Creative Relationships
By Tomás Núñez, ThD
Creativity is the dynamic of the universe itself. Its natural state is not stability but creative change. Everything is the fruit of natural or human creation. The Earth is the fruit of creative Energy, mysterious and charged with purpose. One day, a primitive fish “decided,” in a creative act, to leave the water and explore dry land. Amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals, and we came from that creative act.
We would never have gotten to this point if we were not creative. Let us pause for a moment on the man-woman relationship, a central point in the current discussions of the Church. We know that ten thousand years ago, history was marked by patriarchy. This has been a via crucis of suffering for all women. However, what has been historically constructed can also be historically deconstructed. This hope underlies the struggles of oppressed women and their allies among men, the hope for a new stage of civilization no longer stigmatized by gender domination.
Men and women are increasingly defined not by their biological sex or cultural factors but by their factors of being persons. Here, we understand a person to be anyone who feels they are masters of themselves and who exercises the freedom to shape their own life. The capacity for self-production in freedom (autopoiesis) is the supreme dignity of the human being that must not be denied to anyone.
After recognizing the person as a person, the values of cooperation and democracy as universal values are decisive in the sense of participation in social life, of which women were historically deprived.
Their absence helped to establish historical domination and subordination of women. Today, inclusive and egalitarian relationships will be built through cooperation within an ethic of solidarity and mutual care.
Cooperation implies trust and mutual respect in an atmosphere where coexistence is based on love, proximity, and open dialogue, as Pope Francis has insisted and shown.
The great Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana rightly pointed out that patriarchy’s permanence represents an attempt to regress to a pre-human state, bringing us back to the level of chimpanzees, societal but dominating.
That is why the struggle to overcome patriarchy is a struggle to rescue our true humanity. Women, because they are women, receive less pay for doing the same work. And they make up more than half of humanity.
Participatory and endless democracy, fundamentally, means participation, a sense of right and duty, and a sense of co-responsibility. Before being a form of state organization, democracy was a value that always lived in every place where human beings are found. This democracy is not restricted to humans but is open to other living beings in the biotic community, as it recognizes their rights and dignity. Integral democracy, therefore, has a socio-cosmic characteristic.
The overcoming of the ancestral war of the sexes and of the oppressive and repressive policies against women occurs in the same proportion as real and everyday democracy is introduced and practiced. In the name of this banner, the great writer and feminist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) could proclaim: “As a woman I have no country, as a woman I do not want a country, as a woman my country is the world.”
The fight against patriarchy supposes a re-generation of man. In this task, man would surely be unable to leap by himself. Hence the importance of women at his side. She will be able to evoke in men the feminine hidden under secular ashes and will be able to be a co-partner in a new humanizing relationship.
The first step is to privilege the bonds of mutual interaction and equal cooperation between men and women. Here, a pedagogical process is required along the lines of Paulo Freire: no one frees anyone, but together, men and women will free themselves in a shared process of creative freedom.
In this new context, those values considered old and proper to female socialization must be recovered, but they must now be shouted into the ears of men and, together with women, try to live them. This is a humanitarian ideal for both. I allow myself to highlight some:
– People are more important than things. Each person must be treated humanely and with respect.
– Violence is never an acceptable way to solve problems.
– It is better to help than to exploit people, paying special attention to the poor, the excluded and children.
– Cooperation, association, and sharing are preferable to competition, self-affirmation, and conflict.
– In the decisions – Being deeply convinced that what is right is on the side of justice, solidarity and love, and that domination, exploitation and oppression are on the wrong side.
Such values, once considered feminine, were manipulated by the patriarchal mentality to keep women subordinate and docile. Today, as the world and society are changing, such values are what can save us. This is why men and women must be creative in their relationships; in this way, they become more human.
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