Socialis hominis

By nature, people are fundamentally selfish. We care about what is ours in all its aspects. That which makes us happy and which can sometimes go against the collective well-being. The search for individual happiness does not repair collateral damage, it is set in motion and does not cease throughout our lives.

However, since the appearance of homo sapiens, the collective has been gaining ground and placing some social premises that are introduced as part of our individual happiness. It is a long way from being considered socialis hominis. At stake is the key dilemma of individual happiness and collective happiness, concern for the other or for my own.

The serial killer of the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us some things that we need to incorporate as people in society. We need to think about the need for quality, universal public health care to meet the challenges we face. Efficient scientific research that takes care of us as a species in coexistence with the rest of the species on the planet. And it places our individual responsibility as essential to saving the collective. 

The social person cares for others. For example, how the virus is affecting other areas of the world, whether or not they have sufficient vaccines, whether they will manage to survive the imposed needs to reduce economic income, etc. Therefore, every time we approach the other, leaving our comfort zones, we are building society.

This truism becomes revolutionary if we take into account that we have been fed for decades with the goodness of individualism, as the central axis of world capitalist development. They know perfectly well that by promoting the individual it is much easier to handle the masses and social conflicts, which guarantees them sustained profit.

Every time we concern ourselves with the social, with the global, with the keys to the species, we leave that axis and place ourselves in the sphere of the social, where the balance between individual and collective happiness begins to make sense. The balance between the two must be given without detriment to either of them.

Many human animals still think that this virus thing is a tall tale. That they don't have to wear masks, that they can relate as and with whomever they like, not take any precautionary measures or consider themselves as possible vectors of disease transmission. They are thinking as individuals without taking into account the collective. It is up to us to make a collective effort. We will undoubtedly come out stronger as a global society and show that there is still intelligent life in the human species.

Francisco Pineda Zamorano, expert in International Relations and Cooperation