Listening to Álvaro Pombo one of the most accurate criticisms of our society has been a pylon hammer The following days to receive the Cervantes 2024 award. He would have been better listening to him, with his fine irony accompanied by always alive eyes despite his critical state of health.
It was precisely that bad situation that prevented him from talking. It was his friend and collaborator, the writer Mario Crespo, who put voice to a sharp and refined speech entitled A phenomenology of fragility. And he did not talk about his, that of the winner. Talked about the human in front of a society that has institutionalized indifferencea society where you no longer fight “for honor.”
“Between influencers and Mercachifles” he described this world in which we move between urgency and emergency, without stopping to respond to the really relevant. I wish that call to importance regarding superficiality will be marked in capital lettersto the cultivation of a more intellectual vision of life regarding the marketing of cultural values, where the appearance or immediate impact more than moral depth prevails.
Pombo was right. Too much noise. Acceleration without brake. We are actors of a permanent spectacle that we scripted, we direct, starring, with subtitles that have been wrong the transcription, the meaning. You do not have to be very attentive to understand yours, that of your message referring to ethics, resistance, banalization, triviality as a life compass.
In his book Teach to liveFrench thinker Edgar Morin said: “We must learn to live in another way. Otherwise, life itself will become invivible”. That “living in another way” had a general essay during the pandemic produced by COVID-19. And, although with different formulation, on April 28 he was able to resonate in many people his echo in the form of shadows for a few hours without light.
At that time many contacts were interrupted, beyond those related to transport. Daughters who did not know about their parents. Mothers who did not know about their children. And without whatsapp or social networks. However, the terraces were filled, the face of relatives, colleagues, friends, beyond the screens, were imposed. He met and spoke with neighbors. And many say that the current was recognized, The suitability of caring for the necessary lights.
Suddenly, the light regained its meaning. The possibility of a switch returning the usual ray regained its essence. Suddenly, there were consciences that were asked about the energy consumed without questioning origin or destiny. There were even voices that talked about a second General essay similar to that of pandemia, in the case of being a prelude to a deeper collapse.
But suddenly there were also those who, to the Albur of theories that emphasized our numerous renewable teams, They raised the shout of denial of sustainable transformationclearly necessary in its deepening, as well as that of the human being claimed by Pombo. A change of look is imposed, of generalized recognition of finitude. Therefore, it is essential to do not deaf, but intellectual war to noisy campaigns that oppose sustainability to development.
Sustainability is not a green luxury for companies and citizens with conscience. Not a legal imposition. It is a unique road illuminated by long lights with the goal of collective survival. Albert Camus wrote that “man is the only creature that refuses to be what it is.” And perhaps in this time of algorithms control and speed of nets and data, The human being has forgotten the most human of the human: its limit.
Therefore, the commitment to sustainability to balance those limits is imposed. Durability is imposed and not disposable, cooperation and not competition, depth and not hurry, solidarity and not collective egotism. The planet cannot eternally endure the generalized lightness of consumption and thought. Nothing more successful than applying to the sustainable transformation axes that transcend environmental problems and that reach ethics, culture and even spirituality.
Years ago, in 2014, in Laudato yesPope Francis related the ecological crisis to the economic one. It made us all debtors. He spoke of the “ecological debt” contracted by the global north, of the exploitation of the planet, with the strongest imposing himself to the weakest. On the last day of peace, The Pope warned that “land goods are not only intended for some privileged”.
And in his last speech, that which his health prevented him from reading hours before his death, Bergoglio advised “not to give in to the logic of fear that isolates” and, instead, use “the resources available to help those in need, combat hunger and promote initiatives that promote development.” Faced with the growing rearma, he woke up or tried to awaken consciences, explaining that “these are the weapons of peace: those that build the future, instead of sowing death.”
Probably, let’s talk about an April 2025 marked by three events loaded with symbolism. On the one hand, those two great polls, that of the Pope and that of the Cervantes, sick prize. On the other, the darkness for a few hours of an unexpected blackout. Is it possible that the lack of word and light is precisely what invites us to look at the essential? Maybe it has not been casual. It may be a sign of that need to recover the weight of the real.
