Ademar Arthur Chioro dos Reis

outcome is still rather bleak, posing a scenario of many doubts.

It is impossible not to consider the restlessness that invades the planet from the electoral victory of the theses defended by Donald Trump, at the head of the world’s greatest economic and military power. What will happen to the Old Continent as a consequence of Brexit. The spread of the economic crisis on a global scale which indicates that the recovery will be very slow, widening inequality between nations and peoples. The discourse of the recovery of economic growth has been used to impose setbacks in the environmental agenda. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few was exacerbated, and the richest closed the year with more than $237 billion dollars in hand. Large-scale extermination practices carried out by warring countries and religious extremists have turned the planet into a more violent and insecure place, to the point of questioning where and when the next terrorist action will be, and whether or not it will happen. How will countries that are experiencing deep political and economic crises, such as Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, react? What will Cuba be like after Fidel Castro's death? How Colombia was able to reject a peace agreement sewn for years thread by thread? It is necessary to recognize the complexity of the world and the challenges presented.

In this context, the Spiritist philosophy offers an enormous contribution. From its postulates, it allows to conceive a new (moral) man, resultant, and at the same time the builder, of a new humanity.

For Spiritism, the harmony that governs the material universe and the moral universe is based on natural laws, recorded in our consciences. It is contained in the maxim of love, justice and charity taught by Jesus. Spirits, created simple and ignorant, are overcoming differentiated degrees of intellectual and moral progress. In society, the same process of development has repercussions and is conditioned to the progress made by the individualities that compose it.

According to Kardec, the cause for pride lies in the belief that man has of his own individual superiority. The spiritist vision, based on the principles of charity, equality and fraternity, discovers new horizons.

Spiritism is, par excellence, an agent of human solidarity. By showing that the present life is related to the acts practiced in previous existences, in addition to that each person is author of its own happiness, it makes possible an important contribution to the moral elevation of society.

In the Spiritist vision, the union of intelligence and morality can produce forms of organizations and systems - political, economic and social - more in line with legitimate human needs.

Spiritism, devoid of hierarchical structures of power and as a liberating and progressive movement of ideas, as it is defended by CEPA, allows from its philosophical principles to analyze broadly, however profoundly, man and society.

It is time to reaffirm a global agenda that can respond to the phenomena of poverty, and economic, social and cultural exclusion, which still affect billions of people and we need to ensure sustainable development. And to radicalize democracy, uniting demands of political freedom with the imperatives of equality and social justice.

It is necessary to rescue the idea of a social organization in which the free development of each is the condition for the full development of all. A society where freedom is not an expression of individualism or corporatism, but of pluralism and appreciation of democracy. A society where equality is understood as the persistent and creative search for compensations that allow unequal men and women to have access to equal conditions of life, overcoming the extremes of inequality. Where fraternity is an expression of non-violence, of peace. It is necessary to overcome developmental materialism and consumerism that become a threat to life on Earth.

The process of globalization that we live is aggressive and exclusive and is expressed in the storms provoked by the movement of speculative and adventurous capitals around the world. It is necessary to neutralize it. But above all, it is necessary to question with the same intensity the self-centered, destructive consumerism, oriented by materialism, by propaganda and by the way of life where it is important to have, no matter what.

By 2017 we are urged to renew our energies and hope that we can advance, on a global scale, in the production of a better, more just, fraternal and united world.

That is the message from CEPA, who wishes everyone a Happy New Year.