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Towards a higher form of life

A society is as developed as it is capable of cherishing its weakest members.

A society is as developed as it is capable of cherishing its weakest members.

The wonders of human progress never stop surprising us. Homo erectus… homo faber… homo sapiens.

Real progress depends on embracing this meaningfulness conferrred by love
- Fr Paul Chetcuti

It all started when man no longer crawled on all fours but stood up on his own two feet. He became the pride of creation. Homo erectus… standing up with the instinctive ambition to dominate creation.

Once on his feet he started fashioning creation to suit his needs. He became a worker – Homo faber… Work transforms the world… and the worker. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ one would say today. Employment generates income, which generates consumption, on which depend survival, satisfaction and pleasure.

But where would all this lead without reason? Homo sapiens attained knowledge and reason. We all know how knowledge is power. The worker and the intellectual combined their gifts to craft what we can characterise as the superpower of awareness, science and technology. If we know how to do it, let us do it, then we can enjoy it.

This gave rise to homo ludens – man the leisure seeker. Comfort, ease of life, pleasure, effortlessness became the holy grail of so-called developed societies.

Slowly but surely another kind of evolution started: the enfeeblement of the human race. Stamina, resistance to pain and sacrifice, inability to deal with the simple stress of living gradually turned human beings into sanitised weaklings. Depressions shot up, loneliness set in, childlessness sapped developed societies from life and joy… Development leads to death.

This may seem a dreary scenario indeed. Does it need to be so?

Running across, within and beyond all stages of human evolution there was a silent call, a weak but real power, a hidden promise lurking beneath the ground that humanity trod upon in its march of life. Love was silently irrigating the ground out of which humanity was fashioned in its first days. And love was the silent energy that drove the march forward even while humanity enjoyed the illusion of achieving it on its own power.

It was love that made the standing man bend towards his fallen fellow human beings. It was love that, beneath the hunger pangs, drove the hunter-gatherer man to search for sustenance of his progeny.

It was love that broke the hard code of language seeking to communicate the mystery within. Little by little the body and the mind of man started perceiving creation with a new vision thanks to the love that it was humbly and quietly experiencing in the day-to-day business of living. It started dawning on man that there is such a thing as meaning in life. Slowly, even if painfully, homo amans (man the lover) started emerging.

Real progress for humanity depends on embracing this meaningfulness conferred on our existence by love. It is this meaningfulness that was the source of the real dignity of homo erectus, of the creativeness and dedication of homo faber, of the power of homo sapiens and the joy of homo ludens.

We believers call this deepest love-identity of humanity God. He/she is the source and ultimate meaningfulness of human life as well as the whole of creation.

The more we human beings acknowledge and allow this humble power to lead us on, the faster we progress to the highest form of existence. The more we reject a God who is love, the more we transform our own evolution into a hellish spiral of decadence and death.

Our future does not depend on the increasing powers we are gaining for ourselves. It depends on the meaningful and loving use of them. Which brings us to the eternal question: What is love?

There is no abstract answer to this question because it is not a mind question. This is a life question and only life can provide us with an answer. And life becomes meaningful when the age-old mainspring of evolution – survival of the fittest – is replaced by the subversiveness of the Gospel – survival of the weakest.

A society is as humanly developed as it is capable of treasuring and cherishing its weakest members. It is in the voice of the voiceless among us that love speaks out loudest. The Church, even in its own sinfulness, but faithful to its Master, humbly yet strongly chooses to be this voice in the wilderness.

In our debates and considerations about power, politics, economics, ethics, fertility and the meaning of life itself, are we ready to listen?

[email protected]

Fr Chetcuti is a member of the Society of Jesus.

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Clifton Carl Barbara

Aug 16th 2012, 12:06

Not all are in a mess, some have clearer view on the situation.

Victor Rodenas

Aug 16th 2012, 21:14

All the Universities of the World including Malta teach that there is evolution, but William Cauchi does not think so!

Pule' Carmel

Aug 14th 2012, 00:32

Bertrand Russell had another opinion on WORK. Read his paper on " In praise of idleness" or hear him describe it on YouTube! Here is a sample of his WORK!!

*** "........First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders, but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising.

Throughout Europe, though not in America, there is a third class of men, more respected than either of the classes of workers. There are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is only rendered possible by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example.

From the beginning of civilization until the Industrial Revolution, a man could, as a rule, produce by hard work little more than was required for the subsistence of himself and his family, although his wife worked at least as hard as he did, and his children added their labour as soon as they were old enough to do so. The small surplus above bare necessaries was not left to those who produced it, but was appropriated by warriors and priests. In times of famine there was no surplus; the warriors and priests, however, still secured as much as at other times, with the result that many of the workers died of hunger. This system persisted in Russia until 1917 [1], and still persists in the East; in England, in spite of the Industrial Revolution, it remained in full force throughout the Napoleonic wars, and until a hundred years ago, when the new class of manufacturers acquired power. In America, the system came to an end with the Revolution, except in the South, where it persisted until the Civil War. A system which lasted so long and ended so recently has naturally left a profound impress upon men's thoughts and opinions. Much that we take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system, and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

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