DON’T SMOTHER SOLIDARITY LOVE
Love is energy that gives true life to society. In every civilization there are forces that generate life, truth and justice, and forces that provoke death, lies and indignity. It’s not always easy to detect it, but at the root of every impulse of life is always love.
That’s why, when love is suffocated in a society, they’re suffocating at the same time the dynamic that brings about human growth and the expansion of life. From there comes the importance of socially caring for love and fighting against everything that can destroy it.
One way to kill love at its root is the manipulation of people. In today’s society the rights of the person are proclaimed at full volume, but later the individuals are sacrificed in the name of progress, usefulness or the development of wellbeing. We then find produced what the North American thinker Herbet Marcuse called «the euthanasia of freedom». Every day there are more people who live in an «unfreedom that is comfortable, convenient, reasonable, democratic». They live well, but without knowing true freedom or love.
Another danger for love is functionalism. In the society of efficiency what’s important isn’t people but the function they fulfill. The individual easily gets reduced to a cog in the machinery: at work she’s an employee; in consumption he’s a client; in politics she’s a vote; in the hospital, he’s a room number… In this society, things function; relationships among people die.
Another frequent way to smother love is indifference. The functionalism of modern society focuses people on their own interests. Everyone else is an «abstraction». Studies and statistics are published behind which is hidden the sufferings of concrete people. It’s not easy to feel ourselves responsible. It’s the public administration that should worry about those problems.
What can a person do? In the face of so many forms of un-love, the Baptist suggests a clear stance: «Whoever has two shirts must give one to the man who has none, and whoever has food must share it». What can we do? Simply share more of what we have with those who are in need.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
