How has the experience of the pandemic we are all going through influenced your vision on the subject of care?
“To me, it seems that care has emerged mainly as an aid,” Pulcini explained. “Think of all those involved in medical and health services. This has given rise to positive elements; it has aroused feelings such as gratitude, compassion, the feeling of our vulnerability, feelings that we have neglected somehow. All this is very positive because we really need it, and it is essential to arouse those which I call empathic emotions. At the same time, however, care has been restricted to its meaning of assistance, to what the English call ‘cure’ and not ‘care.’ Care must become a way of life.”
We dream of a society where care is the backbone of local and global political systems. Is this a utopia, or is it feasible?
“Care means responding to something. In this case, it means responding to the awareness that others exist. The moment we realize that others exist and we are not closed within the shell of our individualism, the empathic abilities in us function; this means that we can identify and understand the emotions of others. But, today, who is the other? New forms are emerging about those we consider as others. Today, the one who is different is considered as the other, and so are future generations, nature, the environment, as well as the Earth we inhabit.
“If in our relationships we manage to care through our empathic abilities, then care can truly become the complete answer to the great challenges of our time. I cannot say whether this is really feasible or not, but I think we can’t lose the utopian perspective. Responsibility is not enough; we need to cultivate hope as well.”
What do you suggest that we do to behave in this manner and to lead our societies, starting from our institutions, to move towards a more caring attitude?
“I believe that wherever we are, we have to behave in a way that care does not remain confined to the private sphere (…). I have to live care in my family, in my teaching profession, when I meet a poor outcast on the street, when I go to the beach; I have to take care of everyone and everything.
“Care must become a way of life that crushes our unbridled individualism, for it leads not only to the self-destruction of humanity, but also to the destruction of life in the world.
“Therefore, we must try to respond with care to the pathologies of our society, and this means that we have to educate for democracy. Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19th-century philosopher, used to say: ‘We must educate for democracy.’
“This is a lesson we still need to learn, and it means that we have to cultivate our own empathic emotions so that our stimulus to care is freedom and conviction, not compulsion.”
The Youth of the Focolare
