Rivers of ink have flowed in writings, treatises and doctrines on Ethics, for this reason I do not intend in this essay to dictate a lecture on the controversial subject, but rather by pleading with the Most High, our eternal, almighty and good God, and with the help of his Grace, I want to awaken and shake consciences, enlighten minds, motivate wills, make eyes turn towards virtue and make hearts bow and fall in love with it, move feelings so that it is yearned for, desired and love Ethics and hate, detest and reject corruption.
I wish to leave in the depths of the souls of the people who have contact with this essay, the message that there is a profound need to transform our societies, public and private organizations, as a consequence of the generalized corruption that permanently in the world. it attacks and destroys them, therefore it becomes imperative, unavoidable, indispensable and essential that the implementation of ethics in them has the character of maximum urgency.
Today our peoples desperately demand that our leaders and organizations, both public and private, assume ethical behavior in the field of their policies, decisions and executions. There has been permanent insistence on the marginalization of Ethics from economic and organizational processes under the pretext of an alleged incongruity or dichotomy between them, which has resulted in the facilitation of the installation of corrupt practices that have caused enormous damage to our societies. Pope John Paul II has led the questioning of the supposed dichotomy between Ethics and economics and has pointed out that not only is it not alien to it, but it should guide and regulate it, additionally demanding an ethical code for globalization.
Every day we are facing a maremagnum of corruption scandals and in the face of these realities, society asks itself: How could it be possible? What motivated these behaviors? and the usual explanations do not allow to understand them nor do they satisfy the expectations of the people.
This means that we need to put at the center of the public agenda issues such as the coherence of economic policies with ethical values, the social responsibility of private companies, the ethics of the public function, the strengthening of voluntary organizations, the development of the solidarity in general, the eradication of corruption to motivate positive ethical attitudes, the thorough preparation of the new generations of professionals in their ethical responsibilities, among others, since by not having done so we have created the propitious ground for that discussion gap Ethics favors the deployment without social sanction of the unethical values that corruption leads to and the exacerbated selfishness, lack of solidarity and insensitivity to the suffering of so many continue to reign.
It is important to be clear that the corrupt not only harms by what they steal from society, but by the message they transmit: everything for me, I don't care about others, I have no problems of conscience, the only important thing is to get rich. That is why it is time to definitively answer this message, vindicating values and standing up for the fight, we have to place ethics as the maximum urgency, because when planet earth is destroyed in any way, when it supports, sympathizes and participates with it. hatred, destruction and war, when a human being is enslaved or condemned to servitude through unfair wages, when poverty and injustice are accepted and promoted, when the price is put above the human being, profit, consumerism and all forms of alienation,when for discriminatory reasons of any kind any person is persecuted and condemned, when we do not eradicate corruption as a social sin, as presented in his work by Carlos María Galli, and what Jorge Elkin calls the double standards of organizations, when that and many other anti-human situations happen; It is when our ethical responsibility commits us as a duty; to take part in that unchangeable, unavoidable and essential struggle of the human being for the construction of a more just, fraternal, supportive and participatory society.It is when our ethical responsibility commits us as a duty; to take part in that unchangeable, unavoidable and essential struggle of the human being for the construction of a more just, fraternal, supportive and participatory society.It is when our ethical responsibility commits us as a duty; to take part in that unchangeable, unavoidable and essential struggle of the human being for the construction of a more just, fraternal, supportive and participatory society.
Fight that in this case is nothing else, and has no other way than to be a permanent lesson from everyday, simple life every day to the most heroic acts for ourselves and therefore to others, for and with them. make us more and better human beings. A struggle that requires a frontal attack against corruption, its denunciation with the force of truth, because the greatness of being resides in its moral courage to seek and tell the truth above all else, to fulfill its duty with honesty, to seek at all times be fair and honest.
But in reality it takes a lot of moral courage, a lot of integrity of character to be able to be consistent in the face of the truth, especially in the midst of adversity as so many men and women have had to endure the worst for not betray your principles.
Heine was right in stating that everywhere a great soul gives flight to his thoughts he finds a Golgotha. That is why you have to turn your eyes to the great men to imitate them, just look at the beautiful example of the life of Jesus when he whips the merchants out of the temple. What did Jesus have? Forces, weapons, armies? No, it only possesses the power of virtue, the power of its inner truth, the strength of morality, the force of justice, the impetus of truth, from which we can infer that whoever practices it honestly and constantly has the strength. of great men, be they geniuses, heroes or saints. Only with the power of virtue will we defeat war and make peace, only with the power of virtue will we defeat adversity, only with the power of virtue will we defeat corruption.
Isn't GOD himself inviting us to imitate him, girdling us with courage and expelling the corrupt, these merchants of death with the whip of truth?
In a very little known book, by the way entitled "The Character", the Scottish writer, Samuel Smiles, when delving into one of his chapters on moral courage, highlights that each step of progress in the history of mankind has been made in between of oppositions and difficulties.
It highlights the way progress has taken place and has been consolidated thanks to so many intrepid and courageous human beings who have had to endure slander, ignominy, persecution, the cruelty of torture and death itself simply for proclaiming a truth that was not shared by those who held power at a certain moment in history, so let us dare to raise the banners of Ethics knowing the arduous battles and multiple difficulties that await us, but motivated by the wise, who like Carlyle state that there is always room on the heights for the brave and mighty man, like Jesus, who goes further and tells us that the kingdom of heaven is for the mighty, for the mighty and shaken and driven by the words of Martin Luther King, who says:"I am not worried about the bad acts of bad people, I am worried about the indifference of good people", everything leads us and forces us to maintain that there is no place today for damn cowardice if we want a different country, if we want to transform the world, if we want a better world.
We then need to generate people with an integral development, solidly established in the formation of the home, in the example of parents, in the teachings of educational centers, in religious instruction that nourishes the spirit, in the rescue of civility, urbanity and good traditions, among others, but keeping these aspects close relationship and coherence since otherwise a distortion of ideas is created and therefore a deviation from the right procedure. Moral values have been degraded, marginalized, excluded, it is time to recover them!
To conclude, we would have to resort here to a metaphor that allows us to exalt the importance of Ethics, its imperative need and the desire for change through it in our Organizations and motivate ourselves in the face of the great discouragement that is experienced and observed daily by the presence of widespread corruption at all levels of public and private order in the country and in almost the entire world. It is the metaphor of Pandora's box.
It is said that Pandora and Epimetheus, the first couple of humanity for the Greeks, lived in Eden with everything necessary to enjoy full well-being and happiness.
To this first couple of the human species, the gods gave a mysterious box with the sacred promise that they would not open it. And there was no reason to do it since they lacked nothing in that earthly paradise. But full of curiosity, both he and she ignored the divine prohibition and proceeded to open the box, thus letting what was inside fly, one by one the elements among which several monsters stood out: death, the pain, betrayal, envy, greed, in short, all the evils that have plagued humanity since then. Seeing all this, filled with dread and guilt, Pandora quickly covered the box.
Something had managed to remain at the bottom of the box: Hope. That Hope that in these times is so much needed and that we must recover to fight, to the death if necessary, for the triumph of Ethics over corruption, if we want to see that world we so dreamed of come true. Ethics matters, there is too much stress and exclusion in it, that is why we declare the need for Ethics in all corners of the earth as a maximum urgency.
