WHAT THE FUTURE WILL BRING IN MATTERS OF BASIC NEEDS
(By Ramón D. Marín)
Recently, I received a video (https://www.facebook.com/juancarlosyepesnegociosentm/videos/10155501506324579/) that is being circulated on social networks, which was great luck since after seeing it, I couldn't resist the temptation to write these comments, which I believe are worth it. In them I compile a couple of crazy thoughts (or should I say hunches) that have been floating in the air for a good many years. Oh, how much I wish I were Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, or Donald Trump to turn them into a mathematical, sociological, or political equation and in results from real life!
In the video, they talk about an equation apparently common in some books and social networks:
Luck = preparation + opportunity.
This equation (if that’s what it is) is used mainly in self-help discourse to demonstrate that luck doesn’t exist and that what has to be done to achieve success is go to school and grab all opportunities.
The lecturer in the video that I was lucky enough to get, on the contrary, uses the equation to deduce, after some operations, seemingly mathematical; that opportunities and fate have (or should have) nothing to do with success and that it’s the result of preparation alone. It even sounds pretty; actually the video could have been done with the intention to motivate people to study more.
In appearance, only a negative person would find a weak point in the message. However, what I’m trying to do is not find the weak point, I just didn’t want to waste this opportunity to put together the pieces of a puzzle that might make sense and might find somebody to agree with it.
The trigger that brought me here was the word “opportunities”. Upon listening to it, the alarms went off: I couldn’t help feeling the pain of being poor, remembering that for the poor there are no opportunities, nor preparation (nor enough preparation) because we have no access to education (and we don’t have this or that or the other…). Even if we study a lot, it’s obvious that the children of us, the poor, don’t have the same opportunities as the children of Bill Gates or Cesar Gaviria.[2]
And still on inequality, what about the opportunities of those who were born geniuses vs. the opportunities of those of us that were born average (or less than average); especially if we add, to that, the fact of having been born in a third world country. Equal preparation (and effort) of us, the poor and average, doesn’t give us the same opportunities as the geniuses and the rich.
Nonetheless, the video virtually concludes that we all have the same opportunities in life, but neither mathematics nor the self-help, best-selling books would make us believe a lie –or lack of observation– of such magnitude.
For some unknown reason, God didn’t make us all exactly the same, like made with the same cast, but I’m sure nothing would make him happier than having things fixed (as soon as possible) in a way in which we all can have the same opportunities in life. God surely must have thought: “I can’t make them all the same, but that’s why I’m gonna give them intelligence and heart; and I’m gonna make some of them geniuses so they help to organize things.”
Since the world doesn’t need us all to become presidents, then we should at least solve the problem of the attainment of the daily sustenance. But it seems things are really hard to fix because those who make the decisions are not the geniuses but the owners of the capital. What happens is not that geniuses haven’t had that lightbulb moment, it’s just that the greed and evilness of those who have held power haven’t let them.
My opinion is that the inequalities that go with the real world must be alleviated using the human ingenuity, the organization and mass mobilization capacity and the goodness and compassion that abounds in the human beings’heart. There are enough resources in the planet and enough people who feel hurt by poverty and inequality so that nobody has to suffer from unsatisfied basic needs; but the meanness of a few has dominated.
I’m firmly convinced that the law of God, the laws of the Universe, the laws of ethics and moral, the human rights charter, all the poor and disadvantaged, all the just, and all the beings of the interstellar space would give their approval to the statement that those that ended up better off in all the profit distributions that there have been in the lottery of life have the moral and divine obligation (and should have the legal and constitutional obligation) to help for the basic needs of the worse off (poor and average and all those that got the worst part) to be satisfied adequately.
That applies not only to individuals but also to nations. We must develop mechanisms for the virtues and benefits coming from the planet’s goods and resources to reach also the underprivileged from all countries. And it’s not about alms, voluntary, nor isolated help, but planning with precise obligations, stated in global and national laws, which don’t exist yet (that means they’re needed); not because nobody has come up with them yet, but because the know-it-all owners of the capital haven’t allowed the libertarian and egalitarian ideas to flourish.
I, amidst my naiveness, my averageness, my prayers for a fair world, and my capacity to bear the rain of tomatoes and maybe of ridicule and boos; dare to say that all those making a wage over the mínimum must have the obligation to make their contribution as much as the Ronaldos, the Shakiras, and the Bills Gates.
I can hear the voices asking: Why do I have to solve other’s problems? If resources are needed for the disadvantaged, then those resources have to come from somewhere. There’s no magic wand, nor does God have a money deposit. I insist that God provided enough for everybody, that He wants things to be fixed, and that there is no solution other than making those better off to have the sacred duty to provide for the worse off.
What sense does it make to live in a community if that community has not been built for caring for one another, but for stepping on and cheating on one another? It’s an obligation of the state and of those that have been benefitted in the splitting of the power to care for that percentage of the population that got scammed in the natural and economic lotteries.
Among the luckiest ones of all countries there are many that have already undertaken that “obligation/duty”. That’s how many foundations (lonely birds) have been born, whose efforts to improve the world fall short because of the many injustices, inequalities, and lacks of the real world.
But the job of improving the world must not fall upon the shoulders of a few; nor must it be a decision that somebody chooses to make in isolation. If the contribution comes from all, the weight of the obligation is going to be lighter. It should also not happen in some places of the world, while in some others they let hunger and deprivation go wild. Those in charge of making political and legislative decisions, in both the national and global scenarios, have to pass laws and take the necessary measures for all and every one of the individuals and organizations, members of the different local, national, and world, communities contribute their share.
Those contributions must be enough to cover the basic needs of all and every one of us, the aforementioned underprotected from all and every one of the countries of the world. The resources will probably have to be administered by some nongovernmental board or by United Nations because we already know that people don’t believe in the good intentions of governments.
But sadly enough, the poor of today (who lack opportunities and so many other things) have no option other than bearing the ignominious world that we have to live in. As for those that are not poor, they have (theoretically) little to complain about or to fear in terms of deprivation; but what do we know about what our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are going to get in this mess of inequality and social injustice that has been built by those that have been in charge of the boat’s rudder so far? What if it happens that luck and preparation doesn’t favor them? Wouldn’t they prefer to live in a world of fraternity, solidarity, and social justice?
Fortunately, this cogitation is much more than a look at the crystal ball, much more than a proposal born from naiveness and dreaming. It’s an almost mathematical calculation, it’s the absolute certainty that there will come one day when the good and geniuses inexorably find the way for the planet to become aware that infamy shouldn’t be accepted anymore as a natural occurrence of daily life; and consequently, we start putting our act together, in both the national and global scenarios.
What has been said here is the most that a poor, ignorant, average man on the street, like me can say. We all know that those who make the decisions are the owners of the capital, but, as a worker ant full of faith in its work says: "I’m doing my part of the job."
