The motto is by Francisco Pinto Balsemão, but this chronicle will not be about him. About Balsemão, everything has already been said. He was a prince of democracy, a cultivator of freedom, a founder of this Republic and a man of good manners. End of paragraph.
Leave the world better. It’s a cue that sums up a useful life purpose: giving back to society part of what it gave us. If possible, make it better. And whoever was born with more, should give back more. The privilege of those born rich should not be ease and comfort; it must be the initiative that only this comfort allows. We really lack this attitude – and, in my opinion, this is a trait of civilization.
Balsemão personified it, and he wasn’t the only one. Before him, for example, Calouste Gulbenkian left a good work. Born in the Ottoman Empire, he became rich through oil exploration and, at the same time, cultivated a taste for art. This appreciation for beauty resulted in the collection of works that he treated like daughters. And, when he died in Lisbon, he left in his will the desire to give back to humanity what it had given him: thus the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation was born.
An institution that served as the Ministry of Culture, before it existed. That brought modernity, art, a little of the outside world, and a breeze of sophistication to a stuffy country. He brought the world to a country that, due to the dictatorship, rejected it. It is because of figures like Calouste Gulbenkian and Pinto Balsemão that we are no longer proudly alone.
And it is because Portugal still lacks a vibrant and independent civil society that examples like theirs are so important. In a country without a tradition of patronage, those who decide to use the privilege, leaving work, must be worshiped. Set example. Demonstrate to old and new wealth that only those who choose to act on it remain in history. The rest will be footnotes and memories in a few table conversations.
This idea of useful privilege was once the cement that bound elites to the rest of American society. For a long time, libraries, avenues, parks and gardens were named after those who built them. Out of vanity, perhaps, but take advantage of this human characteristic. As Adam Smith would say, it is the baker’s desire to make money that allows us to have bread on the table.
At the height of the industry, the privilege was only granted when it had an effect on the general life of the city, town and village. When many reaped the fruits. Perks were not just a family or personal product: they had consequences. In other words, you want community. As Christopher Lasch argues, in “The Rebellion of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy” (2024, Relógio D’Água), the rift in social inequality generated worrying effects, when the elites became disconnected from the progress of the territory. When they stopped having a say about him. To be an engine of progress.
They will have their reasons: globalization at the head. Elites have become nomadic and global, with no real ties to the country where they were born. If they have always been more cosmopolitan, which enriches any nation, they are, since the height of globalization, as much from Lisbon or Porto as from Paris or Capri. All of this is pleasant for those who cultivate it, but it has a price and this is also paid in social cohesion. Inequalities, which are strong today, generate irritation because they are sterile. Because they have no apparent justification.
Isolated and trapped in their own surroundings, the most privileged disconnect from the country that gave them the life they have. They disconnect from their middle classes and make them less aspirational and dynamic, with no avant-garde in sight. When the initiative arrives, it is always tied to the State Budget.
I have no doubt: inequality is even useful when it results in great initiatives by the most privileged. For many, myself included, it will even be a duty. Only in this way can there be a general end to money and private means.
This is the only way to make the world better.