The Real Meaning of Solidarity

            From Latin solidus and –ario (forming solidarius), solidarity means “adhesion to a generality”, “willing to make appertain”. Beyond his Etymology, solidarity can be understood as an action with social meaning. If the society can be changeable, the solidarian action represents this possibility. When we use the expression “solidarity”, perhaps we understand what it means, but clearly, its cultural concept should be asked again. To be solidarian implies “to give to” with no passive response. Then, solidarity consists in a responsiveness; which is a strict individual gesture. This can involve, as we usually consider, a socio-economic purpose. Indeed, it’s not about the “object” in the action itself, because this wouldn’t represent completely the solidarity act, but the material fact of the idea pursued with this action. If we conceive the act as a material aim, we can forget its non-material meaning. Therein, we find the conscious problem as the solution. If society uses the solidarity act as a habit –due to a religious motive, for example–, this could not be understood as an active act, but a passive convention. In this case, we could observe that there isn’t solidarity in so far as consciousness. In fact, this solidarity conception, it is poor as much as the first one. In solidarity action, there is not a clause at all. The sole ethic requisite on this act implies a destruction of the purpose above. This explains why the tolerance-intolerance paradoxes look like two same faces swivelling in a coin. On the other hand and as we have said before, if an action should be individual, hence the consciousness is therefore an individual aim too, so we should think about how we can solve this antinomy between the individual and the society itself. So then, we could observe definitely, that society is a “group of individuals”, so is the understanding of the contradictions the sole solution to assure solidarity. Later, the individuals –now with a consciousness– realize a social act, but not in the opposed order. Just then this action can be inserted in the cultural concept, as a “generality of world conceptions”. The issue here, in this individual discovery, is that education today is focused on not in the individual but in the others. We convert the “aid to the others” as a moral commitment, but not as a real and natural feeling in oneself, as an ethic. The method perhaps should be, achieve the individual conscious at first, and to take the moral commitment later. But it’s not about to prefer, but to put in order. Thus, we observe the contradiction: the focus on others is followed by a lack of individual decisions. To understand the solidarity problem, we need to question the contradictions first and later realize an action according to an individual and natural feeling. Because the individuality is good, so, it searches the goodness out of him. Solidarity starts with this principle.