Petícia je adresovaná: church-related persons

Indignation is common. We are not outraged, because for us it is not about morals; rather, we are concerned because it is a matter that involves the coexistence of people and nations. Coexistence is a question of culture. We are observing a decline in culture and the rise of barbarism. Culture, which has developed over centuries and is an achievement of many people worldwide, is threatened with ruin within a few years — not only by uninhibited communication, but also by the ruthless dictates of individuals and their entourage.

We like to use social media. We welcome technological developments. However, when they are accompanied by disinhibition, the threat of communicative barbarism arises. Reviling and threats turn them into asocial media. A sensible approach to technology-supported communication requires education. Like reading and writing, chatting and messaging must also be a cultural technology, otherwise they do not serve communication but aggression. Communication is in danger of becoming vulgar. Coexistence is not promoted but ruined.

What holds true for personal interaction also holds true for political interaction between those in government and those governed, and between states. When political leaders carelessly adopt lying and twisting, reviling and threatening, defaming and insulting – attitudes that increasingly characterise disinhibited communication in networks – in order to use them as instruments of political action, they commit political barbarism.

Democratically-governed states are shared cultural achievements. They are based on rules that were developed and improved over many generations: these include, firstly, the individual’s renunciation of power in favour of power acquired by all as the democratic sovereign; secondly, the separation of powers into the legislative, executive and judicial branches; and thirdly, the decision-making paths of participation, subsidiarity and complementarity. These are fundamental achievements that have led to the creation of a body of rules in both the micro and macro spheres. Ideally, they bring about what the American political scientist Benjamin Barber in 1984 called a strong democracy. Incidentally, those who do not know and understand the basic concepts just mentioned should not be given any power. Those who know and apply them have a political culture.

We are concerned about the disinhibition, coarsening and deterioration of social coexistence. Market-dominating corporations manipulate what they themselves praise as social networks for the sake of profit, and they willingly rally around tyrannical autocrats as soon as the democratic winds start to die down. The tyrant, however, surrounded by oligarchs hanging on to his every word, is the pre-modern, undemocratic and absolutist model of the century from 1650-1750: the tyrannical claim L'état c'est moi! has long since been overtaken by the democratic right We are the people! Our mothers and fathers fought for this. They deserve respect.

We are concerned and speak out not because we are church people, but because, as theologians from the tradition of Zwingli, Bullinger and Calvin, we remember the contributions that biblical interpretation from the century from 1530-1630 has made to the education of all citizens and thus to the development of rules-based communication and politics worldwide. None of this could be taken for granted before: everyone can read and write, is contractually and legally competent, has free access to libraries and responsible knowledge, lends their power to those elected only for a limited time, and supports democratically regulated and controlled sciences, networks and cultural institutions. This was the dream of emigrants from absolutist states, this is what made their new states great. The Bible constantly emphasises that the hallmark of how just a regime is, is not that it primarily cultivates the centre of society, where the strong and the well-fed have always been at home, but rather the margins of coexistence: the just are those whose consideration is also for widows and orphans, the poor and strangers, and who integrate them. This is not a leftist idea but a biblical one, which grew out of experience with oriental and ancient tyrants.