Bishop Julio Xavier Labayen

We are here in Tagaytay to sharpen toward a directional focus of what happened in Bangalore. We expect that this directional focus provide us with guidelines for our future action. Hence, the importance of appropriate and practical mechanisms to effect the continued swelling of our river of consciousness from ‘Cultural Values and Sustainable Alternatives’ (Bangalore) to ‘Interwovenness and Sustainable Societies’ (Tagaytay). Our hope is that the swelling of this river of consciousness will inundate the whole earth and renew it in the process toward a Responsible and United World.

The world cannot, by itself, become responsible and united. We, human beings, who make up this world are the agents of responsibility and unity in the world. We, not the world as such, can bring about our dream for a responsible and united world.

That we become these agents for a responsible and united world, I offer the following guiding principles which stem from our common human endowments: self-awareness, conscience, creative imagination, independent will. I say this, because it is here where I find meaning for myself and a hope for a future other than what is offered today by the dominant globalizing organizational process of the neo-liberal capitalist system. I trust that all of us, human beings, enjoy the same human endowments.

1. Self-awareness: Our capacity to take distance from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, our habits and tendencies. It is being able to take off our "glasses" and look at them as well as through them. It makes it possible for us to be aware of the social and psychic programming in us¹. Here I can be honest with myself. I can criticize myself as I should.

2. Conscience: Conscience connects us with the wisdom of the ages and of the heart. It is our internal guidance system that allows us to be aware when we act or contemplate on acting whether our acts are in line with our principles. It also gives us a sense of our unique gifts and mission. Here unity finds its raison d'être (real reason, real meaning for being).

3. An independent will: It enables us to act. It gives us the power to transcend our actual paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act according to principles. While environmental, social and genetic influences may be very powerful, they do not control us. We still have the option to choose. We still have our freedom of choice. We are not their victims. We are not the product of our past. We are the product of our choices. We are "response-able" (responsible) to choose beyond, or other than (alternative), what the present situation and system have to offer. We have will power to act according to our self-awareness, conscience and vision.

4. Creative imagination²: It is our power to envision an alternative future, to create future dreams in our minds, and to join others in acting in a synergistic way.³ Creative imagination is the endowment that enables us to see ourselves and others differently and better than we do now. It makes it possible for us to formulate our collective mission statement, and set our common goal and objective. It also enables us to visualize ourselves living and carrying out our collective mission in the most challenging circumstances and to work out our principles effectively in new situations.

These are our human endowments that inspire and promote the International Alliance for a Responsible and United World. Accordingly, we should then feel privileged to belong to it. We should have a renewed faith in global solidarity and a firm hope for a better tomorrow for this world where we live in. We should make the difference for the future of our world!

These endowments will also help sustain us in our commitment in the midst of trying and difficult situations, and prevent us from being co-opted and instrumentalized by the globalized economic system that makes our world irresponsible and disunited. For our practical purpose, I believe that the crucial personal responsibility that I have together with you is to interiorize in my consciousness the above guidelines. More importantly, together with you I must own them! Then and only then can we become agents together of the global movement for a responsible and united world.

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