“Those who knowingly let the king err deserve punishment as traitors.”
— His Majesty Alfonso X the Wise, King of Castile and León, and King of the Romans.
Introduction: The Soul of the Robe Also Deserves Its Morning Meditations
Historical and democratic memory is important. This morning I woke up thinking, as a lawyer, about the importance of legal principles for life in society. “No one can be forced to do what the law does not require, and what is not prohibited is permitted” resonates with the quote from Benito Juárez, the worthy son of the Americas: “Respect for the rights of others is peace.”
Indecency in Dominican gyms, for example, may seem funny, but it is still undignified when sport, health, and leisure are seen as rights in our legislation. It is still something that the rule of French law (which is ours in the Dominican Republic, the former Captaincy General of Santo Domingo) resolves with a very refined “live and let live”: the purpose of law is to guarantee life in society by preventing harm to others, repairing harm caused, and deterring harm. I justify mentioning this scenario of micro-social interactions in light of the principle of subsidiarity, championed by, among other institutions, the Catholic Church, to say that the solution lies in the day we practice respect for the rights of others and of ourselves.
Of ourselves? Yes. Just as in the Bible we see that almsgiving sometimes benefits the giver more than the receiver, we see in comparative community jurisprudence and in projects of constitutional decolonization principles such as Living Well (Sumak Kawsay) and the other side of that coin: recognizing oneself in the other (In Lak'ech Hala Ken). That is why I maintain that respect for the other is a mechanism par excellence for self-improvement through the perfection of personality by means of its free development in harmony with respect for the dignity of the other.
From Morning Legal Micro-Catharsis to the Spanish Newspaper (Hint: Today I Didn’t Wake Up with Fewer Rights, and That Is Appreciated!)
That is why it seemed to me to fit perfectly, in order to promote the democratic values we need as societies that aspire to full freedom to pursue happiness in—pardon the redundancy—healthy environments, which is the same as saying environments without violence, one of today’s headlines in the newspaper from Spain El Diario: “Did your great-grandfather kill mine?”
That article does not seem to me the most pleasant thing to read on a Sunday morning, but I think the strong headline does justice to the size of the scope of that praiseworthy task, necessary as social forgiveness is. Doing our part to heal generational trauma is necessary for being happy and, again pardon the redundancy, free from need and free to pursue happiness. Seen another way, free to pursue happiness and free from the need for instruments to achieve it.
“He’s not to blame” is something used in Latin America to refer to the descendants of people singled out for abuse of violence in society, both individually and collectively. It is a sign of humanity, what separates us from beasts, and it is also a sign of civilitas, which for this freestyle essay I will define as the antonym of tyrannis, civilitas being the social character that makes it possible for dissimilar and dispersed interests to coexist in peace in the same space, and tyrannis the violation of the values and fundamental rights/freedoms subordinate to civilitas that make that possible.
Does the cheese Make the grilled cheese, or Does the Bread Make the toastie?
“Ubi societas, ibi ius” means in Latin “where there is society, there is law.” Nowadays, I believe there is a state of fragmentation, anomie, and ignorance that makes me think that perhaps the reverse makes more sense: “where there is law, there is society.” The opposite seems more worrying to me: “If there is society and there is no law, there is no society.” And if there is no law, there is barbarism. This is the same as saying that what exists is anarchy, and not the ideal of social anarchy that that notion of “order without coercion” advocates as possible and desirable, with the bourgeois state with its punitive regime sustaining an economy biased in favor of the propertied class having given way to an objectively better social organization (assuming said thing possible).
This matter of historical memory and democratic memory, referring more to the concepts than to the Spanish legal instruments that bear the same name, is vital for life in society without thereby claiming infallibility of the actors who ensure compliance, nor inerrancy of the instruments themselves.
Why is it vital? It is a duty of states formally constituted as WEIRD societies to safeguard dignity by prohibiting acts that attack the dignity of persons. In one sense, we cannot divorce that “Enlightenment project” from its material base: happy workers are more productive. This is part of a virtuous circle that forces me to point out that the profit motive on the part of virtuous rational actors, spoken of by the philosopher Adam Smith, and that project are two sides of the same coin.
This finds a parallel in the famous phrase of Venezuelan President Chávez, which he himself explicitly borrowed from U.S. President Kennedy: reform is preferable to revolution. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as seen by a Dominican—me, the writer: “It is good to stretch out capitalism with socialism,” just as you can definitely stretch out the good coffee or mustard with the dollar store one. A stew for four serves five, and even more so if there is a potato that was meant for yesterday…
I open a brief parenthesis to explicitly include Latin America, which is one, and which aspires, with every right and reason, to a critical appropriation of the West, instead of complete Westernization, given notable failures of complete Westernization in societies such as postwar Japan (arguing Japan’s traditional social fabric was not given its fair share of consideration). It would be a betrayal of the West to discredit the notion of selective Westernization as a praiseworthy and valid path for societies “in transition” consciously toward a better future.
In both cases—societies in transition toward modernity such as Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and societies transitioning toward post-postmodernity (what comes after the period that comes after having consolidated the goals of development deemed necessary for a society to be considered “modern”) such as the United States, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, England, and Scandinavia, as well as others that must be mentioned, Singapore, South Korea, and more recently officially the People’s Republic of China, which are often praised as postmodern successes without this implying they’re lacking their own disagreements and challenges—in those historical teleologies with their own metaphysics that we intellectuals, and those who aspire to be such, use to describe reality and study it in order to transform it, in the tradition of giant thinkers such as Toussaint Louverture (on an interesting sidenote, my political relative), one of the fathers of the “successful maroon in the global village” that is the Republic of Haiti.
Important precepts on which Westernness is founded, which the West expects from those who undertake selective Westernization (Venezuela, Haiti, Dominican Republic), subordinate modernization (Dominican Republic, Venezuela), and reappropriated modernization (Haiti, Venezuela): no one is obligated to do the impossible; rules that restrict are interpreted restrictively; rules that favor are interpreted generously; no one should be burdened or harmed by another’s act; give each person what is due.
Law Lights Paths for Dignity, Peace, Justice, and Prosperity.
More relevant to the study of the article under the headline that caught my attention: in case of doubt, favor the debtor. Likewise, no one can ask forgiveness on behalf of another. But this does not exempt every citizen—while safeguarding that doubt favors the accused—from fulfilling the duty of repairing, and promoting other things needed for the healing of generational traumas. I see there that the condemnation of the defense of the inexcusable finds echoes in the ecclesiastical teachings of the Catholic Church and other important faith bodies of all kinds such as ELCA, PCUSA, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, PECUSA, the SBC and AOG. The old phrase “Condemn the sin, not the sinner,” nowadays, reminds us that some things are always wrong, but that humanity’s moral notion is not static. Space/time and ends never justify all means, but it is important to remember that they mitigate the individual’s guilt in some circumstances.
Conclusion: Vital Concerns.
I close with a question: if you can do it and you want to do it, should you do it? In the West, traditionally, there are areas in which the legislator leaves to the individual’s discretion certain questions of honor and duty, and of what is the best way to be a proper guiding light for the dignity of the other…
Polarizing discourses that lead to the denial of the other as a valid subject come to mind, but the school of thought inspired by Simon Bolivar’s philosophy comes to me more strongly, consecrating the duty to employ honorable men even if they are enemies.
Why do I write this? As a Latin American and European, I do not escape the generational traumas of colonization and its lasting effects. From Haitian slavery to the forced proletarianization of peasants whose descendants deserve judicial protection daily throughout an entire region—and more than one—writing, for me, is an attempt to lend an ear to a soul that has endured a thousand vicissitudes in order, above all, to listen rather than hear…
There are times to laugh, and times to cry. Not everything that glitters is gold. Is now the moment to build on the counter-hegemonies articulated in this era of rapid Promethean expansion with its necessary shadow? Future generations force us to remember that, in the ruins, even lightning bugs shine at night.
