Choosing a topic for an editorial is never a simple task. Certain ideas presented themselves quite insistently. I could have written about the need for official recognition of health social work, about the teaching role of the profession or indeed about the limited institutional support that exists for research. I might also have reflected on paediatric palliative care, which is my field of practice. But then I thought that perhaps what was expected of me was an ethical reflection on current sociopolitical realities—those about which Ismael Serrano sings: “the everyday sorrows, those of supermarkets, of the metro and pavements, and also those far from me, the sorrows of the dry deserts, of the green jungles.”

And yet, I do not know how to go about it. Every word positions us; and every silence, every glance, does too. It seems that lately, for every large or small issue, we are asked to take a stance, to make a symbolic gesture of commitment. But is that truly necessary? The ethical principles of social work already define our context of practice: when we look at the people we accompany, we always strive to achieve equality, justice and dignity. If these values are already part of our essence, what sense does it make to repeat, time and again —in corridors, on social media, in writing— that we are against war, racism, sexism, insecurity and incivility, lack of opportunity, inequality, discrimination and oppression? The danger we face in the present day is to confound a tweet with action, a manifesto with intervention. We risk becoming social stenotherms, organisms unable to survive outside a narrow range of certainties.

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