The integral development of society and of the individual does not only concern the State or political parties, nor the different religious orders. The human being, with his family and friends in his atmosphere, with his culture and his free options, leads his own development. Cooperation will always be welcome, but not an imposition that does not respect freedom, justice and the basic right to seek happiness. Humans are born to be happy.
Happiness projects the potentials in a balanced development that brings plenitude to the person. The idolatry of the strongest, the supremacy of the senses, the exploitation of the weakest and arrogance, the source of insatisfaction and an empoverishing isolation, will take over if we do not calculate the potential of words.
Solidarity comes from solidus, a Roman golden coin. Aware of this solidity, people get together because; they know that they are open to others because they are beings of encounter and not isolated individuals.
Solidarity depends on the sensitivity for the values that ought to be carried out by people who hear for which they vow. Thus solidarity implies generosity, unselfishness, participation and strength. When we join others with solidarity we see an energy and a joy that emerges and that generates valid ways of unity, environments of freedom, of understanding, of cooperation and of justice.
People speak of the necessity of “realizing oneself” and of being authentic. Let us remember that authentikós is the person who has authority, which comes from augere, to promote. He, who has authority over someone, promotes him or her; he, who is authentic, has the reins of his own being. He has iniciative and does not fail us because he is coherent and because he makes us rich with his sincere and stable way of being.
López Quintas says in The book of values that, in order to posses that kind of sovereignty, one has to accept himself, to take life as a gift and to assume some life conditions that he did not choose: qualities, sex, family and nationality. We have to accept this life with its implications and we need to configure it to lead it towards an ideal. If we respond to this call that values create, we become responsible to live wide open and generous towards the others in their goal to live with plenitude.

José Carlos García Fajardo
Emeritus Profesor of Contemporary Social and Political Thought. CCS Director
fajardoccs@solidarios.org.es