Uncontrolled competition, individualism and exitism are corroding people, society and its institutions because in order to be successful, many are transgressing values such as honesty and respect for the rights of others. They are unwilling to fail and will do anything to avoid it. Others take the long, uphill road and, in the end, the winners are those who accept the challenges and better accept and assume their failures.
Chilean society is full of cases of those who jumped the queue to achieve their goals: corruption, bribery, violence, lies, abuse, theft, forgery, etc. The problem is that the higher people are in the social, economic and cultural pyramid, the less likely they are to be unmasked and receive the corresponding sanction.
Nelly León, the chaplain of the women’s prison, was right when she told Pope Francis that “poverty is imprisoned in Chile”. To this we can add that in Chile the weak who do not have the safety nets of power are punished and sanctioned.
It is not a question of moral equality because all cases are condemnable, but what is happening in Chile needs to be reflected upon because inequalities in treatment are generators of anger and violence.
For me, financing and winning a senatorial campaign with ill-gotten money is on the same level as lying to be elected as a constituent. The difference is that the former is still a senator four years after the facts were determined by the courts of the Republic, while the latter is wanted out of the Constituent Commission immediately.
Nor did the Verbo Divino community receive the same treatment as the communities of the emblematic high schools. Faced with similar disorders inside the establishments, in the first, the educational authority did not intervene while, in the others, the Carabineros quickly arrived and entered the educational premises.
It is a vicious circle. As more people put their own interests above the common good in order to win, others are tempted to do the same, and so on. This is aggravated by the fact that those who are part of the constituted power have privileges that ensure impunity.
The hope for cultural change lies in education. Generating a virtuous circle will depend on the capacity of the educational system to develop tolerance for frustration and acceptance of failure. It is a long road without unethical and illegal shortcuts.
At Fundación Semilla we encourage educational communities to congratulate those who try to achieve a goal even if they fail, because happiness and fulfilment are in the process and not in the result. Educating also means encouraging a vision of the common good over competition and personal success. Winning means taking on challenges and better accepting and embracing failures without compromising values or committing illegalities.
