypical words such as 'it depends'. Everyone is right and the good and the bad do not differ because relativism has prevailed. Integrity and vice have the same value and there are no better or worse behaviors ... 'it depends'.