IN a recent seminar I attended, an interesting sideshow grabbed my attention. A small group of the participants, what you call a “petit comite” huddled in a corner to tackle a very intriguing, complex issue.
They were talking about Intellectual Property Right (IPR), and one of them, a book publisher, was complaining about how his books are pirated even by those close to him, who copy and spread his publications through electronics.
This book publisher is a close friend of mine, and I truly commiserate with him because of the decrease of business he is now suffering due to the new technologies. But everybody else was also my friend. I listened to both sides, and tried to sort out things.
At the end of the day, what came forming in my mind was the idea that while there is such thing as IPR and private property, we should also be moving towards a sense of universal ownership over all goods, natural and man-made, that we have at the moment.
We have been negligent in that area, content with the status quo that obviously needs to be updated, if not purified and corrected, especially given the new developments and phenomena we are having today.
This, in fact, has been echoed in one of the points in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Point 179 hits it bull’s eye when it says:
“The present historical period has placed at the disposal of society new goods that were completely unknown until recent times.
“This calls for a fresh reading of the principle of the universal destination of the goods of the earth and makes it necessary to extend this principle so that it includes the latest developments brought about by economic and technological progress.
“The ownership of these new goods—the results of knowledge, technology and know-how—becomes ever more decisive, because ‘the wealth of the industrialized nations is based much more on this kind of ownership than on natural resources.
“New technological and scientific knowledge must be placed at the service of mankind’s primary needs, gradually increasing humanity’s common patrimony…
“It is necessary to break down the barriers and monopolies which leave so many countries on the margins of development, and to provide all individuals and nations with the basic conditions which enable them to share in development.”
Sorry for the long quote, but I believe it is necessary to make this doctrine more known by everyone. The challenge we have at hand is enormous, since it would involve drastic and radical changes in our attitudes and culture.
Thing is we cannot deny the fact that while there is a need for reasonable profit for one’s work, we should avoid making our creations and inventions a tool for greed and dominion over others.
This is how I feel when I see how pharmaceutical products and the electronic goods are so commercialized that they worsen the gaps and divisions among peoples and nations. The rich get richer, while the poor get poorer. The smart ones get smarter, while the less-endowed get more miserable.
I have seen people dying simply because of what I feel is an inadequate if not unfair system of ownership we have at the moment. This situation is crying to heaven for correction.
With respect to the use of the goods of the earth, we should not make money the primary consideration. It’s charity. It’s justice. It’s mercy and compassion. These elements have to enter prominently in the equation. Otherwise, we would just be building an inhuman world.
So, this sense of universal ownership has to be made more familiar to everyone, especially to our leaders and other movers and shakers in the world. In another point of the Compendium, the same idea is articulated.
Point 178 says: “Man should regard external things that he legitimately possesses not only as his own but also as common in the sense that they should be able to benefit not only him but also others.”
Obviously, the road to this sense of universal ownership is tricky, to say the least. But we have to start. We may have to tackle the issue differently through the many items and cases involved in this question, but we have to start somewhere.
How I hope that a serious effort be done in this regard! It can be done anywhere—in the Church structure, or civil society, or government, or academe. But we need to do something about this.
May we be inspired to pursue this need further.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Handling anonymity
WHEN to pass unnoticed, to hide and disappear, and when to assert our identity and even publicize our credentials and bona fides is a skill we need to learn rather urgently. With our confusing times, this art assures us we are on the right track without compromising our ultimate goal.
For sure, there are many situations when we should just do what we have to do without attracting attention. In fact, this is usually the case. Very seldom are the times when our actions would have some public audience.
But even when we do some public action, we should try our best to remain anonymous, unless circumstances demand otherwise. Anonymity guarantees our being grounded, and not easily blown off by merely circumstantial things in life.
Anonymity helps us to work efficiently, with our powers focused on the tasks at hand and with little distractions. With it, we avoid the tricks of pride and vanity, and feed our humility and simplicity, so essential for us to continue doing things.
Yes, humility is the oil that facilitates our going deeper and farther into things. Many people testify to this basic truth. They see more things and work better with humility.
Pride and arrogance, as everyone knows, lead us to self-satisfaction and tend to restrain our efforts and to blind us. They are notorious for not knowing what to do when difficulties and especially failures happen.
Anonymity also aids us in our rectitude of intention, since working in a hidden and quiet way creates the proper air of intimacy with the purpose and intentions of our work. Let’s remember that our work is never a solitary affair. By its nature, it connects us with others, even if it is confined to a private place or an internal activity.
Anonymity enhances naturalness, tact, discretion and prudence, especially when we are under pressure. The show-off only attracts more trouble. The conceited only makes his own web of destruction.
With anonymity our work then easily becomes a living extension of what is in our heart, and builds us up as persons and not as robots. It’s not just a mechanical appendage that we are somehow forced to do and thereby degrading us.
The ultimate value of anonymity in our work is that it leads us to precisely lose that anonymity in our relation with God who is the beginning and end of everything we are and do. It sounds like a contradiction, but our humanity simply works that way. It will look for the first cause and the last end of things.
In these moments, we would be eager to go face to face with God. It’s in this kind of mind frame that we would realize how God is ever present everywhere, how his greatness, his wisdom and goodness, his love and mercy get vitally interwoven in the small and ordinary events and circumstances of our daily life.
He has not left orphans who now try to make do with whatever we can. He is always with us, and in fact ever solicitous of our needs and changing conditions. This is what divine providence is all about.
Yes, even while we are busy at work, immersed in the things of the world, with all its concerns, problems, challenges and pressures, we practically become contemplatives, since we can be truly united to him, and our work becomes his also, and all that we feel and think become his as well and not just ours.
It’s in this mindset also that we become aware of what God wants from us. There’s that existential union—a communion, better termed—with him. And that’s what our Christian faith tells us to pursue.
We need to go after this goal of attaining that communion with God, of becoming a real contemplative even in the middle of the world. This is not only for a few people, but for all, with all of us helping one another to achieve it.
As of now, this truth of our faith may still look like a quixotic dream. But if we put all our mind and heart into it, there’s no doubt that it can be done. It’s God’s will, in the first place, and he would be the first one to give us what is necessary to reach it. But we just have to have faith, and let that faith run its full course in our life.
We can do it. “Possumus.”
For sure, there are many situations when we should just do what we have to do without attracting attention. In fact, this is usually the case. Very seldom are the times when our actions would have some public audience.
But even when we do some public action, we should try our best to remain anonymous, unless circumstances demand otherwise. Anonymity guarantees our being grounded, and not easily blown off by merely circumstantial things in life.
Anonymity helps us to work efficiently, with our powers focused on the tasks at hand and with little distractions. With it, we avoid the tricks of pride and vanity, and feed our humility and simplicity, so essential for us to continue doing things.
Yes, humility is the oil that facilitates our going deeper and farther into things. Many people testify to this basic truth. They see more things and work better with humility.
Pride and arrogance, as everyone knows, lead us to self-satisfaction and tend to restrain our efforts and to blind us. They are notorious for not knowing what to do when difficulties and especially failures happen.
Anonymity also aids us in our rectitude of intention, since working in a hidden and quiet way creates the proper air of intimacy with the purpose and intentions of our work. Let’s remember that our work is never a solitary affair. By its nature, it connects us with others, even if it is confined to a private place or an internal activity.
Anonymity enhances naturalness, tact, discretion and prudence, especially when we are under pressure. The show-off only attracts more trouble. The conceited only makes his own web of destruction.
With anonymity our work then easily becomes a living extension of what is in our heart, and builds us up as persons and not as robots. It’s not just a mechanical appendage that we are somehow forced to do and thereby degrading us.
The ultimate value of anonymity in our work is that it leads us to precisely lose that anonymity in our relation with God who is the beginning and end of everything we are and do. It sounds like a contradiction, but our humanity simply works that way. It will look for the first cause and the last end of things.
In these moments, we would be eager to go face to face with God. It’s in this kind of mind frame that we would realize how God is ever present everywhere, how his greatness, his wisdom and goodness, his love and mercy get vitally interwoven in the small and ordinary events and circumstances of our daily life.
He has not left orphans who now try to make do with whatever we can. He is always with us, and in fact ever solicitous of our needs and changing conditions. This is what divine providence is all about.
Yes, even while we are busy at work, immersed in the things of the world, with all its concerns, problems, challenges and pressures, we practically become contemplatives, since we can be truly united to him, and our work becomes his also, and all that we feel and think become his as well and not just ours.
It’s in this mindset also that we become aware of what God wants from us. There’s that existential union—a communion, better termed—with him. And that’s what our Christian faith tells us to pursue.
We need to go after this goal of attaining that communion with God, of becoming a real contemplative even in the middle of the world. This is not only for a few people, but for all, with all of us helping one another to achieve it.
As of now, this truth of our faith may still look like a quixotic dream. But if we put all our mind and heart into it, there’s no doubt that it can be done. It’s God’s will, in the first place, and he would be the first one to give us what is necessary to reach it. But we just have to have faith, and let that faith run its full course in our life.
We can do it. “Possumus.”
Monday, May 2, 2011
Human rights in crisis
THE recent proliferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is a most welcome development since they facilitate our life in society. With them, the requirements of the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, so essential in society, are more finely met.
Subsidiarity is when a bigger entity can delegate some of its powers to a lower entity. It’s also when the smaller needs of men in society are met due to the presence of more intermediaries between the individual citizens and the over-all state authorities.
Solidarity is when society becomes more organized and moves more or less in the same direction without annulling legitimate differences and variety of sectors comprising it. It means having better working unity in society.
The NGOs are these agents and intermediaries that foster the need for subsidiarity and solidarity in a given society. We just have to make sure that a third social principle, that of the common good, is also met, so that the play of the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity gets into the right groove.
This is the problem we often encounter these days with respect to the NGOs. Many of them, I’m afraid, are a cover to advance an agenda whose idea of common good is at best inadequate, often dangerous, if not utterly wrong.
The other day, someone told me that in a Congress hearing, a representative of an NGO was batting for sexual rights, saying that everyone has a “right to a satisfying and safe sex.”
While it’s true that we are a sexual being, and therefore sex has a legitimate part in our life, we just can’t be naïve when ideas like what was presented in that Congress hearing is proposed to us.
We need to see if indeed this “right to a satisfying and safe sex” truly corresponds to an objective common good meant for us. We have to know what that right involves, what its inspiration and true purpose are, etc.
We just cannot say anything is a human right based on an opinion or even on a consensus of some people. We cannot even consider a culture and civilization as the ultimate source of what is the authentic common good for us and what is not. They are not the ultimate terra firma. They shift too like sand, and can contain impurities.
The crux of our problem is that in determining our common good, any mention to God is immediately or, worse, automatically rejected. It’s as if God has no place in this discussion. It’s as if God is the very antithesis of democracy and its ways and processes.
At best, any reference to God has to be veiled, since making it explicit is considered a fallacy of begging the question. It is feared it would illegitimately stop further discussion or reasoning, which is not true, since such reference would in fact throw the doors open for further scrutiny. It fosters more discussion.
We need to make a drastic change in our attitude and ways of determining if a claimed human right is indeed part of our common good. We have to defer to what the Compendium of Social Doctrine says about the source of human rights.
In point 153, it says, “The ultimate source of human rights is not found in the mere will of human beings, in the reality of the State, in public powers, but in man himself and in God his Creator.”
So, it’s clear that no matter how hard it is to determine what is God’s will and design for us, we just have to make an effort to know God’s will, since ignoring it would just put us in the dark, and lead us to unjust ways of determining what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, true and false.
In short, it would not be democratic, in fact, if our political ways would systematically shun the contribution of religion, or that our discussion of issues that affect our common good would exclude faith and religion, and everything involved there, like listening to the teachings of the Church, etc.
In that set-up, democracy would be understood as just a purely human affair, as if everything begins and ends with us. Of course, we are the primary actors in democracy, but we are nothing without God who is our source, our Creator, and in fact, also our end.
Democracy, without God, would lose its foundations and sense of purpose, and would just be driven not by truth nor by love, but by sheer and brazen human power. That’s when human rights enter the crisis zone.
Subsidiarity is when a bigger entity can delegate some of its powers to a lower entity. It’s also when the smaller needs of men in society are met due to the presence of more intermediaries between the individual citizens and the over-all state authorities.
Solidarity is when society becomes more organized and moves more or less in the same direction without annulling legitimate differences and variety of sectors comprising it. It means having better working unity in society.
The NGOs are these agents and intermediaries that foster the need for subsidiarity and solidarity in a given society. We just have to make sure that a third social principle, that of the common good, is also met, so that the play of the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity gets into the right groove.
This is the problem we often encounter these days with respect to the NGOs. Many of them, I’m afraid, are a cover to advance an agenda whose idea of common good is at best inadequate, often dangerous, if not utterly wrong.
The other day, someone told me that in a Congress hearing, a representative of an NGO was batting for sexual rights, saying that everyone has a “right to a satisfying and safe sex.”
While it’s true that we are a sexual being, and therefore sex has a legitimate part in our life, we just can’t be naïve when ideas like what was presented in that Congress hearing is proposed to us.
We need to see if indeed this “right to a satisfying and safe sex” truly corresponds to an objective common good meant for us. We have to know what that right involves, what its inspiration and true purpose are, etc.
We just cannot say anything is a human right based on an opinion or even on a consensus of some people. We cannot even consider a culture and civilization as the ultimate source of what is the authentic common good for us and what is not. They are not the ultimate terra firma. They shift too like sand, and can contain impurities.
The crux of our problem is that in determining our common good, any mention to God is immediately or, worse, automatically rejected. It’s as if God has no place in this discussion. It’s as if God is the very antithesis of democracy and its ways and processes.
At best, any reference to God has to be veiled, since making it explicit is considered a fallacy of begging the question. It is feared it would illegitimately stop further discussion or reasoning, which is not true, since such reference would in fact throw the doors open for further scrutiny. It fosters more discussion.
We need to make a drastic change in our attitude and ways of determining if a claimed human right is indeed part of our common good. We have to defer to what the Compendium of Social Doctrine says about the source of human rights.
In point 153, it says, “The ultimate source of human rights is not found in the mere will of human beings, in the reality of the State, in public powers, but in man himself and in God his Creator.”
So, it’s clear that no matter how hard it is to determine what is God’s will and design for us, we just have to make an effort to know God’s will, since ignoring it would just put us in the dark, and lead us to unjust ways of determining what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, true and false.
In short, it would not be democratic, in fact, if our political ways would systematically shun the contribution of religion, or that our discussion of issues that affect our common good would exclude faith and religion, and everything involved there, like listening to the teachings of the Church, etc.
In that set-up, democracy would be understood as just a purely human affair, as if everything begins and ends with us. Of course, we are the primary actors in democracy, but we are nothing without God who is our source, our Creator, and in fact, also our end.
Democracy, without God, would lose its foundations and sense of purpose, and would just be driven not by truth nor by love, but by sheer and brazen human power. That’s when human rights enter the crisis zone.
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