A true democracy requires and insists on freedom of the press.
Only when man accedes to complete freedom can we have a democratic state in its ideal form.
The basic motive of the Resistance was indignation.
"As individuals, you are responsible" Jean-Paul Satre.
The responsibility is that of the individual who will rely neither on a form of power nor on a god.
You must engage --your humanity demands it.
The worst attitude is indifference.
We are not dealing with a small elite anymore, whose actions we can clearly identify. We are dealing with a vast interdependent world that is interconnected in unprecedented ways.
Two major challenges:
1. The grievous injustices inflicted on people deprived of the essential requirements for a decent life, not only in the third world --in Africa, Asia, Haiti, and elsewhere--but in the suburbs of our largest Western cities, where seclusion and poverty breeds hatred and revolt. The widening gap between the very poor and very rich is made all the more insulting by the access the poor now have to the Internet and other forms of mass communication that highlight these inequalities.
2. The violation of the basic freedoms and fundamental rights. In his 1941 State of the Union speech, Franklin Delano Roosevelt articulated the "Four Freedoms" he felt people "everywhere in the world" had a right to enjoy: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. The Four Freedom later served as the foundation for the charter of the United Nations, which was adopted in San Francisco on June 24, 1945, and served as the inspiration for the UN's Universal Declaration of human Rights, drafted under the chairmanship of FDR's widow, Eleanor Roosevelt.
Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each state, of the economic, social, and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality."
To the youth...: look around you and you will find the themes to justify your indignation...You will become aware of situations so deplorable they simply demand civil action. Seek and you will find!
Violence is an unavoidable failure...the risk of resorting to violence is that it may only perpetuate violence
Jean-Paul Satre (1947)
Hopefulness and the hope for nonviolence must be favored over violence....
The messages of Gandhi, martin L. King Jr., and Nelson Mandela remain relevant even in a world where ideological confrontations and invasive totalitarianism have been overcome. They are messages of hope, of faith in a society's ability to overcome conflict through mutual understanding and watchful patience. To achieve this we must rely on our belief in human rights, the violation of which...must provoke our indignation.
The Western obsession with productivity and the accumulation of wealth has led the world into a crisis.
It is high time that integrity, justice, and sustainable development be allowed to prevail.
Source:
Stephane Hessel. Time for Outrage Indignez-Vous! (New York, NY: Hachette Book Group, 2010).
ISBN: 978-1-4555-0972-0
