Urban Planning students from the University of Central London recently visited Forge (Fellowship for Organizing Endeavors), the nongovernmental organization I am currently chairperson of, to do some research in the service of the demand for security of tenure by informal settlers. When giving the concluding message at the closing ceremonies of their visit, I did a quick survey and asked students, members of people’s organizations and city officials present if social conditions in the world are now better or worse. A few answered better, most said worse and both are correct.
I was born in the early ‘40s to a middle class family of salaried school teachers. Yet my sister and I grew up in a house that had no running water, no water-sealed toilet, just an outhouse. I walked to school barefoot, my lone pair of shoes reserved for Church and special occasions. We had to repair clothes that got torn with use. We had no phone and no radio.
Today, nobody repairs torn clothing anymore. Nobody walks barefoot anymore and most everybody has radio and TV sets. Everybody, and I mean everybody, has a cellphone now. Things are definitely better on the level of our daily existence.
But things are also worse on the level of transcendent values because our standards for justice, equality and freedom, in short for what is worthy of our dignity as human beings are so much higher now than before. Moreover, we are more aware now of the rights of other creatures, including nature and the environment.
We now want equal opportunities, in the full sense of the term equal, for jobs, education, housing and health care for humans of all races, colors, sexual orientations and religious affiliations. We are not done fighting for woman’s equality with man, yet now we are fighting for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans-genders and queers (LGBTQ). Before, a house was just a roof over one’s head. Now, we want them livable, as in with running water, sanitary toilets and drainage, even for small people like informal settlers. Ranged against these high value-standards the situation of many people is not looking good.
The same is true in the fight for justice, equality and freedom. Much has been accomplished but much still remains to be done. We simply keep falling short of rising and more encompassing standards. Like today we need to raise our standards of respect for nature and the environment or face extinction.
Finally, fighting for human dignity and the rights of all creatures is a life-time endeavor. Hence, for this and all of the above reasons, we have to redefine success as the sheer act of doing what we are convinced is our part or role in the fight to uphold the dignity and rights of all creatures. We cannot define success by the results of whatever we do or have done. All our accomplishments, our successes so to speak, are likely to fall short of standards that irreversibly keep going higher. But then, that’s development, rising standards, the opposite of stagnation.