A sense of what is truly important

It is coming down to this — choosing to prevent the virus from spreading and killing people or choosing to prevent the economy from collapsing, which will kill people anyway.

And now something else is looming in the horizon, a global food crisis. In Kibere, Kenya’s largest slum, people stampeded to receive flour and oil being distributed, injuring many and leaving 2 dead.

Some countries are doing better, either by sheer government will, leadership, or adequate preparation. Some leadership traits that have helped are decisiveness, competence, and the capacity to elicit civil cooperation.

So which comes first? People or profit. Ideally, both. And that has been the thrust worldwide. To save people, one needs the wherewithal to feed, test, treat and eventually rehabilitate both people and production capacity.

But to hold this in balance, demands a moral compass that seems apparently lacking in global leadership today. In developed countries, the response to the pandemic was hobbled by the concern to protect the “bottom line”. With questionable results.

Clearly, in the new normal, there is a need to expand liberal capitalism’s singleminded pursuit of growth, to a quadruple bottom line: people (first), planet (second), profit (third), and spirit (the plumb line that assures that human life is enhanced and not diminished).

There are leaders who actually struggle with the question of which to save first — Duterte, for one. You may question his language and actuations, but at the end of this particular day, he has always considered first, the poor among us. Are they being served? Do they have enough? Daily? He is not caught up with GDP. He is not entangled with finite concerns. His hand is steadied by concern for the poor. People. The ultimate profit of our meagre time on earth.

Categories: Uncategorized

ernestoabella