Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, April 19th, 2024

Respecting Humanity

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Respecting Humanity

Perhaps I am a romantic, but it is my hope that in the future Humanity will live by the truth, with greater harmony between different people, their religions and cultures, and to live in all its complex beauty. As Albert Einstein profoundly writes:
A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.

We must begin by frankly admitting that the first place in which to go looking for the world is not outside us but in ourselves. We are the world. In the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation in which we are only small parts. Through our senses and our minds, our loves, needs, and desires, we are implicated, without possibility of evasion – in this world of matter and of men, of things and of persons, which not only affect us and change our lives but are also affected and changed by us. The question, then, is not to speculate about how we are to contact the world – as if we were somehow in outer space – but how to validate our relationship, give it a fully honest and human significance, and make it truly productive and worthwhile for our world.

It is reasonably said that to love another as a person we must begin by granting him his own autonomy and identity as a person. We have to love him for what he is in himself, and not for what he is to us. We have to love him for his own good, not for the good we get out of him. And this is impossible unless we are capable of a love which ‘transforms’ us, so to speak, into the other person, making us able to see things as he sees them, love what he loves, experience the deeper realities of his own life as if they were our own. Without sacrifice, such a transformation is utterly impossible. But unless we are capable of this kind of transformation ‘into the other’ while remaining ourselves, we are not yet capable of a fully human existence.

It should be noted that all men seek peace first of all with themselves. That is necessary, because we do not naturally find rest even in our own being. We have to learn to commune with ourselves before we can communicate with other men and with God. A man who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the society of those he lives with, and spreads a contagion of conflict all around him. Even when he tries to do good to others his efforts are hopeless, since he does not know how to do good to himself.

“People seem to think that it is in some way a proof that no merciful God exists, if we have so many wars. On the contrary consider how in spite of centuries of sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice, spawned and bred by the free wills of men, the human race can still recover, each time, and can still produce men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity. How could all this be possible without the merciful love of God, pouring out His grace upon us? Can there be any doubt where wars come from and where peace comes from, when the children of this world, excluding God from their peace conferences, only manage to bring about greater and greater wars the more they talk about peace?”

Above all, we must fulfill our responsibility and task in our society with great honesty and effort. All our tasks are so intertwined no matter where we are in the society, in our churches, in our factories. If one of us does not do our task well it brings down the entire group. At the same time if for some reason one of us is having a genuine difficulty in accomplishing our task, it is important for the others to pitch in and help out in order that the wheels of progress are not slowed down or stopped. Just imagine for a second how an automobile cannot move if we get a flat in one of the tires even though the remaining three tires are fine.

We constantly must be aware that we should be doing our work diligently if we only for a moment think that we are doing our tasks to the best of our ability to please our God. Hence irrespective of whether we are being observed by our peers or superiors we should be doing our best to complete our tasks to the best of our abilities.

So, we will develop the spirit of humanity and morality across our society through observing the aforementioned humanly characters. It is time to shake brotherly hands with each other and value our human dignity so as to obtain great achievements.

Hujjatullah Zia is the newly emerging writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at outlookafghanistan@gmail.com

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