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[introtext] => Returning home, dreaming of communion also for that good half of the world that will never set foot in an airplane
by Luigino Bruni
published in Città Nuova n.17/2014 on 10/09/2014
Returning from Paris, from a summer school on the Economy of Communion, flying up in the sky above Europe I am thinking about our capitalism. Perhaps because in France there is a newly appointed minister of economics, perhaps because I have just greeted fifty young people who are fascinated by a more fraternal and inclusive economy. Or perhaps because my heart goes out to too many aircrafts that are in the wrong, flying over many war-ravaged lands; I cannot help thinking of our market economy, our crises, the many Africans and North Africans I've seen in the subways of Paris and its existential, economic and cultural peripheries.
[fulltext] => The first thing I ponder is what is happening in this plane between me (the other passengers) and the airline that is taking me home. I purchased a ticket, and in doing so I have completely moved into the logic of our capitalism. I made a contract with a major airline, a major player in the global economy (which buys, like other major airlines, many highly speculative financial stocks [hedge funds] to insure itself against the fluctuations of oil prices). To buy my ticket I used a credit card issued by one of the leading global financial circuits. Apart from me, this contract was closed also with a top manager normally travelling in business class, an Italian family (parents and three boys) who spent a few days of holiday in Paris and the young activist of an NGO who is returning from a conference where our economic system was criticised. The flight attendant smiles at me and treats me with much kindness, without actually knowing me, but that’s what her contract prescribes for her. And I am writing comfortably, using my PC produced by a large multinational.
And from this plane my thoughts also go to my predecessor at the University of Rome, who, two hundred years ago, in order to make the same trip to Paris took on perhaps a week's journey, had to cross mountain passes, running the risk of being trapped in the mountains, spending a fortune on the trip, and arriving physically destroyed. And I also think that there were very few people who had the means to go to Paris or to other European cities, their number must have been much lower than today.
So if we stopped at this point of the argument I would not feel too uncomfortable
about this flight as I remember the young people from different countries of the world that I have just left, with some nostalgia.
In fact, there is much more to my ticket than that: hidden in it there is such 'a lot' that is hard to see, also because we have stopped asking ourselves some deep questions about the kind of world we have built around us. At the same time it is good to remember that I am travelling on a machine that is one of the main factors of pollution for our planet. It is true that among the programmes it offers aboard there is also the opportunity to make a donation to plant trees that would reproduce exactly the amount of CO2 that we are emitting, but by doing so it is asking us, private citizens to take responsibility for a social cost that this company generates and does not cover (or only in a small part). But then I think of all those citizens whom I have just come across in the metro, and who will probably never get on one of these planes, or just very rarely. In fact, there are less people travelling by air today than yesterday, because even if tickets cost relatively less today than ten years ago, the inequalities have increased, and today the life conditions of the poorest 10% in Europe have deteriorated, and it continues to worsen. Not to mention the billions of people in Africa, Asia and in many parts of South America, who not only do not fly, but they see the conditions of their environment worsen because of the flights of the richer 20% of the planet. Yet even these, and especially these people, would need to fly, to see the world, they need to take flights more than us, more than me, they need to fly and dream. But – and this is something that you do not speak about –if only 50% of those who today are excluded and trapped in the existential peripheries of the world began to fly in the sky, the planet would not be able to provide for our subsistence, and we would all have to get down to the ground. The sad message that lurks beneath this flight is very simple and should not let us travel in peace: the exclusion of one-half of the inhabitants of the planet from this wealth is the condition for us to be able to fly. That's why the real systemic risk of our time is that the many people who are forced to remain on the ground one day cease to peacefully watch the sky where only the others are flying.
And so, as we are landing now, my heart and mind return to the Economy of Communion, to those young people full of hope, and I feel convinced again that if there is a post-capitalist socio-economic system in which all can dream and fly, then this new system will have something to do with the word communion. But we won't ever realize it, unless we – whether we are flying or not – keep looking for it, thinking about it, loving it and believing it today.
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[text] => Returning home, dreaming of communion also for that good half of the world that will never set foot in an airplane
by Luigino Bruni
published in Città Nuova n.17/2014 on 10/09/2014
Returning from Paris, from a summer school on the Economy of Communion, flying up in the sky above Europe I am thinking about our capitalism. Perhaps because in France there is a newly appointed minister of economics, perhaps because I have just greeted fifty young people who are fascinated by a more fraternal and inclusive economy. Or perhaps because my heart goes out to too many aircrafts that are in the wrong, flying over many war-ravaged lands; I cannot help thinking of our market economy, our crises, the many Africans and North Africans I've seen in the subways of Paris and its existential, economic and cultural peripheries.
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In our hedonistic, consumeristic, and finance centric culture, love may be the most used and worn out word. However, Benedict XVI made it the core of his social doctrine. Deus Caritas est and Caritas in Veritate, are, respectively, his first and last encyclicals.
The economy has extreme need of resurrection. Every resurrection is preceded and prepared by a crisis, by a passage or change: one does not resurrect if first, in some way, one does not die. In the economic system that we have produced in this last century there is, in fact, something that is clearly dying out, but there is also something new which is emerging on the horizon, even if we need “eyes of resurrection” to be able to see it, and then to recognize it for what it really is; that is, the dawn of a new day.
There is an overwhelming mass of great injustice toward the elderly. Until a few decades ago the traditional structure of Western society was based on a rule of reciprocity: as adults they gave assistance to our parents, and once they themselves became older they would receive care from their children (who in turn had received care from their parents during their childhood and youth). And the balance between "giving" and "receiving" care broke even. All this then was a political and social representation in the pension system, where the pension received by an elderly was not his savings as a young man, but a sort of return and appreciation of the young people towards them.
From time to time, in recent years, the market rekindles the debate on its limits. We return to wonder whether it is right, opportune and possible to create official and transparent markets for organ trafficking, legalizing commercial surrogacy, legalizing prostitution, etc., issues that for many generate anger and rejection.
The financial crisis in Ireland, following that of Greece, does nothing but remind us that the West has gone too far into debt. The rescue of many banks and businesses last year, following the crisis, led especially to a shift of debt from the private to the public sector.
One of the most important elements in the birth of Western civilization was the opposition between fortune and virtue. In the world of Greek myths, a tight relationship between happiness and fortune existed: he who had a good (eu) god (daimon) on his side was considered happy. Socrates and the long season of Greek philosophy affirmed, instead, that happiness, human flourishing, depends on virtue and not on fortune. Virtue beats bad luck. This is the basis on which all personal and collective ethics in Europe has been built. And thanks to the great Christian event, Europe has affirmed that good living, happiness, depends on the capacity to cultivate virtue, on our commitment and on our responsibility.
In almost all airports of the world, you can pay to get Internet service. In Zurich, with one Euro, you can be connected for 4 minutes: almost all the booths were available. A few days ago, in Porto, I found free Internet service in the airport. I waited in line for more than an hour, and then I gave up because those using the booths were not moving. Maybe if the cost in Zurich was a little less, and in Porto a little more, the efficiency of both systems would improve.
Why do people go to vote?
postal service, etc...). However, often, very often, what happens is that these events take place in half-empty auditoriums, and of the millions of people reached, only a few, sparse groups arrive. How is this possible? Reducing costs is not always positive from a social point of view. When we receive an invitation to a conference, together will hundreds of other people, perhaps with an anonymous letterhead - "Respectable Sir/Madame" - we´re well conscious that that invitation only cost a few seconds of time, and this is why it makes us indifferent. Instead, 