Human development and potential

Starting from the observation that misery takes on very serious aspects in the Third World and from the need for the current poor to be less disinherited, on the political side there is more insistence on the search for justice, on the human side on happiness or brotherhood . Therefore an answer could be: in recent years we have been interested in development because we would like humanity in its poorest components to be happier. Giving greater happiness to the poor of the Third World is presumably [an answer] wrong or, at least, uncertain because it is not fully justified by the analysis of the facts. We do not know at all whether a Third World person with a life expectancy of 35 years is more or less happy than dying at 60. We do not know at all whether that child we saved from starvation will have a happy life. In other words, I believe that the parallel between happiness and development is not documentable and sufficiently objective to justify with certainty why we should be interested in the problem of development.

I would suggest a motivation, which starts from the desire that each man can be completely fulfilled, which does not necessarily mean being happy. It seems to me that in this way a fairly significant connection can be found with the need to commit oneself to development, because development objectively gives a series of possibilities for human fulfillment that non-development cannot give. The fact of living up to 80 years and more, then, does not necessarily make the person happier, but it certainly allows a greater potential for life, it allows to carry on a biological cycle, to experience all the purposes for which in some way he lives or - for those who are believers - for whom he was created. The motivation we are looking for could therefore be formulated as follows: we are interested and committed to development, because development is necessary for man to be able to bring out all his potential quantitatively and qualitatively.


Giorgio Ceragioli
from “Progetto” (now “NP”), 1992, n. 4