Studies show that school performance levels are significantly influenced by the type of home people come from. Children from more affluent homes, whose parents are very interested in their learning abilities, and where there are plentiful books and a place to study, are more likely to do well than those from lower-income groups, among whom these aspects cannot be available.¹

Kardec commented that it can happen that the Spirit retains the psychic traits of previous existences in its new existences, but if the social position is not the same, it can undergo enormous transformations. According to him, if he becomes a slave from a master, his inclinations will be very different, and you would have difficulty recognizing him. The Spirit being the same, in the different incarnations, its manifestations may have, from one to another, certain similarities. These, however, will be modified by the customs of the new position.²

In the Spiritist Magazine, after narrating the suicide of a young lady who had killed herself out of despair at not being able to feed her children, Kardec reproduces the thoughts of the Spirit Lamennais: This unfortunate woman is one of the victims of your world, your laws, and your society. God judges souls, but He also judges times and circumstances; He judges things forced and despair; He judges the background and not the form. And I dare say: this unfortunate woman died not out of crime, but out of modesty, out of fear of shame. It is that where human justice is inexorable, it judges and condemns material facts, divine justice finds the depths of the heart and the state of consciousness [...]³

c) Circumstances and opportunities: opportunities are not the same for everyone. Many people admit that their success in life has a lot to do with events that occurred in which they played no part.

Also here, someone will comment that the easiness and difficulties we encounter in life have to do with our reincarnation past, therefore, it is related to issues involving merit or demerit. Here too, this is only partially correct. Kardec clearly defined that many accidents in the course of life are not previously predicted: fatality only consists of these two hours, those in which you must appear and disappear in this world. ⁴Thus, even considering each person's reincarnation history and the role of disembodied Spirits in life's events, unpredictability is something that cannot be ignored.

A study showed that teenagers performed 10% worse on school tests the week a homicide occurred in their neighborhood. ⁵How many times young people and adults are harmed in competitions, or job interviews, due to an unforeseen illness, or family events, which generate a strong mental state of disturbance!

Fifth

There is reason to doubt that even a perfectly realized meritocracy (if that were possible) is the path to a just society. The meritocratic ideal is related to mobility, not equality. It doesn't say there are big gaps between rich and poor. What matters for meritocracy is that everyone has an equal opportunity to climb the ladder of success; there is nothing to say about what the distance between the stairs should be. The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification for inequality, as it legitimizes the generous rewards that the market grants to winners and the meager payments it offers to workers without a university degree. In 2014, CEOs of large American companies received three hundred times more than the average worker.⁶

The most tragic indication of this, according to Michael Sandel, is the increase in “deaths of despair”. The term was coined by two economists from Princeton University (USA), to refer to self-inflicted deaths: suicide, treatment abandonment, drug overdose, liver disease related to alcoholism. It is believed that “deaths of despair” account for the drop in life expectancy in North America between 2014 and 2017, a surprising fact, because throughout the twentieth century life expectancy increased progressively. “Death of despair” is typically seen in middle-aged men without a college degree; the main victims of globalization and the tyranny of merit.⁷

Kardec recognizes that it is the strongest who make the laws and that they did it for themselves⁸, but that divine justice wants everyone to participate in the good, that it does not agree with the validity of laws made by the strong to the detriment of the weak⁹; that justice is exercised with less partiality; may the weak always find support against the strong; that man's life, his beliefs and opinions are better respected; that there are fewer unfortunate people; finally, and that every man of good will is sure that he does not lack what is necessary.¹⁰

Yearning for a just and fraternal society, Kardec states: When men have divested themselves of the selfishness that dominates them, they will live as brothers, without doing each other any harm, helping each other, impelled by the mutual feeling of solidarity. Then the strong will be the support and not the oppressor of the weak and men will no longer be seen who lack the essentials, because everyone will practice the law of justice.¹¹

The considerations exposed make us aware of the development of a different vision of the “successes” and “failures” of life. The way of thinking about who deserves what is not morally defensible. A vision that considers evolution as something collective and supportive is the only one that holds up against the universalist proposal of the Spiritist Doctrine.

Gustavo Geley, a spiritualist researcher who died in 1924, used the expression solidarity evolution. Geley referred to the need to understand spiritual development, a central thought of the Spiritist Doctrine, as a collective effort towards improvement, not just personal, but that of the entire community.

He wrote: Its practical consequences [of reincarnation] are easy to conceive. First of all, it imposes work and effort; not isolated effort, the selfish struggle for life, but solidarity effort, because everything that favors or retards the evolution of others and general evolution favors or retards the evolution of any member of the community.¹²

Although evolution also occurs in the intimacy of each person, in the personal expansion of cognitive and affective resources, the exclusivist focus of this evolution neutralizes the very dynamics of the process, as it crystallizes in selfishness, the source of all human imperfections.

All conditions related to corporeality –trails, expiations, and missions – are never isolated, unique conditions, restricted to the individual himself. These are collective events, which connect all the people linked to it. The mature Spirit renounces expectations of solely personal achievement to invest in collective well-being. Out of love, out of altruism, out of commitment to the beautiful, the good, the noble and the just, he takes on tasks, sometimes of great renunciation, and feels happy about it.

Either we evolve together, or no one will advance alone. Peace of mind will never be the achievement of the selfish soul. It is established in those who are doing what they are supposed to do. Nobody falls alone. No one rises alone. Our vital interactions are so deep that we never know, when faced with an unworthy act or a noble act, where to locate the greatest guilt and the greatest merit.

There is no exclusively individual responsibility for any good or bad act as there is no exclusively individual sanction for this act. Everything you do, everything you think, good or bad; Everything that translates into an emotional impression, joy, or pain, in any individual, has repercussions on everyone and is assimilated by everyone. There is no decadence or progress that is not supportive.

__________________________

1 Sociology, Anthony Giddens.

2 Spirits’ Book item 216

³ O padeiro desumano–suicídio RE, Maio/1862.

4 Spirits’ Book item 859

5 The Anatomy of Violence, Adrian Reine.

6 The Tyranny of Merit, Michale Sandel.

7 The Tyranny of Merit, Michale Sandel.
8 Spirits’ Book, item 795
9 Spirits’ Book, item 781-a
10 Spirits’ Book item 793
¹¹ Spirits’ Book, item 916

12 Summary of the Spiritist Doctrine, third part.