An establishment dedicated to aesthetic concerns, more or less related to health, recently displayed a poster in its window advertising a "solidarity massage." The advertisement caught my attention; after all, a massage is not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of acts related to solidarity. However, nothing prevents it from being considered in this light, to the extent that it forms part of an action guided by intentions of solidarity. The owners of the establishment obviously found such an intention clear, indicating in the sign that the amount charged would be donated to a specific association (that supposedly promotes charitable activities). But the sign also suggested that potential customers could empathize with these aims and could personally show their solidarity if they hired these massage services. That was the import of the poster.

It is possible to purchase just about anything today, including something as simple as a yogurt with special anti-cholesterol properties, and find that some portion of the profits will go, for example, to helping victims of some disaster. Such initiatives and advertisements are frequent nowadays and they continue to call my attention each time I see them because they synthesize and seek to reconcile two features of late-modern culture that frequently present tension: Attending to the self and feelings of larger solidarity.

As Foucault foretold, attending to the self has become a dominant feature of our time. Among Spaniards, it has become especially noticeable in the last two decades and it seems to me that the business initiatives meant to meet this demand have not suffered much from the crises. For example, on a small street of no more than 200 meters in my hometown, three beauty establishments have recently opened. Judging by the proliferation of increasingly detailed and demanding standards and tips concerning health, beauty and style, one gets the impression that attending to the self has become an ethical obligation.  Indeed, especially in summer, this obligation and its associated demands colonize communication media and are addressed to each individual, who is ultimately responsible for her health and appearance; they are increasingly defined and detailed and encouraged through a thousand different social streams and personally internalized with almost complete compliance. 

Thus understood, attending to the self lends an aesthetic bias to the cult of the individual that, according to Durkheim, constitutes the only "sacred residue" that continues to morally bind modern societies. Indeed, although it is not necessary to understand attending to the self in aesthetic terms alone, in our late-modern societies, individualism often leads in that direction. In this social and cultural context, Gilles Lipovetsky has said, "we no longer recognize duties other than the ones we have to ourselves." These chilling words, as a description of a cultural state, are not without reference: attending to the self has become one of the signs of our time, within which self-help books, relaxation techniques and fitness training have become other, particularly popular, expressions.

This current, however, coexists with an undeniable and widespread feeling of solidarity, which frequently leads us to link our consumption practices to social ends. Advertisement agencies have understood this and have become tireless interpreters of dominant values, while always on the lookout for emerging values. Certainly, the artificial connection between solidary values ​​and acts of consumption implies that, deep down, we really do not believe that our duties end with ourselves and we need to justify, in our own eyes, acts of attending to the self by adding on more or less altruistic ends.

It is one thing to believe that our duties do not end with ourselves and quite another to believe that such duties do not exist. Although acts of attending to the self can certainly be excessive, in some cases they may also be quite scarce. Who has not had to tell a particularly close friend or relative that they should take better care of themselves? The golden medium in attending to the self cannot be established once and for all and for everyone; reaching that medium is precisely what ethical wisdom is made up of and what the ancients summed up as happiness.

It should be generally noted, however, that, in the context of individualized societies, our real moral challenge is to achieve a genuine transition from I to we. And, in this respect, the practice of tying a solidary end to an act of consumption centered on attending to the self is always somewhat ambiguous. In effect, although the importance of market and consumer relations in our world opens up the possibility of expressing solidarity through them, the more or less solidary quality of such an act cannot be taken for granted: to associate a solidary end with a consumer practice focused exclusively on attending to the self can correspond to "killing two birds with one stone," but can also be a source of self-deception. And it probably is if those feelings of solidarity are not otherwise channeled at other more direct and genuine expression, where the care of other, the obligations with and for the other, come to the fore, including to the apparent detriment of the self.

I say "apparent" because, without falling into the psychologistic trap of looking at the relationship with the other exclusively in terms of personal gratification, attending to the self can also be seen on a deeper level, where it is attentive to the person's true good, which, as Plato saw, must take into account mercy and justice. From this perspective, this same ordinary act of attending to the self can occur in solidarity key. This happens when the caregiver takes care of himself so that he can better do his job, which is never a simple technical task since, in some way, his person is wrapped up in it. Attending to the self carries an obvious ethical import because it unfolds in a social horizon and necessarily takes into account the needs of others, while using them as a measurement to determine one's own needs.