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Values like care gratitude humility solidarity patience or the generosity They seem to have been rediscovered in the heat of the global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. But how long will those values last? How will they settle in society and in each one of us? Francesc Torralba argues in “Living in the essentials” that crises are occasions to audit our way of life and address the future from a new mindset.
In your work you refer to the fact that this crisis has allowed us to rediscover values that we will need to face the economic and social tsunami that is coming, which are the most relevant?
First of all the value of ductility
, essential in crisis contexts because it means the ability to adapt, generate new processes and new formats in uncertain contexts. The most negative thing would be to stay in the rigidity or in the nostalgia of the lost world.
In some organizations we have seen this ductility: hotels that have become hospitals; car factories, respirator factories; restaurants, take-home food providers or health centers …
Another outstanding value is that of resilience. The ability to extract our potential to face adversity or setback. We have to learn from those resilient people or communities who, despite living for many years in post-war or disasters, for example, have managed to get ahead and open up a life project.
And a third value is the cooperation, solidarity or cooperative intelligence, which implies coming together and trying to see what I can contribute and what you can contribute to find solutions. Alone we cannot get out of the quagmire, we need to share talent and vital energy.
The concept of shared talent is interesting. Is what we have experienced helping us to forge the path of cooperation?
I am convinced of it. When everything works well for you and meets your expectations and there is no eventuality it is rare that you ask for help. We run on autopilot. But when there is a cataclysm, when you realize that you cannot alone is when you start knocking on doors and asking for help from others. That is essential today. We observe it at all levels. For example, organizations need the guaranteed health and safety of their workers to continue the activity. We need technologists, epidemiologists, scientists, lawyers … to be able to create a new framework.
The idea of shared talent o cooperative intelligence It is essential to get out of the crisis. And also historically it has always been this way, since they are moments in which people come together to bond. On the other hand, when everything is going well, one can afford to be individualistic.
The vulnerability of the human being has become more than evident, but also some groups have been especially punished in this pandemic, how can we prevent it from happening again?
One of the basic lessons of the crisis is awareness of the vulnerability or fragility of the human being. Not being able to stop the rhythm of deaths or stop the illness of loved ones has been a collective humility cure.
But this has become more evident in some vulnerable groups such as the older people or people with accumulated pathologies. But how can we guarantee that this consciousness of fragility has continuity? It is not easy, especially if one has not experienced it closely. If it has been lived closely (parents, uncles, grandparents, siblings…) this is marked and leaves a very deep sediment or mark and makes a person learn that they should take care, avoid contagion, be very cautious, be very prudent.
But when there has been no direct experience, it is easy to frivolize and trivialize. And this would be the debate, how to prevent this conscience from becoming frivolous.
There have been many deaths, perhaps more than are recorded. And this lesson should help us to become aware of our fragility and especially of the care that we must give to certain most vulnerable beings, such as the elderly, newborns, people with physical or intellectual disabilities.
During the confinement we have had to “stop” and that has made us regain that contemplative capacity inherent to the human being, how can we take it to the positive ground?
The classics distinguished two types of life: active and contemplative. This is in Santo Tomás, in Raimundo Lulio, in San Buenaventura … in medieval classics. But we have a type of life that is no longer active, but hyperactive. Hyper-fast, hyper-accelerated… On the other hand, the crisis has represented a deceleration and a stillness, the less physical.
From the outset, stopping when one has such a fast pace of life is a shock, almost violent. However when one enters the contemplative life, which is founded on physical stillness, begins to discover possibilities that it does not have in active life. For example, he reflects on his own life, on his ties, his work, his relationship with the neighbors, his future and discovers things that he had not seen before (a tree in front of his house, wonderful books in his living room, neighbors that he did not know ) or that had gone unnoticed due to that acceleration.
It is another thing to know if in the future we will have a better alternation between both lives: one of an introspective, reflective and analytical type and another of production or generation of projects
He argues that there is an interesting drug against fear that is boldness, how to link it to values such as humility and solidarity?
La boldness it is a virtue that is equidistant between cowardice or pusalinimity and recklessness. The daredevil throws himself into the pool without seeing if there is water, rides a motorcycle without a helmet or has sex without taking adequate measures. Recklessness only leads to shipwrecks. And cowardice is the other thing, which makes there so much fear of what may happen that one is left as armored and repeats patterns and models.
In a context of crisis, bold people, communities and institutions are needed capable of taking difficult decisions, even unpopular but thinking of the common good or the general interest. And this is hard to find.
Boldness is essential to undertake new projects and initiatives. We need it to change many things, from the forms of leadership or of organizing ourselves to the very concept of teleworking.
Many organizations did not even want to hear about telecommuting. And now the crisis has boosted teleworking by 75%. But later, what will happen? Will it return to the old paradigm? Will there be a breakthrough? In reality, the audacious is the one who does things out of vocation and not because of the obligation of the context, he is the one who starts things without being sure that they will work one hundred percent. And that’s just what we need: politicians, academics, and bold businessmen.
Among the “rituals in volatile times” that you propose in your book, that of gratitude seems to have been present in society through different symbols, how can this spirit continue?
Gratitude is a forgotten value, overshadowed in companies and organizations. How many people experience ingratitude only after giving 30 or 40 years of their life to a company! And that generates resentment, resentment and very toxic emotions towards an organization.
On the other hand, in the books on leadership ethics, gratitude is fundamental, that is, the first thing a leader has to learn is to appreciate the contribution of its members.
Society has discovered it spontaneously with health professionals and public servants. And he has done it in a secular intergenerational ritual of applause towards those people.
I wish this spirit had a great longevity and was trapped in our being. But for this to sink thoroughly, it is essential that the awareness of the gift received. I put an example. Albert Camus wrote a letter to the language teacher from his childhood just before going to Oslo to collect the Nobel Prize for Literature. That is gratitude, that is awareness of the gift received.
Gratitude builds self-esteem and is very cheap. It is a gesture, a symbol, it unites teams and strengthens leadership.
You warn that the crisis is dynamiting social and political trust and that we run the risk of being invaded by skepticism, where do we go if trust is not recovered?
We are doing badly because trust is essential for social life. Without trust there is no social nexus. If specticism, suspicion or mistrust grows, society is broken. It becomes a kind of group of fragments that are only linked out of strict necessity.
We must ask ourselves why trust has been lost. It is not by chance. When you lose trust in someone, it is because that person has failed you. Not one day, but several times. For there to be trust there are two basic requirements: competition (the more competition you have the more trustworthy it gives) and confidentiality (knows how to keep a secret).
There are groups that have monumentally lost confidence: politicians, bankers, judges … They generate such skepticism that it is difficult for anyone to believe them when they make promises.
Of those seven “letters for the day after” that you put forward in your book, which of the groups to which they are addressed would you say will ask more questions with the text?
I hope young people. They are my regular recipient because I have been in the classroom for 27 years and I usually have more than 300 students in each course. In that letter “to the young” I try to prevent them from succumbing to discouragement, disenchantment and discouragementEspecially those young people who, despite their preparation, cannot get out of the precariat and live in a situation of great social, labor, economic or even emotional instability.
Also, I hope you don’t lose esperanza and trust in your potential and abilities. And above all that they do not fall into a resentment against the generation that has preceded them because it is easy for them to complain about the world that we have left them: famines, great economic differences, global ecological crisis, unbridled capitalism … It is important that they do not fall into recrimination, but that they are capable of becoming change’s agents.
To what extent have you learned in these days to “live in the essentials”?
The crisis purifies a lot and one stays with the basics. The basic is little. Some basic basic needs of the day (water, food …), some bonds that support you that keep you afloat (family and friends) … And when everything falters and, in my particular case, one remains with faith, which is an antidote to discouragement, despair and a fall into the void.
For me, the crisis has meant an encounter with what is essential and has been the opportunity to let go of many accidental and irrelevant elements that do not count in my support as a person.
Francesc Torralba is a Doctor of Philosophy, a Doctor of Theology and a Doctor of Pedagogy. He is currently director of the Ethos Chair at the Ramón Llul University, a Full Member of the Royal Academy of Doctors and chairs various Ethics committees. His works include “Spiritual intelligence”, “Ethics as anguish” and “Volatile world.” The copyright for the sale of “Living in Essentials”, his latest book, goes to SOS Children’s Villages.