sábado, 7 de junio de 2025

SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL MALAISE AND THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN SOCIAL CHANGE

 


Karen Cronick

INTRODUCTION

It is important to reflect on the theoretical aspects of citizen participation. This can happen as a result of a professional intervention, but it can also be a collective endeavor that results from “naturally” occurring processes. Even when it originates in the relatively spontaneous movements of concerned citizens, it is important for professionals who are active in community work to understand the dynamics of these events.

In this essay I will consider the role of culture in bringing about political change. While it is possible to “create culture” in a community intervention, it is also important to understand naturally occurring beliefs and customs in order to help people to redress injustices or correct damaging practices. It is also important to understand the term “consciousness” in the sense of the awareness that people have of their place in the world, their aspirations for change, and their possibilities of achieving it.

I will review certain conceptions that describe how culture works in this way, and its relationship to consciousness. I will also consider political action from different points of view including efforts to overcome violence, scarcities, and migrations.

The people who develop new ideas about social change tend to be intellectuals, dissidents (such as active minorities -Moscovici 1996), groups such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), ad hoc committees and other similar groupings. It rarely happens within the power structures of centralized systems, except as a means of concentrating even more power in fewer hands.[1]

It sometimes happens that a population actively attempts to submit to a tyranny. Thomas Hobbes’ (2022) promoted citizens’ voluntary submission to powerful figures; he described how they can organize to renounce their rights and hand them over to a monarch or an assembly. The citizen abdication that Hobbes describes can also occur after a conquest if the defeated "authors" agree to become the subjects of a king or a tyrant because of their fear of reprisals. A Hobbesian "pact"—manifest, implied, or obligatory—would be a means of escaping the natural violence that, according to him, would occur in groups that lack an absolute governing figure.

The structures of public administration that are organized around powerful leaders such as kings, conquerors, dictatorships and even some elected presidents, do not generally respond to the needs of general welfare. Throughout history, societies have been divided into classes or castes, which include the successive levels (from bottom up) the slaves, the free but lower classes (serfs and laborers, artisans, small merchants), the clergy, the nobility in its various ranks, and finally the king or the great lord (or mistress). This kind of hierarchy with its variants has lasted for millennia.

On the other hand, given the right conditions people can stand up to power and demand their collective rights. Normally the changes initiated from a profound cultural level have to do with the need to increase popular participation in decision-making in order to increase the well-being of the majorities. Political change is a complex issue. We must ask, where does the need for libertarian change come from?

There have been a few moments of popularly motivated social change. They tend to surge from the proposals of artists, playwrights, writers, philosophers and intellectuals in general who at certain critical moments have responded with proposals for social transformation.

There are a few examples: In ancient Athens it was not a simple coincidence that Solon (fourth and fifth centuries B.C.) was a poet. He created the conditions for the world’s first constitutional democracy, that opened the door for some of the most prolific intellectual achievements the world has known. But after the brilliant years of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and the others, Athenian democracy weakened, largely due to military influence, the involvement of the Greeks in various wars, and the rivalry between Athens and Sparta. It ended definitively with the arrival of Alexander the Great.

Likewise, philosophers and poets paved the way for European and American democracy in the eighteenth century. The origins of these movements had long periods of development: the Enlightenment, for example, began with the Renaissance (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), and continued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In these times authors, artists, scientists, and philosophers (who were not in power) such as William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolaus Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and later, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Thomas Hobbes, Denis Diderot and Adam Smith debated each other in the publications, theaters and meeting houses of their time. Each proclaimed his particular perspectives. These people did not need to agree, the important thing was their shared debate.

In other words, free debate, far from causing havoc and chaos, produces critical thinking that empowers people of all ranks. It would be better if the whole population were literate, but at the critical moments just mentioned, few could read. It was enough for the information to come through word of mouth from of those who could understand the written word. The various options these people put forward resonated with people’s needs. 

It was a necessity at those times, and it is a current task. Our present society is in crisis. The well-being of the majority requires urgent attention. What are our current needs? We can find them in need to resolve the conditions that produce unrest: a) wars between nations, b) acts of terrorism that arise in the name of the ideological causes of discontented and uncontrolled groups and individuals, c) deaths and other misfortunes that accompany migratory attempts[2], d) violence between citizens of the same country based on ideological differences or identity issues such as race and religion,  e) the local and poorly resolved efforts to alleviate hunger and disease and f) the dehumanization of the institutions we call prisons and jails, among others.

In the following reflections I will briefly refer to these tragedies, and I will discuss how cultural opposition to these situations begins to develop. As a culture we have allowed these misfortunes to grow, and as a culture we can solve them. Governmental institutions will not act in favor of the common good without the insistence of their populations and its thinkers. And community psychologists have an immense role to play in this process.

In modern times have we have sometimes tried to transform these situations with massive programs. After the Second World War there were two extraordinary attempts to alleviate the suffering caused by that conflagration: the creation of the United Nations and the Marshall Plan.

The First attempt occurred in 1945 when the United Nations (UN) was established. Its main purpose was to prevent future wars. Specifically, the objectives of this organization were: the maintenance of world peace, the protection of human rights, the provision of aid in cases of need, and the promotion of international law. Eighty years later, it is clear that the organization has, indeed, had a positive effect, but it has not enjoyed all the support it requires to able to avoid war. The weakness of the UN is a problem now. State and international organizations tend to reflect the interests of the already powerful, not those of the world's population.

We rely on national and international organizations, congresses and parliaments, political parties, businesses, and other organizations to solve our social problems. However, it is becoming more and more evident that the only organizations that are going to "save" us are those that promote widespread considerations about who we are and what we wish to become. They open debates and awaken awareness about the possibility of more just societies. One example of such an organization would be an innovated education system, and another might be found in NGOs[3] such as "Care for Peace", "Save the Children", "Doctors without Borders”, “Greenpeace" and others that offer relief and reflection in emergency situations. We have to evaluate our true needs, and reconsider what our most transcendental values are. And we have to do it as interconnected collectivities. It has to be an explicit and intentional process, if we want to stop being xenophobic, violent, vindictive and fearful.

The second massive historical attempt at alleviating the civilian cost of war and promoting world peace was the Marshall Plan (also called the European Recovery Program, April 1948–December 1951). It originated in the United States and was designed to rehabilitate the countries defeated in World War II that had been recent enemies. The aim was to create stable economies in which democratic institutions could develop. This program was such an overwhelming success that it allowed Germany and Japan, at that time completely war-torn, former enemies, to rebuild within a few years.

The victorious countries had learned from the consequences of having imposed on Germany the obligation of “reparations” after World War I, only 27 years earlier.  These onerous obligations were part of the Paris Peace Accords in 1918. The demands placed on Germany produced so much unrest in the country that they lead directly to the temporary success of Fascism and the Second World War. The agreements required Germany to hand over 6% of its gross domestic product to its former enemies, and this caused much impoverishment and unrest in the population.   

The Marshall Plan had great popular appeal in the United States. Its citizens wanted peace. At the time of the presentation of the program to both legislative houses of the U.S., and multiple national and international guests, President Truman declared:

“At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guaranties of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based on the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority [....]  I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid, which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes” (Jones, 2022, p 21-22).

In this case, the decision to finance the reconstruction of Europe after the war was taken at the highest levels of the US government, but it responded to a general desire among the population for the construction of a lasting peace.

In what follows I will examine current social and cultural expectations that have to do with aspects of human well-being that we could control and change. I will first consider the ideas of culture and the Lifeworld, and then I will consider the problem of human consciousness within the cultural limits we have imposed on ourselves. Finally, I will reflect on the sources of social discomfort and ways of alleviating it.

CULTURE AND THE "LIFEWORLD"[4] AT ITS PSYCHOSOCIAL AND CULTURAL LEVELS

Culture and its role in social change

"Culture" is the favorite topic of anthropologists and sociologists. As a general rule, anthropology studies small communities, often tribal and isolated groups. Sociology, on the other hand, tends to analyze large institutions in Europe, Asia, or the Americas with the aim of making social trends and structures visible. In what follows, I will concentrate my ideas on the idea of culture as a social-political environment in which ideas about the general welfare can be debated and understood.

Culture can have a positive or a negative influence. In Cronick (2025) the author reviews the positive effects of the European Illustration on democratic self-government in the American continents, together with three other influences: a) the negative effects of slavery, b) the almost-annihilation of the indigenous populations, and c) the massive displacement caused by European migrations. She discusses the nearly simultaneous impact of these experiences, and the conflict between them in the 19th century, all of which continue to influence intercontinental American culture.

Martínez, Bermúdez, Cediel, and Beltrán (2022), in an article on the role of culture in the economic and political development of nations, state that it has a fundamental role in the creation of well-being and the full participation of citizens in the decision processes of their state and communities. They point out how the United Nations, together with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), is promoting culture as one of the pivots of development, within the framework of fundamental freedoms. They say that it "strengthens political and citizen participation, invigorates social solidarity and cooperation, refines the formation of values, and strengthens the re-memorization of the historical heritage". They offer various definitions of culture such as:

1. a complex whole that links to the totality of manifestations that express the life of a human group,

2. a textile of meanings, in which all kinds of semantic and syntagmatic relationships are intertwined, but also social and cultural content exchange through which we can carry out the exegetical exercise of the ontology of being,

3. a means of change and social transformation. The authors cite the work of Escobar (1999) in this definition. The approach is more enriching when the epistemological vision leads us to think about development from a humanistic approach, which includes the participation of Nation-States, local communities and different social actors in decision-making and in the formulation and implementation of cultural policies.

The authors say that "culture is expressed as artistic creation and reference, identity, education, patterns of conduct, life models, social representation, symbols, values and practice, as well as an element of power". The role of the individual is to recreate the meaning of the world and of his or her own existence, always within the framework of his or her cultural history, but also with the possibility of intentional change. Martínez, Bermudez et al affirm that culture can influence nations’ social and political development, strengthening human rights and social values and even their models for economic growth. They say that it is understood that the intertwining of social factors influences the cultural and economic development of a society.

This approach to culture incorporates the ideas of intentional and thoughtful change in favor of humanistic values. It does not abandon the idea of tradition, but puts it at the service of the well-being of all members of society. Even in countries where leaders have used cultural aspects mainly to strengthen their own power, the diversity of cultural allows us to question some practices. In South Africa, for example, apartheid was challenged by members of both the white and black populations, and eventually Nelson Mandela became the nation's first black president.  Both he and the previous (white) president, Frederik de Klerk, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their efforts which were backed by an immense collective effort.

In its usual sense the term "culture" is used with reference to works of art, fiction and music. This meaning, too, has served as a precedent to mobilize consciousness. And these manifestations are always active in social change.

The desire for peace is perhaps the deepest longing of all. Possibly one of the most famous artistic achievements promoting peace -of all times- is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Premiered in 1824, in its fourth and final movement Beethoven included a chorus developed from a version of Friedrich Schiller’s poem "An die Freude" (which in the symphony is called the “Ode to Joy”). The poem evokes ideas of cultural harmony and friendship. It still today expresses humanity's oldest aspiration. The Council of Europe, 161 years later, adopted it in a musical version developed by Herbert von Karajan, as the Anthem of Europe, and later the European Union also adopted it. It evokes an appeal to universal peace, and thus, the anthem does not have official lyrics, only music; everyone sings it in their own way, in the language they want, and with the same desire for worldwide goodwill, following the same notes in a beautiful gesture of unity. A translation into English of the original lyrics of the first verse used by Beethoven would be:

Listen, brother, to the song of joy. The joyful song of the one who waits for a new day. Come, sing, dream singing. Live dreaming of the new sunshine in which men will be brothers again.

Throughout history there have been many works that have promoted the essential brotherhood -and sisterhood- of humanity. The ancient Greeks wrote multiple texts in favor of peace, or at least lamentations for the effects of war, for example, Euripides' The Trojan Women (n.d.). In this work, the author, who was Greek and a descendant of the victorious conquerors of Troy, writes about the mourning of the Trojan survivors of the conquered nation. Centuries later Erasmus of Rotterdam[5] was a medieval pacifist philosopher known throughout Europe. Another author who promoted peace was Miguel de Cervantes[6] , who in his work praised it as the greatest good of men.

The Renaissance paintings, especially in Italian paintings and sculptures, represent not only technical changes in relation to the medieval styles, but also philosophical ones: this new artwork celebrates the human body, not only because of its divine origin, but also for its humanist values. In these paintings and sculptures, the body is depicted with realistic enthusiasm. Objects and people are “in the world” and have their own reality. Peace was a major theme among the thinkers of that time. Isabella Lazzarini, Andrea Guidi, Elena Bonora, Sean Roberts and Diego Prillo (2020) observe that:

[… ] In the Renaissance and the Reformation, the term ‘peace’ referred at the same time to a state and a notion; the first derived from events and treaties, while the second participated in a system of representations, that is an image that a specific society constructs about itself. In this second acceptation, the notion of peace crossed the path of some other crucial concepts like justice, freedom, the common good. Such political keywords not only played a pivotal role in daily social and political life but also represented the building blocks of the theoretical analysis of reality outlined by intellectuals such as Machiavelli, Erasmus, Vives, Vitoria, Montaigne, Gentili, Bodin, Grotius, who worked extensively on peace and its opposite – war – and on their crossings and reciprocal interferences [….]

In more recent centuries the longing for peace has several iconic representations in fiction. There are, for example, two episodes, in two different novels, in which enemy soldiers meet, look into each other's eyes, and finding humanity instead of adverse interests, they separate in harmony. The first is found in Tolstoy's War and Peace: (cited by Bosé and Puyana, 2017, p. 39).

"They were looking at each other for a few moments and that saved Pierre. In that gaze, apart from the conditions of war and judgment, a human relationship was established between the two men. In that brief moment, the two of them vaguely felt an infinite expanse of things: they understood that they were both children of humanity, that they were brothers."

In a second example, in the twentieth century, Javier Cercas (2023) in Soldiers of Salamis, talks about incidents at the end of the war between the Republicans and the Francoists, especially stories about a fascist soldier, Rafael Sánchez. The novel opens with a description of a mass shooting by the Republicans in Catalonia, almost at the moment of beginning their flight from Spain. What Cercas describes was an encounter between an anonymous republican militiaman and Sánchez, in which a human gaze prevents an execution:

From there, sheltered in a hole, [my father] heard the barking of dogs and the gunshots and the voices of the militiamen, who were looking for him [...] At some point my father heard a noise of branches behind him, turned around and saw a militiaman looking at him. Then there was a cry: "Is he out there?" My father said that the militiaman stared at him for a few seconds and then, without shifting his eyes, shouted: "There's no one around here!", turned around and left.... (p. 5-6).

Another example is the historically true episode at the beginning of World War I on Christmas Eve, 1914, when German and English soldiers observed a series of unauthorized ceasefires along the Western Front. During lulls in the fighting the soldiers began to sing Christmas carols. It began with the Germans in their trenches singing “Stille Nacht” and the English in their own trenches joining in with “Silent Night”. Soon French, German, and British soldiers crossed the barriers to exchange Christmas greetings and gifts of food and drinks. There were football games, and they took time for joint burial ceremonies and prisoner exchanges. These celebrations were soon stopped by the English military command and then fighting resumed. Some of the participants were court-marshalled (Ray, 2025). This is another example of how war is not a universal motive.

In the visual arts, Pablo Picasso's Guernica (painted in 1937) is one of the most iconic paintings of the twentieth century. Also, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd's sculpture, Nonviolence, demonstrates a revolver tied in a knot; it is on permanent display at the UN. Also at the UN is Norman Rockwell's Golden Rule mosaic that shows people of all races, religions and genders, in peace and harmony.

In this very short journey through the culture of peace, it is important not to forget the historians. Perhaps one of the stories that most describes the lamentations of war is Homer's Iliad. In addition to the legends of heroes and their exploits, the poet grieves the destruction and the lives lost. Homer mourns, in the very first lines of the Iliad: (Homer, VIII c. B.C.E. /n.d.):

Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated hour Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power Latona's son a dire contagion spread, And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead; The king of men his reverent priest defied, And for the king's offence the people died….

The study of the history of peace should lead to a broad historical narrative. Gittings (2016) describes the history of peace thusly:

Taking a very long view of modern history, we may detect four separate strands of peace-and-war thought and argument over the last millennium. First is the realist approach, whose origin is popularly associated with Machiavelli (although it has older antecedents with Thucydides, among other classical sources). The realist approach had particular appeal in the age of the rise of nation-states, was later associated with the ruthless outlook on humanity of Social Darwinism, and flourished again in the amoral age of Cold War nuclear strategy. Second is the theory of just war, often traced back to St Augustine …. Dormant for obvious reasons for most of the Cold War, just war theory has been reinvigorated by more recent debate on the ethics of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the ‘war against terror’. A third strand is the continuous narrative of peace thinking which can be traced from the time of Erasmus and fellow-humanists of the Renaissance, through Kant and other philosophers of the Enlightenment, to the peace societies and conferences of the nineteenth century, whose efforts to find international mechanisms for peaceful negotiation of differences between states seemed for a while to produce tangible results in the creation of new institutions for arbitration and for the limitation of war. Though these hopes were dashed by 1914, they paved the way ahead for the League of Nations, and ultimately for the United Nations. The fourth strand is the history of pacifist thought and action …. “

 This approach leads to understanding peace as a human condition that people can stimulate, organize and administer. But it also requires that the participants understand the history of the concept, and the manipulations that leads them to war. They need to know about the social instruments they can count on to obtain a fruitful coexistence based on dialogue and understanding. And they need to know that all this is possible.

Freedom or lordship

For as long as there has been historical evidence, kings have exercised power exclusively in their reigns, and have attempted to conquer nearby kingdoms, enlarging their own territories or creating colonies under their control. There is evidence that human beings were not always like this. In fact, in their book "The Dawn of Everything", Graeber and Wenfrow (2021) state that in the first millennia of human history, human groups exhibited cooperative and deliberative behaviors. This collective decision-making was not limited to tribal life; according to these two authors, some large settlements were governed by these principles.

It was only in the last four or five millennia that kings, conquerors and dictators, with their war strategies, have dominated the human experience, but this period covers all documented history. For as long as we have historical references, there have been colonialists and monarchs who have imposed their authority by force.

It has happened that the inhabitants of some lands have chosen to be ruled by kings. In this we remember Hobbes´writings. For example. There is a captivating story in the Old Testament (Samuel I, chapter 8) that has been cited by Cronick (2024a). It relates how the people of Israel asked Samuel, the priest, to appoint a king for them. The Israelites had been peaceful nomads until then, but their fears of the surrounding empires made them desire a stronger society that could protect them. The wise old priest warned them that they would lose much of their autonomy if they accepted the authority of a king. He told them that a king would take their sons as servants, cooks, and soldiers, that he would take their lands, their vineyards, and their olive groves. But the people persisted, despite Samuel's warnings about the misfortunes and wars and difficulties that were to come. Finally, the priest gave in and facilitated the search for this first monarch, who ended up being a young man named Saul. The story is interesting because it demonstrates a certain awareness among the ancient sages of the time about the meaning of power and the privations that come when the authority of princes is accepted.

This account describes a long time of transformation in which independent peoples, described by Graeber and Wenfrow and ancient sources, became monarchies with their different levels of authority and distribution of wealth. In this hierarchical and cultural reorganization, the old norms of tribal solidarity were replaced by others in which competitiveness and rank became important.

Once in power, the acquisition of new territories was not only attractive among the kings, but also a requirement for their survival. When Agamemnon went to conquer Troy, and when Alexander the Great ended Athenian democracy, they obeyed the same cultural mandates that the European conquerors followed in Africa and the Americas. It was a similar mandate when the Germans launched their war to increase their "lebensraum" and Russia and the United States invaded Afghanistan in turn.

I just watched a video of an interview with Jeremy Griffith (Wtm, 2024) in which he says that he has "discovered" the solution to the human condition in which aggression and domination have been the main motivations. He says that the models that claim that this aggression is genetically determined are not the most suitable for understanding this problem. Despite what I consider to be some important simplifications in his arguments, I think he has touched on something important. Griffith says that there is no determinism based on chromosomes to explain competitiveness and violence in human beings. Rather, it is a psychological imposition. Taking his argument a step further, it can be added that this has long-standing cultural roots.

Sources of violence

Wars and terrorism

There were 56 wars in 2024, according to Alejandra Agudo (2024), with 92 countries involved beyond their borders. These events were international in nature and had their origin in the aggressions carried out by those who hold governmental power. Terrorism, on the other hand, is a kind of undeclared war in which individuals or groups (with or without the backing of the countries they support) physically attack people and groups they consider their "enemies." Stephanía Suarez mentions some of those that occurred in 2024: walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon, a fire in Turkey, explosions in Kerman in Iran, a shooting in Pucallpa in Peru, violence in Durán in Ecuador, a massacre in the municipality of Crocus in Russia, and an attack on a Christmas market in Germany. This type of violence is sometimes supported by governments that fund and control violent groups that promote these acts, but they are not full-blown wars.

Migrations

The discomfort reaches the most intimate experience. The intensity of migrations in which almost entire populations trying to escape hunger and oppression is at levels never seen before. The violence associated with these escapes is not limited to the countries the migrants flee from: migrants face intimidation throughout the trajectory of their exodus, and eventually also in the countries where they settle. They are treated as undesirable people and sometimes there are political interests that foment hostility against them. Migrant-receiving populations often accept this xenophobia as part of their own cultural identity, without reflecting on the nefarious values with which they are associated.

Violence among citizens

Aggression between citizens and between neighbors is sometimes related to acts of terrorism, but in general it is the result of individual acts of homicide or cruelty the source of which is rooted in the personal psychological distress of its perpetrators. This type of violence has also reached tragic levels. Our news sources are filled with accounts of mass murders and attempted violence. These news items have to do with aggressions with no probable links to the multiple repressive bodies associated with the governments of the world.

What needs to be emphasized here is that we are living in a time of great unrest and threat. This collective mood is affecting all of us. Not all of us would grab a gun to kill our neighbors, or throw a vehicle at defenseless people on the street. But we all live through the effects of the anxiety that all this causes, and many of us – who haven't actually executed anyone (yet) – own guns at home that have the sole purpose of violent defense. [7]

Numbeo (Index, n.d.) published a list of the countries in the world according to the homicide rate (number of deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants) in the first half of 2024; The top five countries, with their indexes are: 1) Venezuela, 80.90, 2) Papuea New Guines, 80.08, 3) Haiti, 78.65, 4) Afghanistan 75.74, and 5) South Africa, 74.84.  

The countries with the fewest homicides in the same period were Hong Kong, (China), Isle of Man, Oman, Taiwan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Andorra. There is an obvious bias due to the small population of these places, even considering that these are indices and not total numbers.

Among the largest countries we find that the United States has an index of 49.21 and Russia’s index is 38.85.

The aggressors are usually people who lack the emotional and social resources to control their anger. These are cultural shortcomings that could be remedied if there were appropriate psychological and educational resources to help them.

It is also important to remember that our societies give undue influence to certain economic interests that benefit from the manufacture and sale of lethal instruments. These interests promote both wars and social violence. Taking on the task of controlling them would also be an undertaking that would include the development of a new social and cultural consciousness.

The aggressors are people who lack the emotional and social resources to control their anger. What's more, they usually cannot locate the causes of their discomfort. These are psychological and cultural shortcomings that could be remedied if there were appropriate clinical and educational resources to help them.

Lack of adequate food and housing

Regarding the problem of the lack of adequate food in the world, a United Nations page (UN News, 2025) reports that "hunger is spreading in the world, affecting 20% of the population in 59 countries". This is even the case in some sectors of well-to-do countries.

At the same time, economic inequality is on the rise: Markus Schreiber (2025), writing in the newspaper La Nación, informs us that: "Between 2015 and 2024, fortunes of more than one billion dollars in the world increased by 121% (from 6.3 trillion to 14 trillion dollars), and the number of billionaires went from 1,757 to 2,682, according to the annual report on high net.worth by the Swiss bank UBS."  The very rich are not directly responsible for the unrest of the poor, but an economic system that allows a few people to enjoy most of its economic resources engenders extreme shortages among some of its members.

Prisons

In a society governed by empathetic principles, people considered criminals would receive appropriate treatment to remedy their antisocial status. This society would recognize that criminals have also been victims of affective deficiencies.  But this has happened on few occasions. As a general rule, those who are considered criminals end up in places of confinement, without rights and in deplorable conditions. These conditions do not diminish their aggressive tendencies; rather, they reinforce them. In our cultures we still demand retribution and revenge, and we believe that these people must "pay" for their guilt with their own pain and discomfort.

There are initiatives for a reconsideration of this ethic of retribution, but in general they are suggestions without legal obligations. Anastasia Platonova (n.d.) summarizes the Doha Declaration (adopted at the 13th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice) on the importance of measures to rehabilitate prisoners and integrate them back into their communities. This document emphasizes the need to build effective, impartial, humane and accountable criminal justice systems globally. The author points out how the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has offered support to its member states to develop prison programs focused more on rehabilitation than punishment. UNODC has developed a "Roadmap for the Development of Rehabilitation Programs in Prisons", to support sustainable rehabilitation effort. It also offers a "Manual on Anti-Corruption Measures in Prisons" and an "Introductory Guide to the Prevention of Recidivism and Social Reintegration of Offenders".

In other words, there are voices that ask for change, but there are interests and prejudices that maintain the current system. The changes that might occur will arise from popular demand. The proponents of change are going to have to find voices and echoes in civil society. It is a phenomenon that has occurred before, for example, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the European Enlightenment. Now we need similar voices to ask for harmony, well-being and peace, as well as freedom. 

SOCIAL CHANGE AND POLITICAL ACTION

Social consciousness

We may need to consider that consciousness is a cultural phenomenon, not in the sense of a mental capacity, but rather in terms of self-perception and awareness of others. The way people perceive themselves makes a difference in what possibilities they see for themselves and how they act. This changing self-perception has cultural roots and has influenced humanity’s ways of relating to the world and to others, and has had a profound political impact. 

For René Descartes consciousness was rational thought that defined a thinker’s very existence. Juan Manuel Navarro in his introduction to Rules for the Direction of the Spirit (Descartes, 1996) quotes Hegel who said that self-consciousness, as described by Descartes, is an essential moment of truth for modern philosophy in which it declared its independence from theology. It was the beginning of the “principle of immanence", in which philosophy’s attention switched from “the object to the subject, from the world to the self, from the exterior to the interior” (p. 8). Meditation about objects becomes a deliberation about the essence of “what is”, in this case, an appreciation that arises from the thoughts of a being who is thinking.

In his fifth rule Descartes (1996) talks about the need to substitute ontological reflections (in the scholastic sense) for epistemological ones, which, although objective (scientifically speaking) imply subjective criteria (Navarro-Cordón in Descartes 1996, p. 21), or, at least a conscious decision to think one way and reject other ways. Method is important for Descartes in that it underlies his philosophy, and given that the method is chosen by the person who thinks, it determines de direction of his thoughts.  In Descartes the method is a requirement for the critical spirit who is confronting his or her own cultural and historical legacy. The method is not something merely "methodological", but is rather an intimate motivation and anthropological demand. What is questioned is the self itself, and therefore the method gives rise to the birth of "secularized man" (p. 26).

In John Locke we find reflections, not only about how conscious thought leads to a true appreciation of reality as conceived by a conscious mind, but also the mechanics of thought and self-awareness. Gideon Yaffe (2011) has analyzed Locke’s approach to consciousness. Consciousness and awareness can be distinguished from sensory perception. Perception is an appreciation of what goes on in the world according to one´s visual and auditory appreciation. Consciousness, however, is directed inward. “As Locke puts it, “[c]onsciousness is the perception of what passes in a Man’s own mind” (p. 2). Locke described how one is aware of both individual events or thoughts in time, and a continuous stream of awareness. The thinking person is then capable of abstraction in which general ideas are created from particular ideas given by experience. Next, the person combines ideas to create complexes that may or may not be found in experience. And finally thought permits comparing, in which one creates ideas of relations from these ideas. This reflection on the nature of being and awareness has obvious roots in Descartes, as Yaffe notes, and is at the same time a new way of looking at man as a thinking creature.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Kant, 2024) examines how Kant enlarged on these reflections. The authors say: Kant’s phenomenal consciousness was more than just a succession of associated ideas. It was the experience of a conscious self, but placed in an objective world that incorporated a structure of space, time and causality. Kant was able to englobe ideas about ethics, and the transcendence of specific moral dictums. This observation is crucial for the growing awareness among Illustration philosophers about the role of responsiveness in the development of man’s role in determining political awareness.

 Truth and ethics

In la publication in Bioética (2024), the ideas of truth and ethics are linked. The author says that the development of a concept of ethics is a cultural and transformational work; For example, he affirms that in political scenarios this could manifest itself in movements that articulate real demands for social justice. He affirms that the value of loyalty to the family or social group can be culturally contrasted with other values, and we can mention the recognition of the basic unity of humanity as an ethical foundation. Therefore, he says, there is no single way to understand morality; it varies depending on the place and the time. Education would be central to the development and extension of ethical concepts in each culture.

It is interesting how, in popular language, ethics is linked to the idea of "what is right", a concept that is invariably connected with the foundation or with "the truth". Daniel Figuera (2025) refers to the idea of truth in Alain Badiou. For Badiou, truth is not a static fact or a universal revelation. It is a cultural recognition of a new way of defining what is true. In such an occasion, a process or "event" originates that introduces a new logic within a given system. There are plural "truths" that necessarily have to be partial and linked to specific contexts, such as in a religious revelation, or significant political change. He gives as examples the current ideas on climate change or economic inequalities. It would then be something built through participation.

However, one of the characteristics of truth, for a very long time, has been that it has to be a pronouncement that is based on rules that determine its acceptability. One of these basic rules is that any statement must be accompanied by the method used to establish it. In science or mathematics, rules are deductive or inductive logics. In science, a description of how the objects under investigation have been observed is also required. Claims about unobservable objects are not accepted, unless they have been predicted by a proven mathematical theory, such as electrons, for example. 

To establish the truth in other scenarios such as historical accounts or legal testimonies there are also rules. There must be previous writings or stories that arouse a certain documentary confidence in order to be labeled as truths. In this sense, a religious testament drawn up before the historical period of written records is not the same as the stories recorded by identifiable authors. And even in the latter case, the stories must be subject to analysis and verification. We can ask, for example, about the total veracity of Plutarch's stories in Parallel Lives[8]. One can even critically analyze modern narratives such as the reasons that nations use to justify wars. In the legal sense, witness testimony must be based on some evidence, which can be other people's verifiable allegations, or physical evidence such as fingerprints, for example.

 

The active promotion of cultural change

Most cultures have resources for generating social change. They incorporate the possibility for narrational shifts within their belief systems and social structures such as families. Usually, these structures involve long established decision-making strategies and communicational systems. But narrational shifts require a competence for incorporating new information and new ways of interpreting it. As we have mentioned, some of these tactics appear in artistic manifestations and sporting events.

Numerous examples of these shifts are reported in the social media. These are not verified sources, but they echo a general cultural phenomenon. For example, a Facebook user (2025) reported that:

“Fifty years ago, one man introduced the game of chess to a small village in India in hopes of combating rising alcohol abuse and gambling. What started as a simple idea grew into a community wide obsession with strategy and focus. Today, the village is known not for vice, but for intellect and discipline. Generations have grown up surrounded by chessboards, proof that one game can truly change lives.

Amanda Gorman says, (2021) “[…] culture is the home for stories and narratives. It provides the contextual framework and basis for meaning-making for all society in the same way that a constellation makes more sense when you understand it in the context of a galaxy” (p.5). Thus, she says, “This phenomenon is a constitutive part of changing opinions and belief systems and, therefore, a constitutive part of culture change” (p. 8).

An example of this kind of questioning, based on new expressive experiences, can be found in a master-level thesis by Ligia Mujica (2008) in which she described how the creation of a mural motivated profound cultural changes in the border city of Santa Elena de Uaren (between Brazil and Venezuela).  The mural was painted by the cinetic artist Juvenal Ravelo, who has used his aesthetic and community proposal for promoting cultural changes through environmental and aesthetic adjustments. Ravelo calls his concept, “Art of street participation”.

Mujica related how, in this experience in Santa Elena de Uaren in Venezuela, Ravelo involved the inhabitants of the city in the development of a mural. It can be found on the edge of the border street that connects Brazil and Venezuela in that town. Before the mural, the area was a disadvantaged and environmentally depressed neighborhood in which violence and drug use were prevalent. Ravelo involved the neighbors in clean-up activities, and the improvement of the structures bordering the street. He taught volunteers how to apply his designs to the bordering walls and supervised the changes. After the painting process, which lasted almost a year, many social phenomena changed. Drug use declined. The neighbors began to participate in the civil instances available to them to redress grievances, such as the local town hall. School assistance increased among the children. These changes happened without direct political participation, in a profound narrative shift, that later became civic awareness in the sense of cognizance of the importance of legitimate participation and a demand in the community for citizen involvement.

This strategy, that juxtaposes a disagreeable reality with a vision for possible change, has been studied elsewhere. Sánchez, Cronick y Wiesenfeld (1988) related how a self-construction project to replace housing lost in a landslide led to new ideas about education, women’s rights, and community relationships in general.

Environmental awareness can also stimulate community consciousness. On one hand, Kelling and Wilson (1982) proposed a theory of “Broken Windows”. They assume a close interaction between urban settings and the behavior of the people that live there. An unrepaired broken window sends a message to criminals and vandals that the neighbors are unwilling or unable to defend their vicinity. The broken window is a symbol of weakness. It represents a lack of community will. The authors say, that when the residents care for their windows, walls, streets and sidewalks they communicate a strong sense of cohesion and social responsibility, effectively giving themselves control of their space.

On the other hand, neighborhood maintenance is a collective endeavor that requires coordination and the negotiation of differences. Some people will want to plant trees, others will want to widen the streets. Most solutions are “polemized”, that is, they are defined, discussed, and negotiated. Benjamin Schiemer (2018) discusses community’s creative problem-solving processes. He says that there are three paradigmatic community orientations that can be described in terms of:  a) cultural representation and differentiation; b) the formation of ideas of order and meaning; and c) their creative processes. In terms of the last characteristic, local culture is constantly renovated “as communities-in-the-making”. In fact, we may say that culture develops plausible solutions over time, and is constantly debating the relative merits of all of them (Cronick, 2002).

Resistance to cultural malaise as can be found in reactions to totalitarian solutions and ideological tyranny in small community settings. Luis Ewan (2025) cites Edward Muir’s description of “thin trust” in Italy in the beginning of the 20th century in Italy, as an:

“Idea of the commune as a physical space, as social interaction and as a process of exclusion. Central to Muir's depiction of community life in the commune is the notion of ‘thin trust’, the trust that [has] existed between complete strangers or mere acquaintances based on their shared provenance. The physical spaces of the commune, its piazze and churches, narrow closes and taverns, its winding rivers, forests and fields offered venues for frequent and repeated social exchange, which ‘thickened’ [this]  ‘thin trust’ [….]”

Ewan describes how the campanilismo of certain rural sectors in Italy in the early 20th century resisted the country’s growing fascism. He describes a “a traditional way of life that rooted rural Italian peasants to their place of birth and its immediate surroundings. “

Changes, or resistance to undesired change, can be associated with well-being, but they also can reflect malaise and xenophobia. Historically there have been numerous examples. In modern examples, Syazwan Bin Jumaat (2020) describes how in Indonesia some communities:

“[…]  through misinformation and misguidance, have acted in a way that does not protect the people within them. They have fallen under the influence of fake news and skepticism towards the devastating crisis situation, which has led to large numbers of people being potentially exposed to COVID-19”.

In another example, Paul Jackson (2024) says that the British fascism that survived World War II can also be framed around a sense of community.

“[…] The fascists, in their attempts to attract followers, use evocative, and often specifically emotive, themes to help activists imagine alternate forms of community, typically recalling a seemingly lost past as well as a time to come in ways that resolve perceptions of a dying or lost community in the present. Fascist literatures [provides] crucial ways to explore and understand these visions of alternate communities.”

When members of a community ally with undesirable or damaging worldviews, such as crime organizations or fascist or tyrannical political interests, they are still clinging to some hope for political change. On the other hand, sometimes communities foster hopelessness, or what Seligman called “learned helplessness” which happens when their members have no vision at all for a better future (Cronick, 1985).  In this case they fall into a semi depressive state. This can be very difficult to problematize.

Another difficulty with problematized, or negotiated, community differences is that some cultures have immiscible worldviews in relation to other cultures. And it happens at times that these cultures coexist in the same geographical and political entities. This occurs mostly with religious and ideological groupings. Thus, agreeing on policies having to do with topics such as euthanasia, abortion or the acceptance of certain scientific findings such as evolution becomes difficult. The only solution in these circumstances is probably a mixture of a relativistic belief stance and emotional tolerance. This posture requires an open humanistic attitude in which each member of a given society accepts the possibility of difference and diversity. This is a self-conscious, ethical posture that must be generally and explicitly shared to be successful.

In this brief review of how culture enhances and inhibits cultural change we can see several themes of interest: a) facilitated changes that awaken an awareness for new possibilities, b) the spontaneous development of new ways of interacting, c) traditional cultural structures that inhibit negative changes, and d) the vulnerability that some local structures have to negative influences. These situations can be addressed through the introduction of new themes, such as tolerance, empathy, new communicational resources, and even the mitigation of economic and social stress. For the stimulation of tolerance and empathy, artistic works and participation in theater and musical endeavors are very useful.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

Schiemer (2018) assumes that communities are order-creating entities, that is, they coordinate their actions and attributes. Therefore, he says, more than one type of social ordering can exist simultaneously and sequentially in each one of them. They also generate, from within their own dynamics, “practices that have a “we-intentionality” (p. 3), that is, their members can be aware of their community’s changes and can intentionally help to produce them and control them. He argues that “these practices generate incomplete structures […] which motivate further practices” (p. 3). Order can be established through regimes and rule systems, but community members interact directly, in multifaceted ways. This differentiates communities from civic entities such as cities or states. He talks about a “common property” in the sense of shared needs and aspirations, some of which may be implicit.

Making these needs explicit is one of the jobs that community leaders, NGO members, and the artistic community share. These influences, together with the effects of each community’s varied cultural dispersions and capacities, open the possibilities for growth and change.

There are, of course, impediments. Powerful interests promote divisionary tactics and xenophobic fears to protect themselves, their power, and their investments. The armament industry, for example, benefits from wars and massively armed populations. But these influences have a long history, and nevertheless, communities continue to generate viable social solutions for their problems.

First of all, individual community members can often feel and express empathy and compassion. This can be the first, basic step toward inclusive programs for social well-being. This fundamental emotion, however, needs to be channeled through a process of self-awareness that leads to community consciousness. It requires a method that permits individual members, and then community groups to express their feelings and to convert them into viable action. A sense of the basic unity of humanity then may be channeled into collective action, tolerance, and the construction of socially sustainable “truths”. They can then be “objectified” into, for example, the means for generalized economic wellbeing, environmental esthetics, social concord, physical and emotional health, and universal education.

 

 

 

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[1] It has happened, however. Below I discuss the origin of the United Nations and the Marshall Plan for restoring the economies of Germany, Italy and Japan after World War II.

[2] They are so-called "illegal" displacements, but in fact they are situations of flight from intolerable situations of hunger and violence.

[3] It is not a coincidence that tyrannical leaders often try to diminish or eliminate the presence of NGOs in their countries.

[4] Lifeworld (or the German term used by Edmund Husserl, Lebenswelt) refers to a collective, self-evident subjectivity.

[5] Erasmus of Rotterdam "[...] denounced war and defended peace in the following terms: To those lovers of strife and bloodshed among nations, who are divided only by one name and one channel, you should know that this world, that the planet called Earth, is the common country of all those who live and breathe upon it. They should also remember that all men, regardless of their political reasons, come from the same fathers and also share the same consanguinity and affinity towards concord and peace" (Bosé & Puyama, 2017, p. 22).

[6] "Cervantes' pacifist and humanistic convictions from are reflected in his famous Discourse on Arms and Letters in which he openly condemns war [...]”  (Bosé & Puyama, 2017, p. 23).

[7] To clarify doubts, I do not have a gun at home nor would I have one.

[8] Available at: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Plutarch’s Lives, Volume I (of 4), by Plutarch, et al. (s. f.). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14033/14033-h/14033-h.htm

Sólo el amor (poema)

 K. Cronick


viernes, 23 de mayo de 2025

How I want to say goodbye (poem)

(K. Cronick)

We don’t need to cry,

we will meet there, 

at the old stone beacon

near the northern harbor

when we, all of us, are

like the morning, evening stars,

spirits that never again 

will weaken,

bright beings 

made of light.  

 
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