Healing The World As The Ethics And Citizenship Of Foundations In This New Millennium

Never in human history, are foundations so important for everyone in our societies.

At the same time,

• Foundations must not become another arm of an establishment which imposes and reproduces itself with the view to contain or divert the processes of human transformation.

• Foundations must become the voice for the voiceless, the power for the powerless, and the road to higher levels of welfare for the poor people.

There are many forms of organization within civil society. There are all sorts of NGOs, unions, associations, businesses, academia, etc. Therefore, it behooves to ask what is so unique about a foundation. What distinguishes their nature, scope and contributions from other groups in civil society?

Within this context, the subjects of ethics and citizenship are of central importance, although they are vast and often not well understood.

Ethics and citizenship are two central pillars of any debate on the present and future role of foundations. However, just to state this fact is not enough.

Importance of Human Transformation

Because of the diverse and complex aspects of ethics and citizenship, and given the nature of this conference, we are somehow guided to be selective and to focus on one or two aspects only. In my view, this selectivity must be deeply rooted in our life experiences and in our process of human transformation. Probably, this is the only way to make this exchange today more meaningful and practical.

Let me start by telling you one of my principal conclusions:

“In our societies, foundations only make sense if they contribute substantially to our process of human transformation”.

This is to say, foundations must become catalysts and intelligent contributors to such process of transformation. And, in order to be so, their strategy, aims, goals, instruments and actions must be embedded within the different elements and peculiarities of human transformation.

Otherwise, and as we can observe daily, many foundations are melting inside a huge and undistinguishable pot that contains a myriad of civil society organizations, doing little for the citizens of the world. To continue over this path means to become part of a process of self-exclusion and marginalization.

Personal and Collective Transformation

The process of human transformation is both personal and collective.

This transformation is not only about you or me as individuals, but it is also about how your personal development becomes instrumental to the welfare of others. This is to say, this transformation it is also a collective happening.

And, I believe the definition given by the organizers of this conference to the term “philanthropy” exalts clearly these collective dimensions of our debate we are to have here today: the welfare of others, to love our brothers and sisters, and humanism. All these meanings of philanthropy form a holistic reality of our human collective, as well as of the collective of all living beings.

This is to say, this debate brings out the importance of engaging in our collective welfare, collective transformation, and collective future.

Therefore, a second important conclusion today is that Any debate on the future of foundations, and their relevancy in people’s lives, must also be about the ethics and the citizenship of the collective.

And, we must understand that these collective realities have their own synergetic nature, character and scope. It is not just the result of adding individual realities.

As the study of jurisprudence is essential to understand the ultimate nature and scope of norms, laws, rules and regulations in our society, personal and collective human transformation represent the true horizon for the ethics and citizenship for all the foundations that would like to be relevant in shaping and contributing to humanity’s future.

As in my life time I have seen the population of the world to double twice, I have no doubt in my mind and soul that we are now in the millennium of the collective.

The signs that we need to focus on the collective are written all over the wall. Think about the process of globalization, the impacts of the internet and the general revolution in communications, the role and functioning of media, the threats to our human security, the wide spread of HIVAIDS and other devastating diseases, the impacts of global warming and ozone layer depletion, the importance of migration and high volumes of remittances, the global impacts of wars and conflicts, and so much more.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We belong to only one world. There are no two worlds. It is our world.

This is why it has become essential to identify some of the key principles and aims guiding a debate on ethic and citizenship in the realm of our collective human transformation.

The Need to Heal the World

As an umbrella of what I would like to share with you today, it is my intent to focus on just one fundamental principle, which practically defines everything I do professionally, personally, and spiritually.

Specifically, this principle is the need to heal of the world.

Thus, and possibly, a third important conclusion of my presentation today, is that “Healing the world” is strongly linked to all processes of human transformation everywhere.”

To “heal the world” forms the essence of my ethics and citizenship, as well as the ethics and citizenship of my tinny little organization.

Let me add that the term world is defined here as containing, housing, holding, embracing of all living beings (e.g., human beings, sentient beings). It is not just about human beings.

This world is hurting today because nearly 25% of the population lives in poverty,

more than one billion go hungry every night despite the abundance of food, one million women die during pregnancy because they do not have access to health care, the destruction of the environment and the rapid disappearance of our biodiversity, the killing of animals, the incredible pollution of the air and water, the infinite number of wars and conflicts, the violence in our cities, the high number of teenagers suicides, the spread of HIVAIDS and other diseases, the increasing number of economic physical and mental illnesses, and so much more.

As a corollary of my last conclusion, one should say that The healing of the world is a precondition to attaining peace everywhere and adequate levels of human security.

For many people it is much easier to understand, for example, the impacts that environmental destruction has on our material welfare. It is evident that soil degradation and irrigation water pollution, as examples, are destroying our ability to produce foods, particularly in areas where the poor people live. It is also easy to see how the pollution of water and air in our cities results in diseases and great suffering to people.

Yes, it is not difficult to see the connections with our levels of material welfare.

However, it seems to be more difficult to see the connections between healing the world and our spiritual transformation. This is a more complex subject matter that I have not much time to develop here.

Let me just say, for the sake of example, that there is a total symmetry between our capacity to develop spiritually and the quality of our natural environment. This is why so many Saints and Sages tend to live in more pristine areas.

But, why is it that, despite of these connections we see with our material and spiritual welfare, we tend to do little or nothing to heal the world, or even heal ourselves?

Let me pause here for a moment and give you one or two reasons.

The most important reason is related to our very high levels of toxicity.

Yes, indeed, we are living at very high levels of toxicity and, thus, our senses get numbed, do not alert us of a given situation, and become very poor antennas in relation to nature’s signals.

Therefore, we are many times indifferent to what is happening to the world as our container.

In particular, nobody in this room, for example, is crying and suffering because another elephant is killed for the sake of selling the ivory. Nobody is suffering because one more 3000 years old tree is being cut in the Amazon. Nobody is here really suffering because of the thousands of deaths in Darfur, Sudan.

The second most important reason why we are insensitive to the destruction of our container and doing little to heal the world is our inability to self-realize the human, spiritual, ethical values we advocate.

There is no doubt that it is essential to advocate those values, as economic and business values are invading our lives to the limits. They influence all we do!

But, advocacy for the sake of advocacy will not do.

Thus, it is no point that I proclaim peace, love and compassion, if I have not self-realized them. And, it is the lack of this process of self-realization of these values that keeps us also insensitive to the hurting world.

We are not attaining world peace because those who are in front negotiating for peace have never self-realized pace within themselves.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

There is a fundamental law that states that only inner peace is the real and sustainable foundation for world peace.

The key point here is that, ethically speaking, and also speaking in very practical terms, the possibilities to increase human welfare, materially and spiritually, will depend on the quality of the outer world we live in.

Not an inanimate world, but a live world with material and non material elements.

Thus, the ethics and citizenship, defining the role and aims of foundations, must not be detached from the quality and life dynamics of our world. This is why I dare to propose today that foundations should have as the core of their ethics and citizenship, the laws, principles, instruments and actions geared towards the healing of the world.

For the moment, we see how much we are destroying the natural environment in the name of economic growth and development. This is happening everywhere in the world, including Portugal.

This environmental destruction has important consequences for our material and spiritual human transformation.

To think that human transformation is independent of the quality of our “container”, is simply an illusion. And, to propose an ethics that is completely detached from the realities of the world it is just impractical and of little value.

Thus, another important conclusion at this stage of my presentation is that for the foundations to embrace the aim of healing the world, and all that is connected to ethics and citizenship, they must be linked to a process of self-realization.

Otherwise, the very nicely presented and socially acceptable goals of many foundations will only be kept in the books and not in the core of human realities and the process of personal and collective human transformation.

The Inner and Outer

Some of you may question the distinction I am making between the “content” and the “container”. Between us living beings and the world.

In many respects you are right. As an old Indian say will tell us: “the outer is like the inner, and the inner is like the outer”.

This is to say, whatever is happening outside us represents the mirror image of what is happening inside us. In other words, we are indeed the masters of our own destiny. And, it is often us who actually create the causes and conditions of our existence, and what surround us generally.

I make this distinction here only for presentational purposes.

The Law Of Interdependence – Other Living Beings

At this stage of my presentation, it is important for me to say that I am not necessarily talking about the ethics or the citizenship of the dominant groups in our societies. These groups often cast and control the conceptual framework and the actions derived from them.

Dominant groups impose notions of what is ethical or what is for them the correct ethical values to follow, which are, then, understood as the only values to embrace.

As any aspect of human transformation, ethics and ethical values evolve, change, shift and turn. They are not fix, and what may appear totally clear today, may not be the case tomorrow!

It is clear that healing the world is not necessarily the ethics and citizenship of the dominant groups, particularly of the dominant economic and business groups. Otherwise we would not see poverty and environmental destruction everywhere.

The debate of what is right and wrong has enveloped us into many fallacies that appear as evident, while they are not. One of these fallacies is “To grow now and clean later”.

To put economic growth as a condition to clean later is simply not to know the essence of what constitutes a sustainable society in economic, social, human, and spiritual terms. There are no examples where after growth societies have come back and clean later.

Another fallacy is that of “Grow first and do social justice, or equity, later”.

Again, to hold hostage poor people and minorities to what belong to them –like the case of social justice—is ethically and morally wrong. It is impossible to think about a holistic concept of citizenship, when some citizens are condemned to poverty and welfare degradation. That is not really a concept of citizenship.

Furthermore, another fallacy is to makes us focus only on us, human beings, and to tell us de-facto that we are the only ones important in the world, our “container”.

“We are supposed to be the only relevant content”

In some respects, this attention is justified on the grounds that we, as human beings, need to have a decent level of welfare, happiness, and satisfaction. And, this is why it is important to pay particular attention to such human realities as poverty, unemployment, and the lack of empowerment, opportunity and security.

Those human realities must become central to all organizations in civil society, including all the foundations. These realities must form the basis for any foundation, wherever they are formed. In one way or another, all foundations must be an instrument of people’s welfare. In sum, the aims and vision of foundations must be anchored in our human reality and must become an integral part of human transformation.

And, this is why, elimination of poverty, empowering people, creating opportunities, improving human security, and creating decent work must be essential to defining the ethics and citizenship related components of foundations.

However, we are neither the only inhabitants of this world nor the most important ones. I say this with no trepidation, in spite of the fundamentalist ethnocentric views of ethics and citizenship prevailing in many parts of the world.

This notion of human superiority, and we being the ”owners of nature”, has translated into the exploitation of nature and its progressive destruction is failing every living being.

However, any form of ethics that is not anchored into all living beings becomes an incomplete foundation for any form of future existence.

Animal species, trees, plants, and other living beings are also with us, together, shaping up our human destiny.

We know that we are totally interdependent of each other as human beings, but it is essential to remark here that we are also fully interdependent with all living beings and nature.

This is a three pronged form of interdependence.

Thus, the boundaries of ethics and citizenship are not in our human collective alone.

To practice an ethnocentric form of ethics is not only wrong, but a major error driven by our limited intellect.

Material and Spiritual Welfare

Furthermore, when referring to the term “welfare”, we must refer to material as well as to the spiritual welfare of all. Both forms of welfare go hand in hand. To separate them is also another error of the intellect. Because of this error, we may find ourselves in a society where people may be materially rich but spiritually poor.

As it was stated in the declaration at Dumbarton Oaks, California, after the Second World War (the 1940s), in the creation of the United Nations System, if we as a collective were to seek human freedom, this would require the expansion of both material and spiritual welfare.

Today, there are thousands of books and proposals on how to heal people, though not too many people practice what these books propose.

Most bookstores have plenty of self improvement books. Similarly, here in Portugal as well as in other countries of the world, there is an incredible growth of lectures, seminars and public exchanges on different alternative ways we may improve our human and spiritual welfare as part of the “content”.

Today, prayer, contemplation, meditation, yoga, and other forms of inner growth, form now part of the curriculum of the most famous business schools around the world.

However, there is much less attention and determine actions in relation

• To healing the spiritual dimension of the world.

• To healing a hurting world.

• To healing other living beings as well as nature in all its forms.

Some Practical Steps

Let me offer some practical steps or actions to embrace today.

Healing The World

First, on healing the world.

• Select areas where major healing is needed here in Portugal, or in some of the former colonies and territories, or even around the world. Prepare specific programs to address these situations.

• Use the platform of the best foundations to influence domestic and foreign policies, so that the institutional and political spaces for Portugal to influence international organizations like the World Bank, United Nations and the European Union.

• Form a National Association of Business Entrepreneurs, Managers and Owners to engage in projects whose ethics and citizenship would be based on healing the world. This Association should also be instrumental in opening up a national dialogue on “Portugal 2020”, where all the foundations may play a critical role. All peoples and organizations should participate.

The Governance of Foundations

Second, on the governance of foundations.

• Create awareness that what is done in the end very much depends on the governors and the governance structure of foundations. It would be important to carry a practical policy study on the present forms of governance of all foundations and relate these forms of governance to practices and programs.

• Establish a core dialogue related to those regions that do not benefit from having foundations there, or do not benefit from the existing programs of those foundations. In this respect, it would be important to identify “hot spots” in need of healing and transformation, in the terms described above. Then, see what this implies for the foundations and other members of civil society.

• Analyze the ‘international’ character of the foundations and see whether they are opening opportunities for people to insert themselves in the process of globalization.

Self Realization

Third, on self realization.

• Have self-realized beings leading the foundations. Ethics and citizenship are always embody in the minds and souls of those who govern these entities. The ethical values promoted by foundations, must be self-realized by those who work there, otherwise, all we discuss here becomes just another theoretical exercise.

• Make sure that foundations get engaged in programs of human self-realization, as many universities in other countries are doing these days.

Final Thoughts

The themes of this conference are extremely relevant in light of the human realities we are living in the world, in general, and in Portugal, in particular.

Portuguese people, and all of us, for that matter, must get actively involved in reviewing the core aims of most foundations and see whether they are, in practice, involved in healing the world and in the personal and collective processes of human transformation.

Let us evaluate them by their outcomes and not by their declarations, particularly on paper.

It is essential that we are able to identify and feel in ourselves their transformational powers in relationship to healing the world. In terms of healing Portugal. In terms of healing the Portuguese people.

This exercise is to be done as a form of evolution to another level of human reality.

Finally, the attention of all leaders, at all levels of decision making, must be on the ethics and citizenship of the collective, as a collective; otherwise, most foundations will become history of our past.

Thank you very much.