A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

namics among persons, genders and social groups, in harmony with nature,
in order to promote life and guarantee its reproduction. It is a question
of good living, of complying with the Common Good of Humanity,
which implies, as a first step, respect for the integrity of nature as a
source of life (the Mother Earth). Its construction and its applications in
the foundations of collective life on the planet constitute a process. It is
not only an academic exercise, but one of social elaboration as well,
where not only thinking, but also concrete experience occupy an essential
place, particularly social struggles, each corresponding to a failure in
the compliance of the Common Good of Humanity and looking for solutions.
Since the destructive globalization of capitalism has dominated
economies, societies and cultures of the whole world but has not eliminated
them altogether, the task falls on everyone, men and women, according
to their characteristics and historical experiences. No one can
be excluded from this common endeavor to elaborate the conditions of
life anew. 178
In the speech delivered by Manuel D´Escoto in the United Nations in
2009 we may find the most indicative effort to bring to the level of political
decisions this world need to change an exhausted and irretrievable
paradigm of modernity for another; for this, we can only count on preambles
based on what should not be, so it is still waiting for precise concretions
to define itself. A declaration of the rights of Mother-Earth is
not enough for this, apart from clarity in the urgency to substitute the
interaction of man with nature for the symbiosis of the part and the
whole.
The need to identify and define the Common Good of men in connection
with nature, with its reproduction, with the reciprocal contact of human
beings who revered it in the origins of society, as expressed by totemic
relationships with natural forces, and who protected it by defining taboo
conducts, comes up again as a necessity of our time. We have to face
the sense of shame for the lack of scientism underlying the assumed
178 François Houtart: op.cit.
358