Resignation of the Human

The resignation of the human is a central theme of reflection in the face of the third millennium. Pope John Paul II once pointed out that “ours is, without doubt, the epoch in which man has been spoken about and written about the most, the era of humanisms and anthropocentrisms. Paradoxically, however, it is also the epoch of the man’s deepest anguish with respect to his identity and destiny, of the lowering of man to previously unsuspected levels, the epoch of human rights violated like never before.” [1]

Many in the twentieth century have succumbed to a vision in which the dignity of the human being has been reduced to the category of a thing or of a function; undoubtedly a resignation of the human. Some people have taken note. Ignace Lepp, for instance, famous depth psychologist, has qualified those who don’t seek to know and to respond to their dignity with hard-hitting words: “Traitors to their humanity, since they practically neglect to recognize and assume the transcendent character of their nature,” he says, noting that “they live as things among things.” Lepp points out a paradoxical phenomenon. In times which bear witness to so many technological developments, in which humanity believes itself to have advanced so much, man is a victim of a process of objectification, subjugated to concepts more adequate to the market or trade than to the human condition, to his dignity and mission.

Unconsciousness?

Cases arise of people who act as though they really have resigned from their condition as human beings. This conscious or unconscious relinquishing from being a person has serious effects that seem not unconnected from the horrors committed against people during the 20th century. A retrospective glance justifies its being called the “century of horror.”

Advances and many good things have certainly arisen during these 100 years. However, they cannot conceal the tragedy into which humanity has been plunged, and which manifests itself before all else in the resignation of the human. An English writer [2] has called this time – hopefully without premonition – the beginning of “the abolition of man.”

Human cancellation?

A series of erroneous anthropologies, arising principally from the Enlightenment, feed this process of objectifying the human being. This explains the intentional death of millions of people. The wars, concentration camps, tortures, atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all seem to have been forged in a lax consciousness of humanity.

By some curious mystification, horror has been stripped of its meaning. The premeditated deaths of the most defenceless – the unborn babies whose lives have been cut short in their mothers’ wombs – have been designated with euphemisms that seek to conceal what they really are. That legislation can permit a barbarity like this is evidence of the grave moral regression of many sectors of humanity during the twentieth century.

As in the past when the accusing finger of humanity pointed to Hitler and his followers, to Stalin and his partisans, to Pol Pot and his own, the accusing finger of humanity’s right conscience has to point to today’s perpetrators of genocide and their accomplices. And, just as in the case of the rulings at Nuremberg where no legal order served to excuse those who commit crimes against humanity as irresponsible, one supposes that a future which values the human being will not have to allow those who legislate or submit to laws against the human being to be cleared of all blame. Obviously, from a Christian perspective the horizon of mercy always remains, learned and interiorized from the goodness of God, rich in mercy, and the Prayer the Lord taught us: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Objectification

We stand before a process of objectification that disregards the nature of human reality and conceptualizes it operatively on the basis of diverse functional criteria. This phenomenon of the resignation of what’s human, generalized in many societies, constitutes the basis of the tragedy of abortion and euthanasia, and of other cruel forms of death. The cost-benefit perspective is totally unacceptable as a measure of the profound reality of the human person and his social coexistence.

Without getting into complex analyses it’s enough to be aware of the existence of this attitude, and not only in economically advanced societies. In different urban and rural environments there are those who resign from their humanity in the indicated sense or who act as if they have done so. We must be conscious of this reality since it is a process that directly attacks the dignity of the human being and clearly violates the natural rights that emerge from this dignity. It’s equally very important to detect what can be called auto- or self-objectification – not only because of the serious effects it has upon whoever lives it, but rather because it also seriously affects those who suffer its radiation. It seems clear that the future depends in good measure on the answer to the authentic vocation to be a human person.

Notes

[1] H.H. John Paul II, Discurso inaugural en Puebla, 28/1/1979, I,9. [Inaugural speech to the 3rd General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, Puebla - Republic of Mexico, January 28, 1979.]

[2] See C.S.Lewis, The Abolition of Man.