Sister Death, Sister Poverty

With this title I intend to paraphrase the poetry of the real Francis, the Saint of Assisi, as a source of wisdom and a postulate of higher civilization.

From the agnostic point of view, which is most appropriate for me, the reflection is not so much religious as cultural and spiritual, with all the relative affinities and distances from religious faith, and Christian faith in particular.

Already Heraclitus asserted that life is war, one of his most important truths revealed to him by his extraordinary and aristocratic frequentation of the logos. This is always true in existential experience, from birth until a death often preceded by agony, which is nothing but the last glorious battle. Of course, we prefer to experience joyful battles, as victorious, and normally there is no shortage of opportunities. That is, we also tend to fight our personal and social warfare in gladness and harmony wherever and whenever possible, in the hope of a path to earthly happiness, which is more than legitimate. But this sacrosanct urge has always clashed with the ever-latent thought of death understood as an end in nothingness, in non-life, in the irreversible interruption of the aforementioned hope.

All religions, sources of culture and civilization, respond to this existential contradiction with their different interpretations of an otherworldly reality. But one differs greatly from all others, our Christian religion, unique among the great monotheistic religions.

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do

With this extreme message, our God made man offers us the key to the qualitative leap in civilized living that has become unmissable today for the very survival of humans, two millennia ahead of evolutionary time.

Indeed, pain and evil are effects inherent in the most common forms of warfare, no matter how much we want to avoid them. And it is all too easy, however illusory, to attribute responsibility for them to the adversary of the agon at that particular historical moment, turning him or her into the object of emotionally irreparable hatred, into an enemy to be annihilated, possibly in the name of revenge. This is a simplistic and reductive binary logic, of which, moreover, we have an obscene current example in Anglophone war propaganda, which would like to turn us into packs of dogs, as instinctively ready to maul the enemy as they are to lick their friend gratefully and submissively, singled out with rather questionable, if not paradoxical, criteria.

This has always been the case in human history, before and after the birth of Christ, whose message has been disregarded more often than not, often even with great display of hypocrisy by the Christian protagonists themselves, those unwilling to give up the eternal salvation of their souls, however stained that may be by their objective responsibilities in the pursuit of earthly privilege.

The question that arises at this point is: but will it ever be possible to live out our destiny as warriors by repudiating in fact the spiral of mutual hatred, overcoming it toward the realization of a spiritually advanced civilization, truly superior to the canine model?

The answer is surely yes, when I think of the horizons opened up by knowledge, that same human quality that has produced a technological evolution that will end us if not managed consciously and wisely. It is not a matter of all of us becoming scientists and all-rounders at the highest level, but rather of cultivating the most authentic spirituality that is inherent in us, the only one that enables us from time to time to distinguish good from evil, relative though they may be. Some call it morality, others love, others simply common sense, but the fact remains that it is present, or latent, in almost all of mankind. That having reason has to make a case for it, elevating it to a choice.

On the other hand, the answer is surely no, when I think of the creeping and dominant ideology that has established itself in our world, placating and conditioning it with a thousand forms of devious and instrumental propaganda, but supported by power completely bought and corrupted by concentrated material wealth, exalted and pursued in the name of a misunderstood freedom.

The confrontation, the struggle between material wealth and spiritual poverty, that is, between ruling elites and the dominated masses, is also an example of warfare, from which we cannot escape at this time.

As it happens, the opposing existential attitudes differ in the acceptance or rejection of physical death, which is the most obvious natural fact that there is, an integral part of the natural conception of life, the fact that makes us human in the highest sense of the term.

The liberalist logic of profit maximization, with objectives transited from the widespread desire for luxury and material privilege to the elitist perversion of absolute and totalitarian power, is the outcome implicit in the nihilistic and materialist attitude mentioned above, of the rejection of humanity within us, which ends (or begins?) by the rejection of death, deceptively equated with the tragic final defeat of the war waged by each person, personally.

Here is the meaning of the Franciscan evocation regarding death itself, our sister and companion in life.

As for poverty, the discourse is even simpler, although deserving of the utmost attention so as not to be misrepresented, at Schwab just to give a negative example.

First, the relativity of the concept must be kept in mind: it is the difference between individuals that allows the distinction between poor and rich, not possessions in absolute terms and their value, itself relative. Croesus would have dreamed of owning a smartphone with all its functions. Which today is within the reach of even the most dispossessed. With this trivial example we enter squarely into the technological question, which makes the great difference of the present and the near future from every other historical past.

Not every one of the 8 billion humans will ever be able to afford the cost of the most modern technological advances, from life-saving health care to luxury conveniences, in addition, of course, to basic necessities, which in themselves are also a problem for many today. Each frontier of technological research opens up increasingly complex and expensive application wonders, even if only trivially in the use of limited natural resources. Equally proliferating are the harmful and destructive applications of the latest high-technology products, armaments first and foremost but not only.

And woe if humanity had already reached the potential to invade the universe to overcome environmental limitations; it would be the apotheosis of the delusion of omnipotence and unlimited wealth, with all the nefarious consequences of what is already here and now a clear self-destructive tendency of the physical body, and before that of the soul.

On the contrary, the limitedness of personal resources induces one to make reasoned choices, to recognize the most authentic values, while not having to slide into extreme misery that prevents one from leading a dignified life. Above all, it teaches a sense of social justice and true freedom, which is above all inner. In the face of technological evolution, we are all relatively poor, in the same way that we are all absolutely mortal. To face this reality there is a great space of maturation before us, and everyone will have to walk it in stride, with his or her own legs, to reach places unexplored by the still childish and often spoiled humanity that has populated our history ferrying us here.

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Original column by Alberto Conti:
https://comedonchisciotte.org/sorella-morte-sorella-poverta/
Translation by Costantino Ceoldo