These are moments of deep reflection, in the face of what’s happening in Israel and in the world. I feel a profound sadness for what I perceive as a clearly misguided direction in how events are unfolding and how difficulties are being faced.
My internal feeling is clearly “a desire to cry”; it’s a kind of helplessness in the face of what appears to me as a moment of clear folly and inhumanity.
I share these feelings with a very good friend, who tells me about what he does with his groups of racially discriminated people, who must confront the trauma of their past as prisoners in concentration camps maintained by the United States on the West Coast, in addition to an increasing racial discrimination in recent years in this country. The work is individual, one-on-one, seeking to internally reconcile these traumas, and at the same time develop an understanding of the moments (there are moments of progress and moments of setbacks, but nothing remains static; in times of increased violence, it is advisable to work a lot internally, maintain internal faith, and reconcile in each person… in this way, in moments of openness, there will be an internal strength ready to go out into the world and promote advances in humanity, making the best of what the new moment allows). He speaks to me about maintaining and strengthening internal faith, faith in those humanistic principles that we have cared for and defended for so many years and that seem to have stagnated in a world that appears to be growing in anti-humanism.
The ant work, taking care of reconciliation in each person, strengthening that internal faith in each individual, is what generates the necessary foundation for humanist proposals, emphasizing on the care of life and the human being, to have the opportunity to be raised and developed with strength in a future moment.
This is a dark moment in humanity. The media glorifies and exaggerates violence, thereby generating a counter-reaction of exaltation of retaliatory, revengful and inhuman responses. Governments are swayed by nationalist or extremist positions, both of which are clearly inciters of violence. They seek to justify themselves, but people in their hearts no longer believe them. These governments still have power and strength and impose themselves over the deep desires of their own people, most of whom only seek to live in peace and openly develop their best potential. It is clear that no humanistic solution will come from governments, let alone from nationalist or extreme religious groups seeking to impose their outdated and fanatical views on large populations, inventing false enemies and portraying themselves as victims, despite being themselves, the ones imposing their rigid convictions on others.
So, there will only be solutions from an organized and reconciled humanity that, from a deep sense of inner peace and inner faith, can recognize and advance in those upcoming moments of consciousness expansion (or moments of weakening of governments or authoritarian groups of any kind, or moments of reinforcement of rationality and/or human and compassionate spirituality). And for this, the solution in these tough moments of the human process is to maintain inner faith, strengthen personal bonds, and clarify where we can find spaces of openness, no matter how small they may seem. Only inner faith will help us overcome moments of crisis.
