Monday, March 25, 2024
Across Europe we see a continuation of polarization. Deep social and cultural rifts translate in very personal clashes of all kinds of (geo)political issues. People find themselves in bitter arguments online and even with friends and family. Issues like the war in Gaza, Covid, immigration, life ethics or climate change cause estrangement and anger between people. Of course, there are people who take extreme positions on these and similar issues and that provokes a response. However, we all need to reflect on whether all these clashes are really helpful in the long run. It is good to point to those things that are really within our influence and/or responsibility and take a clear position where necessary. Issues related to corruption and abuse of power both are still a reality in all of Europe and demand our action. Of course, these are not the issues we debate so vehemently. Often, the issues that trigger many people are not the ones, we are personally involved in at that moment. Moreover, often those who experience issues personally can tend to be much more nuanced as they have seen and felt themselves many issues are not that black and white in real life. Why we get so emotionally engaged in certain issues? In a conversation I had we discussed why people are so engaged over the war in Gaza, but almost nobody discusses what is happening in Sudan or Myanmar. We identified people had made issues such as Israel or climate change, ‘identity markers’. That means that these issues define where you are in the ideological spectrum and then become important to who we are. The question is however if issues like the war in Gaza or climate change really define who we are. Is our identity really a collection of issues whereabout we fight over with others? The risk in that approach is that we forget who we really are. We are all interconnected human beings with human dignity. That is our common core identity. Of course we then still disagree on almost everything, but at least these issues will then not define who we are. This creates space for acceptance of different points of view and allows us to look for common ground where it exists. Such a process opens us up to see nuance and pathways to solutions. This approach also requires us to listen to very different voices and see the value of (aspects of) a different view. This does not mean that we simply abandon our views for what seems to be the most conservative or progressive opinion of the moment, but we summon in ourselves the resilience that enables us to listen to those we disagree with and truly try to listen to why they say what they saying. In that way we can discover the motives and common aim for human dignity. We can never agree with extremist views that aim to destroy or deny the human dignity of others. However, beyond that, we need to end the culture that locks us up in a narrow set of views on a narrow set of issues. That also requires an end to the tendency of ostracizing others for their views. ‘Cancel culture’ on either the left or the right, blocks finding common ground and common human dignity. Especially in a time like this we need the opposite: we need to be able to sit down together and work together where we can and not reject people in advance. Even more problematic is the tendency to attack and reject people over statements of years ago. We all now have an online life in addition to our offline life. That means that we either stop making any online statement on anything whatsoever and limit ourselves to posting pictures of cats or accept that people change in life and that our statements are not our whole humanity. Handling this requires a new maturity that can only grow if we continue to see our common human dignity. Ultimately, human dignity is not founded in ourselves, it has been given to us as we can see in Easter. Jesus death and resurrection is the deepest foundation, confirmation and restoration of our human dignity. This message of Easter also means that nobody ‘owns’ human dignity and nobody can ‘give’ human dignity to anyone else. Nobody ‘deserves’ human dignity, it has been given to us through grace, not because we are ‘good people’. Precisely the idea that ‘we’ are ‘good people’ (and ‘the others’ not) creates this culture of bubbles that isolate people from one another. The best alternative is to acknowledge that we have all been given the same grace and human dignity. Moreover, the realization of universal human dignity is something that people from all religious convictions (and none) can accept and share. In fact, we do so as we can see in Article 1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU: ‘Human dignity is inviolable, it needs to be respected and protected’. If we want a society and not a collection of insular bubbles we will discover that human dignity is truly the only foundation for a common future. Sallux wishes you a Blessed Easter!
