In 1998 I wrote a fairly autobiographical novel that was undoubtedly boring for almost the entire public, since my greatest interest at that time was not in writing, but in trying to better understand what had happened to me in my life. I think I managed that in a way, because I did obtain a different perspective on the events of my life, and that is always good. 

One of the chapters in that book was titled "Money is Everything" and when I re-read that chapter, I really did not see why I gave it that name, since I only suggested the concept of money and did not make it explicit. And we know how suggestions work… mostly pretty poorly.

Anyway, a few weeks ago that title came back to haunt me, but in a different way from 25 years ago. Now the idea was not so vague, but began to explicitly appear every day in conversations, in what I read, in exchanges, and especially when I contemplated the deplorable spectacle of our global system in crisis. A system that has almost completely abandoned the human being and whose indisputable and perversely accepted central value is money.

They say "money is everything and money destroys everything."  Now, instead of being  just a kind of half-leftist political slogan that is "liberal" to the more "conservative," this phrase has become a suffocating, disastrous reality for everyone. This reality brings with it the deterioration of the social fabric, a phenomenon we are only now discovering and of which we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. 

The most significant thing is that this has nothing to do with anything political or apolitical, but is strictly an ethical issue. We may not recognize it as such because we have been taught to think of ethics as almost religious, and therefore we never see the roots of problems. We stay on the surface, which only allows  labels, dubious descriptions, or shallow but correctly accepted phrases.

There is no valid ethics that does not take the human being into account. It is only  the human being who can create, aspire, and build an ethics at the service of the human, not the other way around. Despite every effort to impose an ethics down through history, those efforts have all been in vain. Because the ethical cannot be imposed. It can come neither from above nor from below, but only from human beings in reciprocal relationship with each other. 

What I am trying to say is that an ethics only works when it grows out of the simple understanding that the human being is what is most important. I  registered this truly when I treat others the way I want to be treated. This valuing of the other as if they were myself is the foundation of an ethics at the service of humanity.

That the ethical has given birth to "human rights" with all their complications and virtues is meaningful only if those "rights" begin and end with individuals. Unfortunately this is not the case. Our socio-economic system considers people's “rights” much less important than the rights of corporations or businesses. Our whole "free market," based on the concept of "competition" and giving free reign to those with capital and resources who wish to exploit others, is clearly deteriorating,  especially for the new generations. 

Now this whole economic system  is about to disintegrate because it does not respond to today's social problems. If it once offered some benefits, today those benefits do not exist. I cannot go on for pages and pages explaining how this economic building is collapsing, but I think it's obvious to everyone in our supposedly "advanced" societies that the growing unemployment, physical violence, drug addiction, homelessness and lack of healthcare, the constant sense of instability and danger, the impossibility of caring for the environment, and the chasm of inequality between rich and poor all show that this system has resoundingly failed.

Failures are positive when they are recognized as such - then they open up the possibility of beginning a new stage. When they are not recognized, then they are destructive and generate all kinds of violence. 

It remains to be seen how we will face this crisis, but without a doubt, and following the mechanics of history so brilliantly presented by the philosopher Ortega y Gasset, it will be the generations who are currently without access to power who will decide these issues. 

It is possible that then a new paradigm will appear, and a new ethics will emerge to replace competition with collaboration. It is possible that my rights begin and end with the rights of the other. It is possible that community has a deeper value than the individual. It is possible that corporations will disappear and give way to cooperatives. It is possible that we will begin to treat others the way we want to be treated.

In fact, everything is absolutely possible if individuals go through an internal transformation and if our society is rebuilt out of that which makes us truly human. 

But none of this can be imposed. This kind of transformation  needs to be born, to grow and develop out of the internal center of gravity with which every human being is endowed. And the core value - or ethics - of this center of gravity is to  treat others as one wants to be treated. 

It is only in truly registering this ethics and in acting accordingly that we understand the divine, the sacred, the ethical and everything we tend to seek outside ourselves before we realize that it is actually inside us and inside every individual born on this planet. When we are able to recognize all this, that is when an historical rupture can take place and a new world can be built based on everything that makes us truly human.

 This recognition is available to everyone, without distinction of any kind, and if we can enjoy a little internal silence, we can express it in the world we live in.

Money is just an instrument and as such can be used in many ways. The way it has been used and abused, especially in this century and the last, has led us into crisis. Although many neither see nor wish to see this crisis, it is obviously manifesting itself and will continue to manifest itself until we come to the historical rupture we mentioned - that rupture in which all power held by one or more human beings over other human beings is abolished: "When the possibility for one man to have power over another is socially eliminated, then the generations will cease their millennial struggles in order to exercise power only over nature. That will be the moment we break our historical enchainment.”

And that will be the moment we see a new “form” of relationship that will become the center of gravity for a new civilization.

It seems important to me to clarify that this “power over nature” will be the power of protection and not of extraction. Since the environment -- or nature -- is an intrinsic part of us, it needs the same care our bodies need. If up to now we have contemplated an incomprehensible suicide with anguish, that anguish is not much different than what we feel when we look at the environment. And this is so because the humanity-environment structure is one and indivisible. As are the humanity-planet structure, the sun-planetary system structure, and so on. 

Nothing exists in a vacuum, nothing exists by itself. Every existence is in dynamic relationship with other existences of different constitution and magnitude. Achieving harmony among existences produces the best conditions for any development, but this is a topic for another digression. For now, "money is everything" - but any effort toward a different situation, starting with ourselves and the way we treat others, has the potential of ultimately changing the disproportionate equation in which we find ourselves. This simple concept, which we call true Solidarity, is the counterbalance to selfishness, isolation, competition, exploitation, mistrust, discrimination and abuse.

We will see…

EDITED & TRANSLATED BY TRUDI RICHARDS

ILLUSTRATION BY RAFAEL EDWARDS