The Rehumanization of our Humanity
I unreservedly concur with Chong Yew Keat of Malacca when he stated categorically that:
AFTER thousands of years of human formation and development, the time has come for a complete rethinking of what our roles truly are in this world -- whether to contribute to a prosperous, peaceful and harmonious world or to hijack and abuse our existence to do evil deeds, and let out conscience and rationality be deluded by the lure of greed and power that will contribute to our destruction (“Fill the world with love, compassion, and empathy”, NST, January 2nd).
The way of life then was free and beautiful, yet what is happening now in the world?
A titanic curse is haunting the whole globe; it is the chronic and malignant cancer of an economic system that duped and brain-washed the people that the most important thing in this life is wealth, economic status, financial capability, gold, investment, position, power and money.
Due to this rapid transformation of the world’s economic resources, we somehow lost our reason and unconsciously replaced it by uncontrollable appetites; we’ve forgotten our passions and replaced it by desires; we junked our creative powers and replaced it by material gain; worst, we shattered our humanity into pieces and replaced it by mere commerce and reduced everything to the sphere of economic activity. We betrayed our very selves to the system which ironically we ourselves had created into being! Indeed, it is the greatest irony of all time! The slave now is our master, because we have forgotten our very nature and being!
Sad but true!
We all want to help one another and share each other’s happiness; human beings are like that; yet as economic progression has further developed and as we maximized to the maximum all the resources of mother earth; it seems to me that we have lost our way. Greed has invariably poisoned men’s minds and corrupted their souls. The present global financial system has barricaded the world with individualism, hate, racism, nihilism, selfishness and false consciousness. The prevailing system has reduced man into a machine that is a mere appendage to the whole economic operational chains. This presently ‘developed’ world has led and goosed us to misery, degradation and widespread bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we deny the very existence of our fellows; and shut ourselves inside our very selves. Machinery that gives unimaginable abundance and immeasurable wealth has left has in want, hunger and deprivation!
In the grim analysis of Gil Lahav of Harvard College:
“The inexorably increasing celerity with which things happen and the increasing importance of technologies and intelligent machines seem to jeopardize some of what we find valuable as humans. While all of these technological advances in speed and convenience are ultimately designed to help humans, they also threaten to desensitize us. If sensitivity is a property of humans that confers value on us, and if sensitivity is stifled by an ever-hastening technological environment, then the haste that technology imposes upon human life may diminish some of what is valuable about humans”.
Our knowledge has made us cynical and apathetic; our cleverness turns us into hard and unkind beings!
We think too much, yet we feel so little! It seems that we have already erased from our memory what Ludwid van Bethoven had taught us: Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.
We are not aware, but the system has transformed us into a machine. The system has assumed an invincible power over our own selves, clouded our better judgment and has shattered our independence. We are all victims of this system that tell us what to think, what to feel, what to do, what to prioritize and what to value. Man is forgetting that he is not a machine or an object nor a commodity. He is man, natural, living, independent and free!
However, all is not lost! There is always hope and regeneration! As Charlie Chaplin lucidly expressed in a speech in one of his classical movies:
“More the machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without this qualities; life would be violent and all would be lost”.
We have the capacity and the power to overthrow this evil system and transform it to a more genuinely humanistic and pro-human being economic system.
Ultimately, as Lahav firmly maintained, it is we who will have to decide the extent to which technological advances change our values. Then, he gave us a strong warning: “If we do not actively control the meaning and uses of our inventions, they may eventually reinvent us”.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society”.
If I may be allowed to add to that:
We must now transform this world of greed to that of the world of love; a world that respect the inherent humanity of man, that world that gives him the freedom to freely develop himself and all his natural faculties, a world that accept him for what he is and not what he has, a world that recognizes the brotherhood of man and the unity of the souls, a just world, a beautiful world!
Man must return to himself! Man must return to his nature! He must struggle passionately to be free once again, to regenerate his original consciousness and always strived to be independent, as he has always been!
To paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg:
What we need is a universal system that would enables us to love everybody with a clear conscience.
In the poignant and utterly beautiful words of Rueben Dudley:
“We need to set aside whatever differences, real or perceived; eschew pride, envy and greed; uphold truth, integrity and justice; and, above all, put into practice those greatest of life's values -- "love your neighbour as yourself" and the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"”.
It's really, "now or never"! (“World Concerns: It’s now or never for us to wake to the truth”, NST, January 10th).
In conclusion, I am leaving these magnificent words of exhortation of Mr. Keat:
“The world and humanity have suffered enough from our folly and ignorance.
For a better path ahead, we, as humans, must come together as one as fellow humans.
This is the time to bask in the strength of humanity, to join hands and work towards our shared destiny and a brighter future.
We must be wise, mature and rational enough to look beyond the divisions that exist among us, and not to let them be hijacked by certain groups that are out to exploit us and sow hatred, misunderstanding and discord.
The positive forces in human nature -- empathy and the spirit of humanity -- will always prevail”.
Jose Mario Dolor De Vega
Subang Jaya, Darul Ehsan,
Selangor, Malaysia
I unreservedly concur with Chong Yew Keat of Malacca when he stated categorically that:
AFTER thousands of years of human formation and development, the time has come for a complete rethinking of what our roles truly are in this world -- whether to contribute to a prosperous, peaceful and harmonious world or to hijack and abuse our existence to do evil deeds, and let out conscience and rationality be deluded by the lure of greed and power that will contribute to our destruction (“Fill the world with love, compassion, and empathy”, NST, January 2nd).
The way of life then was free and beautiful, yet what is happening now in the world?
A titanic curse is haunting the whole globe; it is the chronic and malignant cancer of an economic system that duped and brain-washed the people that the most important thing in this life is wealth, economic status, financial capability, gold, investment, position, power and money.
Due to this rapid transformation of the world’s economic resources, we somehow lost our reason and unconsciously replaced it by uncontrollable appetites; we’ve forgotten our passions and replaced it by desires; we junked our creative powers and replaced it by material gain; worst, we shattered our humanity into pieces and replaced it by mere commerce and reduced everything to the sphere of economic activity. We betrayed our very selves to the system which ironically we ourselves had created into being! Indeed, it is the greatest irony of all time! The slave now is our master, because we have forgotten our very nature and being!
Sad but true!
We all want to help one another and share each other’s happiness; human beings are like that; yet as economic progression has further developed and as we maximized to the maximum all the resources of mother earth; it seems to me that we have lost our way. Greed has invariably poisoned men’s minds and corrupted their souls. The present global financial system has barricaded the world with individualism, hate, racism, nihilism, selfishness and false consciousness. The prevailing system has reduced man into a machine that is a mere appendage to the whole economic operational chains. This presently ‘developed’ world has led and goosed us to misery, degradation and widespread bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we deny the very existence of our fellows; and shut ourselves inside our very selves. Machinery that gives unimaginable abundance and immeasurable wealth has left has in want, hunger and deprivation!
In the grim analysis of Gil Lahav of Harvard College:
“The inexorably increasing celerity with which things happen and the increasing importance of technologies and intelligent machines seem to jeopardize some of what we find valuable as humans. While all of these technological advances in speed and convenience are ultimately designed to help humans, they also threaten to desensitize us. If sensitivity is a property of humans that confers value on us, and if sensitivity is stifled by an ever-hastening technological environment, then the haste that technology imposes upon human life may diminish some of what is valuable about humans”.
Our knowledge has made us cynical and apathetic; our cleverness turns us into hard and unkind beings!
We think too much, yet we feel so little! It seems that we have already erased from our memory what Ludwid van Bethoven had taught us: Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.
We are not aware, but the system has transformed us into a machine. The system has assumed an invincible power over our own selves, clouded our better judgment and has shattered our independence. We are all victims of this system that tell us what to think, what to feel, what to do, what to prioritize and what to value. Man is forgetting that he is not a machine or an object nor a commodity. He is man, natural, living, independent and free!
However, all is not lost! There is always hope and regeneration! As Charlie Chaplin lucidly expressed in a speech in one of his classical movies:
“More the machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without this qualities; life would be violent and all would be lost”.
We have the capacity and the power to overthrow this evil system and transform it to a more genuinely humanistic and pro-human being economic system.
Ultimately, as Lahav firmly maintained, it is we who will have to decide the extent to which technological advances change our values. Then, he gave us a strong warning: “If we do not actively control the meaning and uses of our inventions, they may eventually reinvent us”.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society”.
If I may be allowed to add to that:
We must now transform this world of greed to that of the world of love; a world that respect the inherent humanity of man, that world that gives him the freedom to freely develop himself and all his natural faculties, a world that accept him for what he is and not what he has, a world that recognizes the brotherhood of man and the unity of the souls, a just world, a beautiful world!
Man must return to himself! Man must return to his nature! He must struggle passionately to be free once again, to regenerate his original consciousness and always strived to be independent, as he has always been!
To paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg:
What we need is a universal system that would enables us to love everybody with a clear conscience.
In the poignant and utterly beautiful words of Rueben Dudley:
“We need to set aside whatever differences, real or perceived; eschew pride, envy and greed; uphold truth, integrity and justice; and, above all, put into practice those greatest of life's values -- "love your neighbour as yourself" and the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"”.
It's really, "now or never"! (“World Concerns: It’s now or never for us to wake to the truth”, NST, January 10th).
In conclusion, I am leaving these magnificent words of exhortation of Mr. Keat:
“The world and humanity have suffered enough from our folly and ignorance.
For a better path ahead, we, as humans, must come together as one as fellow humans.
This is the time to bask in the strength of humanity, to join hands and work towards our shared destiny and a brighter future.
We must be wise, mature and rational enough to look beyond the divisions that exist among us, and not to let them be hijacked by certain groups that are out to exploit us and sow hatred, misunderstanding and discord.
The positive forces in human nature -- empathy and the spirit of humanity -- will always prevail”.
Jose Mario Dolor De Vega
Subang Jaya, Darul Ehsan,
Selangor, Malaysia