Since the social outburst of October 2019, our country has been on a rollercoaster of events and emotions. Democracy has shown signs of strength because the institutions have fulfilled their role, but it has also shown a dark side in the disorder within the collegiate bodies of popular election. The last thirty months have been an excellent civic education class that has brought democracy as it is right in front of our eyes. The next two months will show the best and the worst of it.
Faced with the exit plebiscite to approve or reject the Constitutional text, many Chilean men and women, especially those in positions of leadership, are poisoning our hearts, encouraged by individual protagonism and the competition to stand out in the media and social networks.
It is not the Constitutional proposal, as analysts claim, that divides us. It is the unbridled competition that justifies everything in order to win approval or rejection. Sensible is the campaign that invites us to read and reflect on the text and critically analyse what it says.
Competition has become part of today’s culture and at Fundación Semilla we see it at school level. The competition for grades, the competition to be the “coolest”, the competition to stand out and to get recognition from their environment, are poisoning coexistence and making us lose the focus of education. Collaboration, on the other hand, as a way of relating and interacting with others, seems to be absent in schools despite being the only way for a whole human group to advance towards greater well-being.
Competition is poisoning the heart in neighbourhoods where drugs add more and more young people every day to trafficking and consumption. Also, in the economy with collusion and many increases in products and services that seem to be justified more by greed than by their costs.
Human beings need each other and competition forgets this. The same is true in nature. Living things need each other to survive and evolve.
Collaboration is the way, not competition. This does not mean that we are all equal, because assuming that premise is not helpful. Collaboration is most valuable in diversity, where everyone brings their own contribution.
The great biodiversity in nature is the basis of our planetary survival. And likewise, collaboration between people is and will be the progress of our community.
Let us practice collaboration and not competition, to avoid living with a poisoned heart that does so much harm to ourselves and to others.
