Down the rabbit hole of self-absorption

Anna Tarazevich

The individualism of the Renaissance, the dismemberment of man and his relations in the age of Enlightenment, and finally the subjective idealism of Kant, whereby our minds were taught to relinquish the objective thing, the trans-subjective reality, and to indulge in boundless subjectivism: these influences tore us from the moorings of our being. . . . We became imprisoned within the walls of our own selves. . . . The category “humanity” became foreign to our thought, and we thought and lived only in the category of self. 

— German scholar Karl Adam (1875–1966) Source

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Where doctors harm children deliberately

This hit me hard. https://t.co/TmOo8Ug6rB

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) February 9, 2023 

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Our battle with evil exposed in quake

Corruption leads to destruction ‒ Hatay, Turkey, February 8, 2023

Even after a century of war, terror and high-tech genocide, we are still inclined, in the Western world at least, to pretend to ourselves that the world has really become quite a pleasant place, with ‘evil’ merely a blip on the horizon with which we can deal easily enough.

However great the contrary evidence, this modern myth of the eradication of evil through ‘enlightenment’, leaving only a few minor mopping up operations (preferably in far-away places) before Utopia finally arrives, has taken such a hold on popular imagination that any idea of God having to do anything powerful and destructive to address the problem is regarded as far too drastic, far too dramatic. 

But none of the early Christians, and certainly not Jesus himself, would have colluded with this glossing over of the seriousness of evil. 

                                 — N.T. Wright in Revelation For Everyone (2011)

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Humanity's arrogance slapped down at UN

Mr Guterres in Tripoli, Libya. UN Photo/Florencia Soto Niño

The secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, is at the centre of the world's effort to maintain the well-being of every community and every person on this planet, our common home. When he expresses great fear at the outlook for our continued existence it warrants attention. That few news organisations bothered to cover his bitter diagnosis given before the UN General Assembly in New York this Monday says a lot about the lack of sensitivity of society's leaders toward those who challenge the world's prevailing arrogance, myopic ideologies and self-indulgent lifestyles.

Mr Guterres began:

Excellencies,

We have started 2023 staring down the barrel of a confluence of challenges unlike any other in our lifetimes.   

Wars grind on.   

The climate crisis burns on.

Extreme wealth and extreme poverty rage on. 

The gulf between the haves and have nots is cleaving societies, countries and our wider world. 

Epic geopolitical divisions are undermining global solidarity and trust.  

This path is a dead end.  

We need a course correction.  

As a vivid judgement on humanity he cites the example of the Doomsday Clock:

That symbolic clock was created 76 years ago by atomic scientists, including Albert Einstein. Year after year, experts have measured humanity’s proximity to midnight – in other words, to self-destruction.

In 2023, they surveyed the state of the world – with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the runaway climate catastrophe, rising nuclear threats that are undermining global norms and institutions.  

And they came to a clear conclusion. The Doomsday Clock is now 90 seconds to midnight, which means 90 seconds to total global catastrophe.

This is the closest the clock has ever stood to humanity’s darkest hour – and closer than even during the height of the Cold War. 

In truth, the Doomsday Clock is a global alarm clock.  We need to wake up – and get to work.  

The manner of behaviour promoted by some ideologies, institutions and political leaders are not only self-defeating but also immoral, Mr Guterres says:

The good news is that we know how to turn things around – on climate, on finance, on conflict resolution, on and on.  And we know that the costs of inaction far exceed the costs of action. But the strategic vision – the long-term thinking and commitment – is missing.   

Politicians and decisionmakers are hobbled by what I call a preference for the present.  There is a bias in political and business life for the short-term. The next poll.  The next tactical political maneuver to cling to power.  But also the next business cycle – or even the next day’s stock price.  

The future is someone else’s problem. This near-term thinking is not only deeply irresponsible – it is immoral. And it is self-defeating.   

What is immoral, sinful from a religious perspective, will by its very nature be opposed to true human well-being. Pope Francis, in his encyclical letters to world has implored everyone to welcome rather than despise the bonds that tie us together. His encyclicals have been described this way:

In 2015, Pope Francis completed the encyclical Laudato Si’ on May 24 on the care for our common home which has been foundational for Catholics in relation to listening to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, highlighting that all of creation is interconnected and emphasizing climate change and the acceleration and injustice of the ecological crisis and climate emergency. 

The most recent encyclical issued by Pope Francis on October 3, 2020, was Fratelli Tutti on fraternity and social friendship, in a global context of uncertainty due to the Covid 19 pandemic. 

Mr Guterres stresses the need to go back to the civilizational heritage that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights expresses:

Excellencies, we have an obligation to act – in deep and systemic ways. After all, the world is not moving incrementally. Technology is not moving incrementally. Climate destruction is not moving incrementally. We cannot move incrementally. This is not a time for tinkering.  It is a time for transformation.  

A transformation grounded in everything that guides our work – starting with the UN Charter [the foundational treaty signed on June 26, 1945] and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration – the distillation of our shared mission to uphold and uplift our common humanity.  

It was bold, ambitious and audacious. We need to take inspiration from its spirit and its substance. The Declaration reminds us that the “inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace.”  When I look at human rights in the broadest sense – with a 21st Century lens – I see a roadmap out of the dead end.

To work for peace is the first step because the shame of humanity is that "two billion people who live in countries affected by conflict and humanitarian crises".  

Excellencies, if every country fulfilled its obligations under the Charter, the right to peace would be guaranteed. When countries break those pledges, they create a world of insecurity for everyone. 

So it is time to transform our approach to peace by recommitting to the Charter -- putting human rights and dignity first, with prevention at the heart. That requires a holistic view of the peace continuum that identifies root causes and prevents the seeds of war from sprouting. 

The nuclear threat has become real again with the war in Ukraine:

It is also time to bring disarmament and arms control back to the centre – reducing strategic threats from nuclear arms and working for their ultimate elimination.

Nuclear-armed countries must renounce the first use of these unconscionable weapons. In fact, they must renounce any use, anytime, anywhere. The so-called “tactical” use of nuclear weapons is an absurdity. 

We are at the highest risk in decades of a nuclear war that could start by accident or design. We need to end the threat posed by 13,000 nuclear weapons held in arsenals around the world.  

At the same time, no Agenda for Peace can ignore the dangers posed by new technologies. It should include such measures as international bans on cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure, and internationally agreed limits on lethal autonomous weapons systems. Human agency must be preserved at all costs.  

The world's financial system shows how poor-sighted societies are through a lack of moral vision: 

Let’s be clear. 

When we see poverty and hunger on the rise around the world….

When developing countries are forced to pay five times more in borrowing costs than advanced economies … 

When vulnerable middle-income countries are denied concessional funding and debt relief…

When the richest 1 percent have captured almost half of all new wealth over the past decade… 

When people are hired and fired at will, but lack any form of social protection…

When we see all these gaping flaws and more…

Something is fundamentally wrong with our economic and financial system. 

He continues: 

 The global financial architecture is at the heart of the problem.  It should be the means through which globalization benefits all. Yet it is failing. The global financial architecture does not need a simple evolution; it needs a radical transformation. 

It is time for a [...] new commitment to place the dramatic needs of developing countries at the centre of every decision and mechanism of the global financial system. 

A new resolve to address the appalling inequalities and injustices laid bare once again by the pandemic and the response.

A new determination to ensure developing countries have a far greater voice in global financial institutions. 

And a new debt architecture that encompasses debt relief and restructuring to vulnerable countries, including middle-income ones in need [...]. 

Without fundamental reforms, the richest countries and individuals will continue to pile up wealth, leaving crumbs for the communities and countries of the Global South. 

Mr Guterres' desperation over the world's ignoring the threats to human survival is clear when he points to "fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits", this in a week when leading oil companies have reported record profits and a reluctance to forge ahead with renewable sources of energy. It is for that kind of reason, he says:

We must end the merciless, relentless, and senseless war on nature. It is putting our world at immediate risk of hurtling past the 1.5-degree temperature increase limit and now still moving towards a deadly 2.8 degrees. 

Meanwhile, humanity is taking a sledgehammer to our world’s rich biodiversity – with brutal and even irreversible consequences for people and planet. Our ocean is choked by pollution, plastics and chemicals. And vampiric overconsumption is draining the lifeblood of our planet – water. 

This is the year of reckoning: "No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers." The suggested immorality of the greed of managers and investors is coupled in Mr Guterres' plea with his call for the end to deceitful clean and green claims with regards products but also the heralding of what in reality are "fake carbon credits". 

Respect for each other is a further moral quality that Mr Guterres deems necessary to draw to our attention. He calls on "Governments, regulators, policymakers, technology companies, the media, civil society", with the last including individuals. Our moral obligation, personal as well as civic, is this:

Stop the hate. Set up strong guardrails. Be accountable [...].

All this is familiar territory for those imbued with an understanding of the history of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where Judeo-Christian concepts of how God-given dignity of each person demands respect for their rights and freedom were carried into those documents that were meant to lay the foundation for the world society after two horrific world wars and where communism loomed as a dark cloud over eastern Europe. 

In his 2015 letter Laudato Si' Pope Francis writes:

Sobriety and humility were not favourably regarded in the last century. And yet, when there is a general breakdown in the exercise of a certain virtue in personal and social life, it ends up causing a number of imbalances, including environmental ones. [...]

Once we lose our humility and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything, we inevitably end up harming society and the environment. 

It is not easy to promote this kind of healthy humility or happy sobriety when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude god from our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong.

A humble attitude toward other people and our common home, an attitude arising from the knowledge of the evil in our own heart, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pointed out, is expressed powerfully in a prayer Francis offers at the end of his letter: 

A prayer for our earth

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe

and in the smallest of your creatures.

You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.

Pour upon us the power of your love,

that we may protect life and beauty.

Fill us with peace, that we may live

as brothers and sisters, harming no one.

O God of the poor,

help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,

so precious in your eyes.

Bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it,

that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.

Touch the hearts

of those who look only for gain

at the expense of the poor and the earth.

Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,

to be filled with awe and contemplation,

to recognise that we are profoundly united with every creature

as we journey toward your infinite light.

We thank you for being with us each day.

Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle for justice, love and peace.

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The Creator’s lavish love

 

Zoom in on the Andromeda Galaxy with Hubble. What looks like a smudge of light to the unaided eye is actually a vast galaxy containing an estimated 1 trillion stars.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Full HD version on Youtube: https://t.co/uE6XQiyJ5e pic.twitter.com/NXK3LBQkM1

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) February 3, 2023

Galaxies can contain as many as 100 trillion stars. Astronomers believe there are about 170 billion galaxies in our universe. 

Eight principles God gives us for joy

Source

The more I give my life away the happier I become… Pride's the greatest sin because what does pride say – basically, I gotta fill myself up to be happy. I've got to aggrandize my ego. I've got to fill myself up with good things. But the basic spiritual principle is: No! It's actually by emptying the self out that I become beatus, I become happy. It's by letting go!

This from Bishop Robert Barron in his video sermon for last Sunday’s gospel. He titled the video The Key to Happiness. Catch his insights on the video or by reading here.

Friends, we have one of the great passages in the New Testament today for our reading, namely, the Beatitudes, taken from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthews, the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

Beatitudo just means happiness. I don't care who you are, what your background is, that's the one thing we all want. Everyone has that in common. We all want beatitudo. We all want to be happy.

Well here's [Jesus, God] telling us how to be happy. So we should pay close attention.

Living for the sake of the other

He says, first, “How blessed, happy … are the poor in spirit. The reign of God is theirs.” Why is this the first beatitude? Well, because pride's the greatest sin. What does pride say? Basically, I gotta fill myself up to be happy. I've got to aggrandize my ego. I've got to fill myself up with good things.

The basic spiritual principle is no,  it's actually by emptying the self out that … I become happy. It's by letting go, emptying out, living for the sake of the other. Not filling up the cage with all sorts of things but rather giving oneself.

So being poor in spirit means – don't think of it primarily in sort of monetary terms – it's a spiritual idea. Poor in spirit [means] the more I give my life away the happier I become.

Sorrowing for their sin

Next, “Blessed are the sorrowing. They will be consoled.” I know this can sound a little odd, like is this sort of a masochistic idea or sadistic idea…[but] the great spiritual tradition read it this way: How happy are those who are sorrowing for their sin.

We feel bad about all kinds of things. We feel bad because our dreams haven't come true. We feel bad because we didn't get the job we wanted. We feel bad because this relationship fell apart. But what's the one thing we should really feel sorrow over? Our own sins.

What do you mean? I'm okay and you're okay; I'm beautiful in every single way. Our culture today is telling me never to be sorry about my sins, never feel bad about myself. No, affirm myself at every turn. How's that working out for you? Look around the culture. How's that working out for us? Affirming ourselves at every turn, never admitting any kind of problem, to make you happy. It makes you miserable!

The key to happiness is being sorrowful for the right thing. Sorrowing for our sins – “they shall be consoled” the Lord says. Quite right. That's the first step toward repentance and toward the acceptance of forgiveness. How often do we think that the key to our beatitudo is being forgiven for our sins? Our sins are like a great burden, our sins are like chains.

The first step in losing those chains is to be sorry for our sins and thereby be open to forgiveness.

The goal is to empty ourselves

Third beatitude: “Blessed are the lowly. They shall inherit the land.” Again, it's so counterintuitive. Who inherits the land? The last time I checked it was powerful people, self-assertive people, those with no concern for the other. The Nietzschean Superman, the “I”, the “will to power” and “Don't get in my way. I'm the one that will inherit the earth”. Powerful nations willing to wield great weapons of destruction against their enemies. They're the ones who inherit the land.

No! says Jesus, rather the lowly. Think of it this way. Those who have emptied themselves, forgotten about themselves, are the ones who actually are closest to the earth. They're closest to reality. We're talking here about humility.

Don't think of that phony humility – someone who's humble says, “I'm not preoccupied with my own ego, how I'm doing, what impression I'm making. Rather I forget about all that. I get that monkey off my back and I lose myself in whatever I'm doing.

Notice, please, I'm lowly and therefore I'm close to the earth. Humble is from the Latin hummus and humilitas. Hummus means the ground, the earth.

When I'm preoccupied with my ego and my status, and how I'm doing, I'm divorced from reality. But when, in the simplest way, I forget about myself and I give myself to a book, or a person I'm talking to, or a task I have I become happy. Isn't it true? Think about it: The best moments in life are when you're least aware of yourself, least aware of your hang-ups and preoccupations. How happy are the lowly. They, indeed, will inherit the land.

Everyone's got a hungry heart

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness. They shall have their fill.” We're hungry and thirsty for so many things, aren't we?  I'm hungry for success. I'm hungry for more power. I'm hungry for material goods. I'm physically hungry for food. I'm hungry for attention.

Right. All these things we have – these hungry hearts, as Bruce Springsteen said. Everyone's got a hungry heart. We're always looking for what's going to satisfy us.

One of the most important questions to ask about yourself is this: what are you primarily hungering for? So amidst all these different hungers is there one that you really want? Is it success, money, power, fame?

The Lord says none of those will make you happy. They won't give you beatitudo. Now they're not bad in themselves… but the primary thirst of your life should not be for those things but should be for holiness.

What's holiness? Friendship with God. That's the one thing you should want above all as you're facing a decision in life. “Hey if I decide this it'll make me richer”. Yeah, but will it make you more of a friend of God? “If I choose that, it's going to make me more famous, for sure.” But will it make you a friend of God? “Boy, that's going to make everyone like me.” Yeah, I know, but will it make you more a friend of God? That's all you should be worried about.

So how happy are those who hunger and thirst for holiness? Listen, they shall have their fill because every other thing you hunger for in life you get it and it's fine, but it wears off. It goes away. It effervescences.  But your hunger and thirst for holiness, friendship with God, doesn't fade away, it intensifies.

What love looks like in a world of suffering

“Blessed are they who show mercy. Mercy shall be theirs.” Mercy is hesed in the Hebrew, misericordia in Latin.  Mercy is what God is. He's marked by tender mercy as in that beautiful translation of hesed that's in the King James Version of the Bible – the tender mercy of God.

What is that? Well, it's compassion. Look at that word compassion from compassio in Latin. That means to suffer; misericordia means the pain in your heart. It's the suffering that you feel in your own heart when you identify with the suffering of somebody else. That's what love, willing the good of the other, looks like in this world of suffering. You enter in a sympathetic way. Look at that word again – sympathia means to suffer with. You enter in a sympathetic, compassionate, merciful, way into the suffering of the world.

You know how many of us want to run from the suffering of the world: “Take me away from that”, “Make me immune to that” “Give me something  that will drug me so I don't experience it.”

Says the Lord: “The happier you will be if you identify in love with the suffering of the other.” Wait, trust me everybody! Your whole life will change if you let that sink in. If you say my task today is to, when I see suffering, to enter sympathetically into it. That to be merciful.

But if there's no anchor in your life...

“Blessed are the single-hearted for they shall see God.”  That's lovely. The single-hearted…That great line from Kierkegaard, the philosopher, [that] the saint is someone whose life is about one thing. That means he's a gathered person; he's involved with all sorts of things, might have a very busy life, but all of it is centered around one thing. It's the anchor in the rose window, around which the whole design is arranged.

If you can't name what that is for you, you won't be happy. If you say, “I'm a busy guy. I'm doing this and this, and [I’m] all over the place and, boy, I'm admired and look at all that [I’m] accomplishing.” Yeah, but if there's no anchor in your life, there isn't one thing that gathers all the things that you do, then  you'll be like the demoniac in the gospel: “What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” Right. That's a single person talking but he speaks in the splintered plural.

How blessed are the single-hearted! What's the one thing you want amidst all the desires of your life? It should be to please God. Again it's related to what I said earlier: If you're doing X Y and Z, but in all that am I pleasing God? That's the one thing that matters: a single heart.

“Blessed, too, are the peacemakers. They shall be called the children of God.” Shalom, that lovely word that echoes up and down the scriptures. The risen Christ says it to his disciples: “Shalom, peace.” God makes the world in a great non-violent act, not suppressing some rival power. The crucified and risen Jesus returns not in avenging violence but in forgiving love.

God is peace. One of the great marks of his followers is that they are makers of peace. Not only are they peaceful themselves but they produce peace. Try it sometime if you find yourself unhappy. How much time do you spend in the course of the day making peace. Not just tolerating wickedness, or not looking the other way, not walking away from it but entering mercifully into it and making peace.

Trust me. It'll make you happy too. That's Jesus’ point.

Woe to you if everyone speaks well of you

“Blessed are those persecuted for holiness’ sake, the reign of God is theirs.” Again, how counter-intuitive! Who wants to be persecuted? But if you're persecuted for righteousness sake that means you're walking the right path. We're living in a fallen world. We're living in a compromised world. If nobody ever criticizes you, you are not in a good spiritual space. Woe to you if all men speak well of you, says the Lord. They treated the false prophets in just that way.

One of the great marks that you are on the right path, the path of happiness, is that you [have to] endure persecution. Do it as a happy warrior, not falling into resentment, but saying “Hey, that's a sign that I'm on the path the Lord wants me to be on.”

Go to Matthew Chapter 5. Walk through these. They are the key to what we all want – beatitudo. 

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Thanks to Bishop Barron for unveiling God's word for us in such a penetrating way.

Ω Another inspiring consideration of the Beatitudes can be found on the Living Space website here. These eight statements are key to being not only a good Christian, but also a human being who knows how to live one's life fully, to live abundantly. Read these principles and learn how to enjoy the adventure that is life in response to God's call to grow closer to Him.

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Tết Quý Mão 2023 - New Year highlights

While the rest of the sinophile world follows China in ringing in the Year of Rabbit, Vietnam observes the Year of the Cat. The reason why Vietnamese have the Year of the Cat rather than the Year of the Rabbit is that the Chinese word for rabbit (mao) sounds like the Vietnamese word for cat, which is con mèo. Also, whereas for the Chinese the rabbit symbolizes mercy, elegance, and beauty, for Vietnamese, those qualities appear in the more familiar cat. Likewise, Vietnamese switch the more familiar water buffalo for the Chinese zodiac's ox. Anything cute brings out the women in their colourful clothing saved for this time of year so they look gorgeous in the photos that go on to fill social media. Most urban centres cater for this eruption of photo-taking by providing an array of flowers and vivid displays appropriate to the the lunar year's animal.

This from HCM City's annual Nguyen Hue Street extravaganza. In fact, wherever colour or some interesting feature is seen, there seems to be the right place for a Tết photo.

And:

And:

Flowers are an essential component of Tết, which heralds the northern hemisphere's spring. That's why the Lunar New Year is sometimes referred to as the Spring Festival. 

To decorate their homes, Vietnamese spend large amounts on flowers. Accordingly plants are tended so that they flower just as Tết approaches. Here we at an extensive night market, where we follow a family as they struggle to make a choice. 

A whole park is taken over for the sale of flowers, especially the Tết blossom trees, the yellow apricot mai of the south and the deep pink peach đào of the north.

To have the trees flower on the first day of the new year is believed to bring good luck, one of the superstitions that alienate Christians from the traditional aspects of  the festival. Instead of activities aimed at placating the gods of luck, health, wealth and happiness, Christians focus on the other features of the festival, those of fostering family and fellowship.

The vendor has done a wonderful job in having the flowers blossom at exactly the right time.

A decision has been made, a small grafted bonsai mai, probably five years old, is set to be taken home and put on display in a prominent place. The price for the potted prize was 400,000 dong, about US$17. For those who enjoy bargaining, this is the time to shine, especially as the days count down closer to New Year's Day, when the markets disappear, and vendors take unsold stock home till next year. 

A burst of colour to greet visitors to apartment and office blocks, even shops and homes. This splendid example of the mai will hold its flowers for up to two weeks, and then be returned to the entity it was rented from. On the tree are the red envelopes, bao lì xì in Vietnamese, referring to "lucky money", which show the regard of the older person for the young, or adults for those who are old. Gifts of fruit and a selection of foodstuffs are also common. In fact, there are many cultural elements related to Tết, such as special rice cake treats to eat, but also protocols relating to the sequence of a family's visiting relatives and social "elders".

Businesses get in on act at Tết with special advertising, just for the festival time, even down to providing beautifully designed envelopes for money gifts, with their brand name of course! Above is an example from a supermarket chain, showing the gifts people might buy for the occasion. The third pictorial envelope shows people going to a pagoda, a matter of course for many of the mainly Buddhist population. Thanks to ScooterSaigonTour for this example. 

I hope you enjoyed this insight into a rejuvenating event that consumes the attention of a large part of the world's population because of the shared happiness it provides and the solidarity it cultivates by focusing, not on the desires of the individual, but on the family and the ties that bind a society together. 

All that remains is to wish you a belated Chúc mừng năm mới!

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