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Sympathy, Solidarity: The Spirit of the New World
The prevailing world order – not only in the last century, but also since searching for gold campaigns set off, which later developed into the old colonialism campaigns – has enshrined the principle of profit as the supreme principle from which various other "principles" are derived.
In order for the profit-owners to pave their own way in the face of people’s natural social sense, a systematic long-term destruction of human’s humanitarian qualities was necessary, and primarily the destruction of a person’s sense of belonging to and sympathy for others.
Human’s alienation from nature, society, and even from oneself, became enshrined; while utilitarian, opportunistic, and individualistic ethics prevailed, all to serve the profit that has reached its final limit of historical progression, contemporaneously with the current crisis, by declining to a zero rate of profit.
Western governments, which raise the global banner of the profit system, are "struggling" to protect the big corporations from the economic impact of the Coronavirus and oil prices, and insist on preventing the halt of "market movement", throwing workers to the abyss of the catastrophic spread of the pandemic, sacrificing them as scapegoats for the interests of the big corporations that have already devoured them bit-by-bit, and now wanting to devour them wholly perchance that might alleviate the fundamental contradiction between labor and capital.
In the gloominess of blind pursuit for profit, splendid models of solidarity and humane sympathy emanate across the planet from the hearts of the affected to the hearts of the affected. The banner of this sympathy is carried by countries that are not historically unfamiliar to doing so; topping these countries are China, Russia, and Cuba, which have built humanitarian bridges carrying doctors and various medical supplies to the various countries, regardless of the positions of the assistance-receiving countries’ governments. This is happening while some western countries are still searching in their deficient pockets for some crumbs to allocate for pretending that they are confronting the viral pandemic, while actually letting the pandemic roam and spread. Meanwhile, during this time of incapability, we do not know how trillions of dollars suddenly appear from the magician's hat to be dumped to bail out the troubled big corporations.
Today, human civilization is actually at a crossroads. The current crisis is now full-fledged; it is not only an economic crisis, nor a social, environmental, and humanitarian one, but it is all of these at the same time, and therefore it is a crisis of a civilization model, a comprehensive civilization crisis of a type the world has not witnessed for centuries.
As humanity stands at a crossroads of civilization, it carries with it – along with the great scientific and technical development that it has acquired – a weapon that is more powerful and illuminating, the weapon of sympathy and human solidarity, which constitutes the spirit and means for the humankind struggle against the ancient world to be emancipated from its rules, while being armed with the spirit and means to build the new world.
Kassioun Editorial, Issue No. 959, March 30, 2020
