The Ethics Guide for the Transformation from Neoliberalism back to Humanism.

Today, at his daily press conference, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and a commission team in charge of collecting the opinions of experts, citizens, academics, philosophers, psychologist, historians, and, cultural historical memory experts, presented a the two-years research to promote an open discussion to im the topic of the lost of human values and ethics in Mexico and our global society. Values that were lost during the 36 years of the neoliberal economic era, not by accident but by design.

The results of the two-year research is the new normal ethics guide.

The document is written in a simple language so it can be comprehensible by any person. It contains twenty moral principles such as love, dignity, equality, fraternity or ethical reflections on the environment, wealth and the economy.

It makes perfect sense that the solution to the failing neoliberal economic model was to come not from Europe or The U.S., but a country that has been a victim of the model, Mexico for decades. In Mexico, neoliberalism became synonyms with corruption promoted by foreign multinational corporations, which then  led to large poverty levels, crime and an enormous inequality. Mexico has for millennia defended human rights as part of their cultural tradition and within its constitution.

Makes since then, that Mexico has officially ended neoliberalism, and has instead offered a solution, not only by implementing a different economic model, but also by offering people and the world a path to regain our lost human values. 

It’s of a universal consensus that the installation of the economic model called Neoliberalism, caused a societal change, not by accident but by design as part of the package of this  new social-economic ideology.  The model promoted by Margaret Thatcher and former president Ronald Ronald raigan at the beginning of the 1980s, seek to remove the very essence of democratic society via means of promotion of individualism and gains-at-all-cost mantra.

At the start of this new neoliberal area, which many don’t even knew it began, the new normal installed though social manufacturing, convinced many  to begin the process of removing that what makes us human, where empathy, care for the other in your community, country unity, and right of unions and labor laws were to be minimized or eliminated, and promoted as the enemy of big corporate interest.

Of course with the idea that their well being and riches will trickle down to the rest of the population, something it never happened, in the contrary the salaries went up for middle class, and the gains went all the way to the top 10%.

To replace the mix-economy model (economic + development + social growth), to cannibalistic neoliberal economic model (pure growth), society, governments  and business where to promote: Individualism, self-centered actitudes, leadership, focus on materialism and consumerism, and ultimately seek to place corporations as entities of glorification and  the source of our own existence.

The so called Trickle-down economics, as if the fountain of the riches could sprinkled down to the rest of us. There forth, the pyramid of needs, meant that the only way to become self-realized, one needed to become as rich as possible because only then, society and the world around us will accept us as GOOD.

The neoliberal ideology was installed all over the world by persuasion, but many times by force, like in Chile, which now after 40 years of neoliberal policies and ideology, it made the country the most privatized country in the world. A country that in 2019, the entire population raised up in protest demanding a new constitution– since the one they had was designed by the dictator Pinochet in 1980 after a military coup removed their elected democratic president. 

“We can all see how the Covid-19 has accelerated and exposed the failure of the economic neoliberal ideology, even the International Monetary Fund recognizes it has reached its end.

“The attempt by the World Bank, IMF and WTO to defend the role of “free” trade merely serves to underline their role as advocates of a neoliberal order that impoverishes the many and benefits the few. The call for a “robust global trading system based on the WTO” is aimed at locking in countries to a system that removes decision-making from sovereign states and places it instead in the boardrooms of transnational corporations. When their report states that trade is good for growth, what they really mean is that it is good for corporate balance sheets. And when they refer to helping those “left behind”, they are inviting us to believe in discredited theories of trickle-down economics which holds that what is good for the rich is good for the poor.” The Guardian.

So what can we do now?  Do we wait until the builders of this disastrous economic model find the solution? Or do we look elsewhere to re-built our broken economics and our broken societies and values?

As I said before, the answer has come to us as a gift to humanity, and what better country to find the way out, that the country that used to hold one of the five greatest civilizations in the world– Yep,  back when all these got started, 500 years ago: MEXICO.

Yes, Mexico. it makes perfect sense because despite that neoliberalism nearly destroyed Mexico in that “neoliberalism became synonyms with corruption.” as the President and life-time human rights activist says; it only takes a hit button to find your way out again. 

Mexico is one of the countries which still holds one of the largest reserves in human values within a great percentage of its population.  Regardless of the colonization of the Spanish which taught Mexicans what corruption was, according to the book A moral economy, Mexico’s indigenous culture (Aztecs and Mayans hold enormous humanism values of love to the other, and love to the earth. That never left, it is part and ingrained in Mexico’s cultures.

But the Aztecs and Mayans used human sacrifice, you might say. Well, not exactly, it has been recently discovered that the Aztecs and Mayans never did human sacrifice and that the Spanish invented that as an excuse to invade Mexico. One of the reasons why the Mexican president has now asked the king to apologize to the original indigenous peoples of Mexico for the le and the massacres accorded 500 years ago.

An awakening is happening in Mexico, and regardless of drug cartel news, we all deeply have noticed a change according in Mexico. After 70 years of authoritarian regime, which some called them a perfect dictatorship, in 2018 the citizens of Mexico had enough and for the first time they voted out of the two-party system that had approved them and robbed them clean, and voted for a third party. 

The winning for the third party (not left or right, but an idea of where ending corruption and human rights were put at the center of the party’s ideal) it was a wave of freedom for Mexico, who recuperated their government and removed the regime out of power after seven decades. Now, Mexico gained their independence and democracy again, for the fourth time, and the reason why this era in Mexico has been labeled the fourth transformation.

The fourth transformation not only means the first time Mexico re-installs democracy back in their government and country, but it is the  final goodbye to the neoliberal economic model that resulted in total failure in Mexico, and many parts in the world.

AMLO IMAGE QUOTES

Despite some resistance and even the covid-19 pandemic, the transformation of the public life of Mexico has continued because is the will of millions of Mexicans, men and women and even children who want a better country, a better moral and just economy, and a better future for next generations. 

During this pandemic, it gave Mexicans a time to reflect even more. President Lopez Obrador to the time to write a document called” LESSONS LEARN DURING THE PANDEMIC: AMLO.” and listed a couple of very poignant points. A total of eight lessons learn which Lopez Obrador than shared publicly and read it directly to the leaders of the G20.

 

In eight points it specifies the basic lessons to be learned from the global health crisis:

1. Strengthening of health services and conceiving it as a human right.
2. Health problems such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity should be taking care from a preventive approach.
3. Regulation of monopoly and profit in the global supply of food, medicine and hospital equipment.
4. Ask the WHO and the UN for the creation of vaccines against COVID-19.
5. It’s the responsibility of the State to temper social inequalities and guarantee basic and universal rights.
6. Strengthening the family and cultural, moral, and spiritual values.
7. Reconversion of international financial and economic organizations into true promoters of cooperation for the development and well-being of peoples and nations.
8. Humanitarian principles, peace, justice, equality, liberty, democracy and liberty as principles that guide the actions of the governments of the countries.

And today, Friday, November 26th, on thanksgiving day (not on purpose since Mexico doesn’t celebrate that holiday) Mexico gave the world its biggest contribution an Ethics Guide to bring back values, empathy, morality and ethics, in a moment when we all desperately seeking for a solution to our humanitarian crosses caused by neoliberal policies. The Ethics Guide on how to recuperate what we lost. 

The guide is a two year research, collecting data from academics, sociologists, best cultures in Mexico, people, citizens, students, historians, philosophers,  and  elder intellectuals. The guide was meant to originally be called: A new moral constitution, but to avoid any political or ideological misinterpretation, the final title was chosen as simple THE ETHICS GUIDE FOR MEXICO’S TRANSFORMATION. 

In this Thursday presentation of the Ethics Guide, the academics explained that it is not only for Mexico, but for the world, and that it is simply a document to open a discussion and not an imposition by the government in any shape of form. The participation is voluntary, and the document will be revised every year to add or remove new ideas or points. The goal is to recuperate the many human values and ethics that we lost during the neoliberal period, in order to build a better society.

It is not magic, neither self-help book or none of that nonsense. The guide is elegant and simple. How many of us have complained that the world has gone nuts, so we thank Mexico for being in the vanguard of the new renaissance of the post-neoliberal area.

Here is the book free to download (hopefully will be translated to English soon)

Download book: Ethics guide for the transformation of Mexico [and the world]

 

 

 

Sources: The Guardian