bernie
Posts: 223
Joined: 11/22/2007
From: TX
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Are we truly concerned with our fellow man, with others? Too often we're too hurried to truly care, to even perceive the other's pain. For instance, the image of this man in Conn. as he was crossing the street and getting run over by speeding, hit-and-run freaks; and, prostrate, helpless, as he lay there inconsolably dying in the street - without anyone coming to his aid...
Surely, as a people on the whole, we definitely are deeply caring and exceedingly generous but such events as this, and of kids brutalizing themselves insensibly, cannot but jolt us to think, what in the world is happening to our humanity? Are we becoming so desensitized that we just don't feel or react as normally inclined, sentient human beings anymore! True, this doesn't happen that often, however, when it increasingly reoccurs it is a genuine cause for concern.
Those, so enmeshed in frustrating bureaucratization, alienation, anomie - sterility of heart and mind - are very far removed from the basic problems of the world, from the realities around them, and till we experience this anguish firsthand we cannot sincerely fulfill ourselves and our humanity. For example, William James' essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War," 1910, was an outcry for a way of service dedicated to the solution of age-old problems, such as hunger, disease, and poor living conditions.
Herein lies our salvation...in becoming more and more aware and compassionate of the anguish, wretchedness, and pain that exists around us and to dedicate one's self in doing something about it; rather than merely giving verbal assent to the futility of war, of oppression, of moral apathy, of intellectual inertia, by simply talking inanely, expelling wind and flatus, vacuously, fatuously.
Indeed, the imprisonment of the self can only be resolved, paradoxically, in finding the sources of humanity and compassion through another (namely, the disadvantaged, the disfranchized, the third world); and, thus descending into one's true self, one can like a fetus, feed, grow, and start upward toward the light.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of NOW: a Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, eloquently and pointedly says:
Physical violence would be impossible without deep unconsciousness. It can also occur easily whenever and wherever a crowd of people or even an entire nation generates a negative collective energy field... Resistance to the Now as a collective dysfunction is intrinsically connected to loss of awareness of Being and forms the basis of our dehumanized industrial civilization. Freud, by the way, also recognized this undercurrent of unease and wrote about it in his book Civilization and Its Discontents, but he did not recognize the true root of the unease and failed to realize that freedom from it is possible. This collective dysfunction has created a very unhappy and extraordinarily violent civilization that has become a threat not only to itself but also to all life on the planet. In a word, even Freud, despite his colossal genius, never made a leap or saltus beyond the epitome of rationalism to existence...
< Message edited by bernie -- 6/7/2008 12:49:23 AM >
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