Not long ago, a newly organized lay society[1] seeking revolutionary changes within the Christian church appointed the Gardener its “Director for Social Justice.” The Gardener organized a “committee” of practitioners and thinkers for a brief review of what they perceive from experience and long reflection as the idea and practice of Social Justice.
Simple Justice – “suum cuique”
The ancient philosopher and politician Cicero used the Latin phrase “suum cuique” to define simple justice, “giving each one his due”… in a context that was personal, individual, private [2]. In this concept, conversely, to be deprived of what is due you is to be a victim of injustice.
Social Injustice, on the other hand, is: Injustice not just on an individual but on a social scale – affecting not just one or two individuals but massive numbers, even whole sectors of a given society, or of a given world, as, for example, the peasantry, the working classes, the student youth, the aged, women, even whole nations – usually with a yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots, the powerful and the powerless, the exploiters and the exploited, the rulers and the ruled. This is what we term Social Injustice. It is a situation of economic, political, and socio-cultural imbalance among various sectors or peoples with so much going to so few and so little going to so many.
The invisible dynamic creating and maintaining social injustice is simple: Unjust social concepts and practices become unjust social institutions and structures to the point of morphing over time into unquestioned and unquestionable “givens” in social reality.
Economic activities and relations become politically protected and culturally established, legitimated and justified.
As a counter-position
Social Justice advocates from ancient Rome to the present globalized situation go beyond merely “suum cuique” (“to each one his due”) and affirm that “salus populi est suprema lex” – meaning, of course, that the welfare of the people is the highest law.
Note, from the terms used, that the social struggle may be really as ancient as it is ever new.
In the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition ( “the people of the Book”), the ethical imperative is to recognize that —
The equal dignity of human persons requires the effort to reduce excessive social and economic inequalities. It gives urgency to the elimination of “sinful” (really “off-the-mark”) inequalities.
There are differences among persons – not all are alike, obviously, – differences that belong to Source plan. In the view of this tradition, this Source is also called God who wills that we should need one another and establish structures and dispensations that will allow every human being to be fully alive and thus give glory to the Source, the Creator.
Jose W. Diokno
Jose W. Diokno, the revered patriot, in his essay “A Filipino Concept of Justice,”[3] said: “Social Justice, for us Filipinos, means a coherent, intelligible system of law, made known to us, enacted by a legitimate government chosen by us, and enforced fairly and equitably by a courageous, honest, impartial and competent police force, legal profession, and judiciary that
- First, respects our rights and our freedoms both as individuals and as a people;
- Second, seeks to repair the injustices that society has inflicted on the poor by eliminating poverty as rapidly as our resources and ingenuity permit;
- Third, develops a self-directed and self-sustaining economy that distributes its benefits to meet, at first, the basic material needs of all, then provide an improving standard of living for all, but particularly for the lower income groups, with time enough and space to allow them to take part in and enjoy our culture;
- Fourth, changes our institutions and structures, our ways of doing things and relating to each other, whatever inequalities remain, are not caused by those institutions or structures, unless inequality is needed temporarily to favor the least favored,[4] and its cost is borne by the most favored;
- Fifth, adopts means and processes that are capable of attaining those objectives.
Five Major Issues in the Philippine Garden
In the light of all this, the Gardener sees the following issues linked to each other, some more fundamental than others but all really important – forming the Social Justice Agenda for the Philippines today. These issues are:
The Issue of National Sovereignty
Who owns our country now? Do we? Do the Americans? The Japanese? The Chinese?
The private empire of oil and related commodities? Or an international banking cartel that wants us to run a hundred times faster just to stay in place? Are we still intent on building a strong industrial economy or does participation in the globalized service sector through export of warm bodies satisfy us? The poetry of political independence must always in the end be based on the prose of economic self-ownership and self-reliance.
The Issue of Land Ownership
Who owns Land – including all natural elements around us, water, air, sunlight, minerals, soil – that evolved us into being and without which we are nothing? Who owns these elements of nature’s bounty that are just “there”, which no one made but, rather, made us all? Who owns them, to what extent, for what purpose, for whose benefit?
Should not Land—including all natural resources—be regarded as distinct from and yet together with Labor and Capital, making the factors of production not effectively two but rather three in all.
Labor and Capital represent human effort and deserve fair recompense. Land, however, is another matter. Produced by no person’s effort or responsibility, whoever uses it may prevent others from doing so—thus making it imperative for a given society to agree on the rules of the use of land. Hence the many provisions of the Phil. Constitution practically redefining land ownership in the nature of stewardship. Land does not belong to the landowners alone—old or new—but to all the people.
It is a limited resource for a growing number of humans, all of whom, to the very last one, are without question “land dependents.” The very space in which to extend their being involves the occupation of land. Land ownership has to be inescapably regarded as stewardship—that is, merely a means to attain the ends of land use which are: food security for all; decent habitats for all; and an ecologically harmonious economic regime for the common good.
We must therefore generally re-focus attention on these original goals of agrarian reform—greater and sustainable productivity of agricultural lands, and moving the nation towards rural development and industrialization…not mere redistribution toward socialism of poverty.
The Issue of Food Security
Who owns the wherewithal to ensure food for all? The very first question in the FAQ of the United Nations’ World Food Program is: “(1) Is there a food shortage in the world?” And their blunt answer is: “There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life.”
And yet there are over 1 billion chronically hungry people, over half of whom are in Asia and the Pacific and a quarter is in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yes, indeed, enough food can be produced but it still must be bought. And if people are too poor to buy food because of unaffordable prices, it will follow that they will also be hungry.
In the Global Hunger Index (GHI) report, the hunger problem in the Philippines was categorized as “serious” and the country ranked 34th among 84 countries in the Index. On the world level, one billion hungry people – is a first in human history.
If anyone asks whether it is within our power and not beyond our expertise to consign this suffering to history, we must welcome the query warmly, immediately, with a clear resolve that we have to do what we can.
While more than one billion people experience the hardship that hunger imposes, the obvious may easily escape us, namely that the cost of alleviating world hunger is negligible compared to the trillion dollar rescue packages to save financial institutions and stimulate economies in the imperial world.
In the longer term, investment in agricultural development in food-insecure countries is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and for overall economic growth.
The Issue of Mining in the Philippines
Who owns our mineral resources, and to what ends?
We are not – we could not be against mining per se. Mining has been an important part in the historical development of civilizations – from first (agricultural) to second (industrial) to third (information) wave of social formations. Industries need minerals to support the production and flow of basic goods and services. How fortunate should our country have been, given the mineral resources vital for industrialization!
The Philippines is a part of earth that is so incredibly rich in gold, silver, copper, nickel, chrome and zinc that there is now a consensus among governments and industry in the valuation of the mineral wealth within the territorial limits of the Philippines at more than a trillion dollars’ worth, at least.
So, at the outset the question should be articulated correctly:
Shouldn’t we only allow the development of our mineral resources for our own use or should we do so mainly for moneymaking by a few in the world market?
The problem, however, has been – again – the fact that the State and the Filipino people do not really own and control mining as a crucial part of basic industry. In no other sector than in mining is the Philippine state exposed to be unarguably weak.
Past mining methods have had, and methods used in countries with lax environmental regulations continue to have, devastating environmental and public health effects. The result can be unnaturally high concentrations of some chemical elements over a significantly wider area of surface. Combined with the effects of water and the new ‘channels’ created for water to travel through, collect in, and contact with these chemicals, a situation is created where mass-scale contamination can occur.
The issue of ushering in a new ECOZOIC era
Who owns the life and extinction of millions of living species on Earth? Can you own the Earth absolutely to use as you please?
It is estimated that there are about 10-12 million species of plants and animals, of which around 2 million have been identified and named. Extinction means the disappearance of an entire species, with no possibility of replication or regeneration. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.
In the 1800’s the rate of extinction was one species a month, or about twelve a year. Currently it is estimated to be one every 15 minutes, or a hundred a day, or between 30 and 40 thousand a year, since the past twenty years or so. Many scientists consider this as mass extinction. When was the last mass extinction?
The last mass extinction happened about 65 million years ago, with the demise of the dinosaurs, which are included among the 75% of all species that became extinct. A mass extinction signals the end of an era, hence, the end of the Mesozoic Era after about 200 million years.
In any case, the past 500 million years of life – and humans have not been around more than a hundred thousand years – have been divided by scientists into three ages: the Paleozoic or the age of fishes; the Mesozoic or the age of dinosaurs; and the Cenozoic or the age of Mammals, with this latter spanning the immediate past 65 million years.
The age of Dinosaurs came to an end because of an asteroid. The age of Mammals is coming to an end because of human activity. Yes, this is the big problem: humans are so ignorant of the fact that they have become such a planetary power for better or for worse. To date, it has been greatly for worse. The modest ambition of the Lay Society of St. Arnold is unite with those who want to exercise their power to usher in a new age – an era wherein humans shall finally have found a way of living in harmony with all creation – a new era which we may call the Ecological Age or the Ecozoic era.
Humans first embraced the organic economy – which by its nature is an ever-renewing economy, living within the bounty of the seasonal renewing productions of Earth’s biosystems, making it capable of continuing into the indefinite future.
Later, however, humans got into an extractive economy, which by its nature is a terminal, or biologically disruptive economy, dependent on extracting non-renewing substances from Earth, surviving only so long as these endured.
We all have our particular work– some of us are teachers, some of us are healers, some of us are in various professions, and some of us are farming. We have a variety of occupations. But besides the particular work we do and the particular lives we lead, we have a Great Work that everyone is involved in and no one is exempt from – prioritizing the No. 1 item of the Social Justice Agenda which is bringing in the new ecological era conscious of our being cosmological beings.
–FINIS-
Charles Avila -The Gardener
The Gardener’s Tales
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1LSSAJ – the Lay Society of St. Arnold Janssen. Its history, mission and vision will be written on by the Gardener in a separate piece.
2See De Natura Deorum (III.38) [justitia suum cuique distribuit, “justice renders everyone his due”]
3published in Solidarity magazine in 1983
4“corrective bias for the poor”. “preferential option for the poor”…[gardener note]
Not long ago, a newly organized lay society[1] seeking revolutionary changes within the Christian church appointed the Gardener its “Director for Social Justice.” The Gardener organized a “committee” of practitioners and thinkers for a brief review of what they perceive from experience and long reflection as the idea and practice of Social Justice.
Simple Justice – “suum cuique”
The ancient philosopher and politician Cicero used the Latin phrase “suum cuique” to define simple justice, “giving each one his due”… in a context that was personal, individual, private.[2] In this concept, conversely, to be deprived of what is due you is to be
a victim of injustice.