Press Releases

Paris Attack: Non-Violence is the only way out!

Call to the people: Non-Violence is the only way out!

(semi-automatic translation)

After the last and lamentable events of Paris, Convergence of Cultures wants to make a call to the people to protect again the value of the human being beyond any difference. A call to preserving and promoting what always stimulated the peoples to look for others, to meet and to know each other throughout the times ….

Beyond the impact of these facts, we see how actually are reborn darkness and fanaticisms, whereas the most retrograde elements of every culture appear, as modern inquirers stoking to the masses.

Today more than ever "the religions have responsibilities that to fulfill for with the humanity. Today they have the duty to create a new psicosocial atmosphere, of going to its believers in educational attitude and eradicating any rest of fanaticism and fundamentalism. They cannot remain indifferent to the hunger, the ignorance, the bad faith and the violence. They must contribute strongly to the tolerance and tend to the dialog with other confessions and with everything that one who feels responsible for the destiny of the humanity. They must be opened, and I request that this does not take as a disrespect, to the God's manifestations in the different cultures. We are expecting from them for this contribution for the common reason in a moment of difficult. " (1)

Certainly, we hope that this call reaches also to governments and institutions. And, with special importance, to some people of the press, that so efficient have been in the last times in the generation of a climate of fear to the different ones, of prevention on the neighbor whose color, customs and beliefs maybe do not coincide with the own ones …

If they do not line up with the forces of the reason and the tolerance, they will be responsible for the violence and facilitate the things to whom press the trigger. Or perhaps they have not been feeding the ghost of the ones that "invade us "? Is maybe that they seek to join the population in front of an invented "common enemy ", in a time that Europe decomposes for its own contradictions?

And if so much they worry about the growth of the violent fanaticism, better they would do in controlling the arms market, which so juicy benefits leave to the European companies, instead of trying to increase the controls on the common citizens.

But we the people, the common persons, will be again the ones that have the opportunity to straighten the course of History. Are the good anonymous people to whom we throw our call to resisting the violence, not to leaving ourselves to drag on it… 

Will we all fight against all? Will fight some cultures against others, some continents against others, some regions against others, some etnias against others, and some relatives against others? Will we be drop to spontaneous action without direction, as wounded animals that shake its pain or we will include all the differences, welcomes are, towards the Universal Human Nation?

This is, therefore, a call to knowing, to protecting and to take care of our nearest ones, listlessly of their color, customs or beliefs. Like shows us the example of coherent action of the Moslem young person Lassana Bathily, who protected fifteen Jews from the attackers of Paris… simply risking himself for other human beings.

Finally, this is a call to all those who feel the moral responsibility of working for a world tailored for all the human beings. For them, we will remind what’s expressed in our Humanist Document (April, 1993) when it says:

"The humanists are internationalists: they aspire to a Human Universal Nation. They understand globally the world in which they live and act in their immediate entourage. They do not wish a uniform but multiple world: multiple in the etnias, languages and customs; multiple in the localities, the regions and the autonomies; multiple in the ideas and the aspirations; multiple in the beliefs, the atheism and the religiousness; multiple in the work; multiple in the creativity. […]

But a wall has arisen between humanist aspirations and the realities of today’s world. The time has come to remove that wall. For that there is necessary the union of all the humanists of the world."

Madrid, January, 2015

(1) Words of Silo in the Meeting for the Philosophical - religious Dialog, in Luz's Union and Force (BSAS. Argentina) 21/10/1995.