Culture & Society

In November 2023, a group of families from the Poblenou neighborhood in Barcelona decided to respond to the growing unease caused by an unquestioned social consensus: that starting high school was the right time to give their sons and daughters a smartphone. The movement gained more traction than expected, and thousands of families from across the country joined in. One of the most active participants, Xavier Casanovas, explains here —in a brief and clear way— the reasons that led them to call for putting technology back in its rightful place before it's too late.

The text of this Booklet corresponds in large part to the lecture that Inamol Zubero gave at the inauguration of the academic year 2023-2024. It is possible to watch the lecture on our YouTube channel. The lecture was followed by three comments or responses given by members of the team of Cristianisme i Justicia: Miriam Feu, David Murillo and Inma Naranjo, which we also include in an Appendix. We wish to thank all four for their availability and their inspiring talks, which we hope will be the same for the readers of this Booklet.

At the end of each year, at Cristianisme i Justicia we try to reflect on the present moment with the goal of pointing out some possible lines of thought that can act as suggestions for the construction of a new future. Along these lines, we propose today this exercise in sociopolitical imagination arises from the will to recover and rescue some words from being held hostage and from the twisted appropriation that is given to them by post-Fascism. Facing this affront, our little dictionary tries to drag into the light the feelings forgotten by those of us who serve everyone in our shared journey toward global justice.

Sequestration. Everyone understands what that means. It is to appropriate something, to make someone or something of interest disappear. The sequestration of truth, therefore, what does that mean? What is it that has disappeared? The truth. And this disappearance gives way to the absence of truth, to post-truth. If we have been robbed of the truth, what is left is what comes after truth. If we think about it, that is strange. To a certain extent, it is a worse option than a simple lie.

At the end of 2022, ChatGPT was released to the general public; it is a softwareprogram trained to reproduce human language and to answer any question it is asked. The fact that this softwarehas learned to offer non-predetermined responses, thanks to the vast amount of information fed into it, has put the expression artificial intelligence (AI) on everyone's lips. We now have a tool capable of composing everything from an unpublished romantic poem in the style of Goethe to an academic paper comparing two authors who have never previously been studied together— and doing so better than 99% of mortals! A program like this raises many questions for us: Is AI really intelligent? Where is its novelty? What will be the consequences of its being widely used? Will it help to improve our world? What can we expect?

The title of this Booklet joins two words, democracy and culture, that mutually support each other like exhausted travelers in the middle of their journey. The tiredness of the word democracy is due to the fact that it designates a tarnished reality, eroded at its foundations by economic globalization, the power of the great industries, techno-politics and populism. The word culture has arrived at the same state because it has lost critical and Utopian stamina in going from being a noble ideal and an antidote against power to being a vassal. In spite of that, the author defends the fact that beauty and art cannot be measured by their utility or their lack thereof and that there is an emotional movement when dealing with beauty that can be lived as the herald of a better world.

The word “reconciliation” is a word with a diverse set of meanings that can encompass many different perspectives: religious, ethical, political and juridical. The author concentrates in this text on the religious perspective and on its Christian version., placing himself clearly in the point of view of victims. From that come all of the questions that recur in these pages: Is there a God who reconciles and who reconciles us with so many victims in this world? If that is answered in the affirmative, what does that reconciliation look like? In what does it consist? How does it concern us Christians?

Why do we assume that jumping over the limits imposed by nature and social customs is the right thing to do? What consequences are there for our lives by uncritically assuming the technological mentality? Is there some way to escape from this labyrinth? These are some of the questions that the author poses in this pamphlet, written from a philosophical point of view and attempting to go to the roots of a question that is not only technical or scientific, but also affects that which is most central to the human condition.

This year 2021 to a close and usher in 2022, right now we shan’t be reaching for grand words, but only penultimate words, spoken in fear and trembling, uttered from an urge to help: penultimate words that serve as an invitation to recover two principles which, in the present moment, can provide guidance in the life of people, communities and institutions. These principles are not new, but instead draw from the tradition that has guided forty years in the life of our study centre and which we go on revindicating as valid.

The pandemic has questioned the paradigm of self-sufficiency upon which our civilization is based and it has demonstrated the great limitations which our economic system has in order to guarantee the basic rights of all people, especially of those who find themselves in a situation of vulnerability. Flipping through pages in order to forget about this serious nightmare, in our opinion, is an error. Therefore, we propose ten lessons, ten key words that are signs of this time and which we should work at and examine, in a personal and communitarian way, so that all that we have lived during this last year and a half will not have been in vain.