Let's talk about care as a paradigm.
What is a paradigm?
A paradigm is a pair of glasses
that one wears not over one's eyes, but on one's brain,
that makes us see reality in a certain way.
For many, many centuries
the paradigm of success, power, earning,
accumulation, being important, winning,
has driven most of our personal, familial, and social decisions,
and of countries and regions.
If you ask a father
what he wants for his boy,
he'll say, to be very intelligent, highly educated,
and to have a high salary, the paradigm of success.
This paradigm has put us in this situation:
on the one hand is the risk of disappearing as a species,
climate change,
and on the other hand is the possibility of any person communicating
with any other person,
the 4th generation communication,
the possibility of finding and recognizing ourselves as a species.
This is the paradox. On the one hand we can disappear,
and on the other hand, we may reach a higher level of humanization.
The question is how to solve this paradox.
We cannot solve it with the same paradigm
that has brought us to this point, that of success.
We have to find a better paradigm,
and the proposition is that this better paradigm is care.
Care assumes a new ethics.
What is ethics?
It is a criterion that allows me to make decisions
in the face of dilemmas and select one that allows me to live with dignity.
Then, the question is,
what is this new ethics?
This new ethics that we propose is care.
Care implies learning three important things:
to know how to care, to know how to make win-win transactions, and to know how to converse.
These are the core values of care.
This statement by Leonardo Boff,
a Brazilian that you know, sums up the problem.
When we love, we care and when we care, we love.
Care is the core category of the new paradigm of civilization
that is emerging all over the world, and this is the most important.
Care plays a double role;
it prevents future damage and repairs and regenerates past damage.
This is the value of care.
I'd like that at least this concept remain after this talk.
Today, care is not an option.
Either we learn to care or we will all die.
This is the new ethics.
Care has the advantage of allowing us to look at the world
in a positive way and avoid the fear of disappearing,
avoid the fear of control, the fear of not doing,
not spending, not consuming
but to look at reality from a higher level,
that it is care which can lead us to new positions.
What is to know how to care?
To care for oneself, for others, and for the planet.
What is caring for oneself?
To take care of the body, of the spirit, and of the intellect.
To take care of the body basically means
self-care and to take care of the affective ties.
It is around these affective ties
with those close to our body,
the love for the body as ourselves
that we can actually find out who we are. I guess it doesn't need to be explained.
However, it is very important to talk about taking care of the spirit.
What does taking care of the spirit mean?
Taking care of the spirit means to seek to develop one's own autonomy
and building one's own autonomy means to learn how to self-regulate,
to learn self-esteem and to know oneself.
Self-regulation, self-esteem, and knowledge of oneself are the bases
of a person’s autonomy.
However, at the same time, as the Dalai Lama said,
it is necessary to learn to control afflictive feelings.
The Christian doctrine has taught us to deny afflictive feelings:
wrath, envy, meanness the wish to accumulate, envy.
However, we actually have to learn to understand the afflictive feelings.
We will always feel wrath, meanness, envy.
The problem is not in feeling them;
the problem is being unaware of feeling them.
When you are aware of your wrath, you can control it.
When you are aware of your envy, you can control it.
This spiritual education is fundamental
for the survival of the planet and the care of the intellect.
We have been taught that the intellect is a private good,
a warrior to fight, to win, to earn, to succeed,
and to get high grades on the college entrance exam.
We have formed a warrior intelligence,
to be the best, the most beautiful, the most powerful.
With this intellect, we cannot survive on the planet.
We need to move from the warrior intelligence to an altruistic intelligence,
the solidary intelligence.
We need to understand that intelligence is a solidary good.
We need to learn to ask questions,
to learn to know who we make friends with,
to learn to answer when we are asked questions.
We need to understand that today intelligence means to know how to ask for help.
What is a great leader? Someone who knows how to ask for help.
For Araújo, and all those who made this TED,
they succeeded because they knew how to ask for help.
To know how to ask is to have an ethical north. To know how to ask for help,
to know to generate circles of friendship,
emotional, social, and professional circles,
they are the main signs of a great professional today.
It is not knowledge, everything else is in Google
and what God doesn't know, Google does.
We have to learn to care for others,
of those who are close and those distant, and of strangers.
How do we take care of those who are close?
By taking care of the affective ties, by learning to be friends
and learning to seek a stable relationship.
67% of young people in the largest cities feel alone,
which leads to depression, drugs, and suicide.
We have to teach how to have friends,
teach how to have relationships.
To take care of those who are distant by taking care of the institutions.
We need to learn to develop the institutions,
to create organizations and protect them.
This is how we can avoid the pain, and take care of strangers.
How do we take care of strangers? By taking care of public goods.
Think about this,
how do we take care of the child
in the slums in a big city of Brazil or Colombia?
If we had a public education system which were actually public
and not two systems, one for the rich and another for the poor.
This system does not take care of anyone.
When we accept the existence of two educational systems in a country,
we are not taking care of others’ children.
We grew used to the fact that my kids can have a good education
and the others will make do.
If we had an educational system with the quality of Finland’s,
you would be sure we’re caring for children we don't know.
The abundance of public goods is the basis of equality, not money.
The more public goods of quality a society has, the more equitable it is.
To know how to make win-win transactions.
Our brain is wired to make win-lose transactions.
We want the most beautiful girlfriend,
the most beautiful car, the most beautiful house,
that is, every competence system is an exclusion system.
The world can't resist win-lose models.
It's not me who is saying this.
John Nash, that guy in the movie A Beautiful Mind,
he won the Nobel prize for this.
Nash's question is:
how have we created wealth
and inequity at the same time?
He demonstrated it was with win-lose transactions and said,
if we want to generate wealth and equity,
we have to learn to make win-win transactions.
To know how to converse, you know this very well.
I'm going to finish by saying this,
from Río Bravo to Tierra del Fuego,
Latin America has 22 million km².
550 million inhabitants live in this territory.
Our territory is three times bigger than that of China
and it has one third of China's population.
All our territory is inhabitable.
We have the largest fresh water reserve in the world.
We're the green continent of the planet,
one which all other continents are looking at now.
However, we cannot make a wall,
a wall to keep the others out.
If we can look at this continent as Latin Americans
from the viewpoint of the care paradigm,
we can offer an alternative of good humanization to the world,
of a new humanization in the face of the climate change.
Thank you very much.