I just wanted to share this article from Philosophy Now (the only magazine for which I have a subscription):
I was especially struck by the section with the heading, Hope is… Another Person. One of the things I find particularly depressing in a modern context – maybe because we have swallowed the scientific objective pill – is the way we treat other people. If we can label them (define them), we can forget about them. People who are different from us can be ignored or, worse, abused. Survival of the fittest, rule of the jungle, the majority vote is the truth.
As an Australian, I have been deeply affected by the Christchurch shooting. Yet the shooting is only really the tip of the iceberg. We have “leaders” (elected politicians) who give credence to the act by continuing the hate filled rhetoric. And worse, for me, is that the pastor of the church we attend used the same “what about us” rhetoric to tacitly justify the act.
We are all created in the image of God. The New Testament tells us that “God is love”. So to love (as opposed to hating) is the most human of all actions. Not a sentimental feeling towards another that validates wrong. Rather seeing the other as a person (created in the image of God) and not as an object (that feeds my needs). I wonder, too, if a majority of religion (in my context Christianity) makes “god” an object to be defined and labeled – and, in some way, to be upset with when that object does not behave as expected.
Anyway, that was a lot more convoluted than intended.
my solitary life 