Javier Melloni: “Knowing the rules of life doesn’t exonerate us from them. Rather, it makes us jointly responsible for its care”

The new academic year at Esade has begun amidst exceptional circumstances caused by the pandemic and the healthcare and economic crisis, resulting in unprecedented, uncertain and complex scenarios that highlight “the need for a new collective planetary consciousness; a consciousness of the links between the many factors that enable or prevent life,” in the words of the Jesuit theologian and anthropologist Javier Melloni during his keynote address at the inauguration of the 2020-21 academic year at Esade. Melloni also suggested that this pandemic has accelerated the shift into a new era for humanity, almost like a rite of passage, which brings us to the maturity that stems from a new consciousness of ourselves and the delicate relationships linking us to other living beings.

“The year beginning today is probably the most different year ever since Esade was established 62 years ago, but also the one in which academic routines are even more open to innovative teaching and creativity,” said the chair of the Esade Foundation board of trustees, Xavier Torra. “All this will call for resilience, an understanding that there are not always answers for everything, and an ability to lead with honesty, humility and commitment – this is the leadership that Esade undertakes to teach,” he added. Likewise, the Esade director general, Koldo Echebarria, pointed out that “the consciousness arising from this crisis gives fresh impetus to our efforts to create innovative teaching methods. The uncertainty springing from this pandemic leads us towards a model of learning focused not only on what we already know but also what we do not yet know; to leave answers aside for a moment, and to learn to embrace the unknown.”

A new planetary consciousness

The new planetary consciousness mentioned by Javier Melloni entails moving beyond “globalisation” which, as this anthropologist explained “is simply a first word that until now meant the predominance of one model over others, a model imposed upon other cosmovisions.”

This new consciousness is also happening “in response to the collapse of two great and opposing economic and political models – capitalism versus communism – which have revealed themselves to be no longer valid, at a time when the very survival of our planet is in the balance,” he said. He believes that these models are poles apart in a spectrum that spans from the self-referential to the interrelated, and that the new planetary consciousness must incorporate these extremes no matter how paradoxical this may seem: “often when we avoid paradoxes only to stumble into clichés, but we can no longer afford to live by them, because this means to cling to one pole of reality and to deny all the rest”, pointed out Melloni. He then quoted the physicist, Albert Einstein, who said that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. “When we are at one or other end of the spectrum, we cannot see beyond our perspective which, despite being true, is incomplete and insufficient. In this instance we lack the height and depth of vision to simultaneously recover our own perspective and that of others.”

Finally, the Jesuit theologian and anthropologist called upon future leaders, professionals and entrepreneurs to adopt this consciousness and its inherent responsibility because, “if entrepreneurship entails damage or the destruction of others then it is not worth undertaking.” On the other hand, he pointed out the importance of enterprises that help create life, that “teach us to live a different way in this world and help restore certain links between the tangible with the intangible and spiritual, the invisible relationship between the individual and the community, in order to preserve life in a progressive manner – towards forms of the future yet to be known.”