Coming to the conviction of what that statement contained was not something that was immediately evident to him. Mistral wondered if there were other sources of collective evil. Was there not perhaps a spiritual derangement of the world? Weren’t there social and economic problems causing common misfortune? Only after observing many things and knowing the face of various crises in different towns, he finally warned that “the geological seat of the most diverse evils was the one noted: trades and professions carelessly served. Mediocre politician, mediocre educator, mediocre doctor, mediocre priest, mediocre craftsman: these are our true calamities.”
Ninety-five years have passed since Gabriela Mistral’s speech—in which she later warned that, due to the mediocrity of poorly served trades and professions, degrees and titles had fallen into disrepute—and the passage of time has only confirmed the relevance of her words. The mediocrity of poorly performed trades and professions causes “religion, morality, economics and pedagogy to be an illusory courtship of the only reality constituted by the trade.”
The anthropological density of Mistralian considerations should make us think seriously about the causes of the disorder of our Latin American republics, often involved in the voluntarism of magical thinking and dehumanizing ideologies. In this context, the pseudo-religious mantra of “a job well done”, repeated ad nauseam by politicians, while incompetence and professional mediocrity proliferate, is no longer enough to deceive ordinary citizens, who observe with increasing irony the inconsistency of so many contemporary sophists.
Is not the evil warned by Gabriela Mistral one of the deepest causes of the poverty suffered by our Latin American societies in areas as diverse as religion, morality, politics, health, the economy or education? Mediocre priests, mediocre politicians, mediocre doctors, mediocre educators, mediocre businessmen, mediocre craftsmen.
The temptation to overcome these evils has frequently led to remedies worse than the disease. Refoundational ideological desires and true experiments in social engineering promise to eradicate the structures of heteropatriarchal, religious or capitalist oppression, while mediocrity acquires citizenship by spreading poverty and hopelessness. However, it should not be forgotten that mediocrity does not have a political domicile nor does it belong exclusively to the state level. As Mistral acutely warned, this is a problem of great anthropological depth that ends up morally and culturally devitalizing our societies.
As is known, the lack of culture of complaint is nothing more than the shortcut of the mediocre. Promoting goods requires more effort, but it is also more fruitful and exciting. Gabriela Mistral, a true source of resources—using the Homeric expression to refer to man—proposes an itinerary to overcome the mediocrity of trades and professions that have stopped serving others.
Although the “radical and rapid amendment” of such a widespread evil was aimed primarily at university students, the considerations it proposes can be perfectly accepted beyond the classrooms and the inhabitants of the house of human knowledge.
The anthropological depth of his suggestions, conceived as a true “indicator arrow” to begin “an internal and external crusade for professional dignity,” finds its comprehensive framework in a statement of extraordinary lucidity: the reforms “come out of the marrow of the soul and appear outward firm like the horn of the bull’s head, or are made on the outside like false horns glued with starch.”
The Mistralian itinerary – a true moral and cultural desideratum – contemplates a path of perfection in three stages and in ascending steps.
The first consists of thinking about the profession or trade as a pact with God or with science, which deeply binds the soul and, after it, worldly honor. The second requires organizing corporations or professional unions where they do not exist and, where they are already established, purifying them of corruption and laziness, that is, of moral laxity. The third consists of forcing society to restore primary consideration to the professions that it has come to despise.
In the first stage, the bases are found for the flourishing of the man who exercises his trade or profession with excellence and a spirit of service. In my opinion, it is about vivifying what we call “work well done”, understood not only as technical efficiency, but as service to others and perfection of reality. Endowed with a religious, moral, economic and educational dimension. Only then, as Mistral warned, will these dimensions cease to be “an illusory courtship.”
In this sense, the reflection made in Chile by John Paul II, in a speech given at ECLAC on April 3, 1987, admirably summarizes the love of work well done: “The moral causes of prosperity are well known throughout history. They reside in a constellation of virtues: industriousness, competence, order, honesty, initiative, frugality, thrift, spirit of service, keeping one’s word and audacity; in short, love of job well done.”
And completing, in a way, the second period proposed by Mistral, the Pope added: “No system or social structure can solve, as if by magic, the problem of poverty apart from these virtues; in the long run, both the design and the functioning of the institutions reflect these habits of human subjects, which are essentially acquired in the educational process and make up an authentic work culture.”
Thus we see, from the hand of Gabriela Mistral and Saint John Paul II, the true remedy for present evils. As has always happened, the protagonist is man and his perfection through the acquisition of virtues that enrich him in thinking (logos), in acting (ethos) and in doing (téchne). All of them are dimensions of man as an intelligent and political being who, by perfecting himself, perfects reality and his relationship with others.
That is precisely what we call culture: knowing good, acting well and doing things well. Therefore, a job well done is not a merely technical activity, but a deeply religious, ethical, economic and educational reality.
Overcoming mediocrity in trades and professions—the cause of the disorder of the world and many of our present evils—implies, through this itinerary of perfection and virtue, “getting into reality,” living humanly, configuring space and modeling time. It means abandoning voluntarism and magical thinking to truly love reality.
Finally, in a text by Mariano Navarro titled About Work, we find a remarkable synthesis of work well done as the culmination of every process of perfection in the various orders of this human activity. On the personal level, man fulfills himself in the most complete way; in the economic, it reaches the highest level of professional competence; In the social sphere—especially in the professional and family dimensions—he obtains true prestige; In the workplace, it dignifies the work itself and inspires confidence; in the political, it enhances the human value of a country; in the artistic, it expresses the intuition that everything good is also beautiful; and in the religious, it opens a clear path of spiritual perfection through the fulfillment of the ordinary duties of a Christian.
Undertaking the task of overcoming the evils present in the Latin American republics, through a job well done, is an exciting undertaking. It begins in us, perfects us internally, is ordered to the service of others and contributes to the perfection of created reality.
Returning to the reflections of Gabriela Mistral and Saint John Paul II constitutes, in this sense, a true spiritual and cultural tonic to replace mediocrity with service to others; that is, for what man was made for and to lead us towards overcoming the poverty that has plagued our Latin American republics for so long.
