on human dignity...

for the past week or so i've been auditing a grad class at iliff school of theology: history of christianity up to the middle ages... and as any discussion that is relevant it is messing up with who i am, and as i sit here typing this, trying to process a little of it, what i really want to do is either curl up on my couch under the covers and cry and fall asleep and/or just puke incensantly because it is messing me up... oddly enough, both are signs of my being alive.

some might say that history repeat itself. i'm learning more and more to say that it isn't history repeating itself as so much as innate characteristics of the human nature that surface and resurface throughout time. and stories from thousands of years ago seem to be in essence extremely similar to stories told today.

it appears to be that as humans we have a desire to control that which is unknown. there are many factors that plague different civilizations, and we all act and react out of our own circumstances. oh, but fear seems to be the constant motivator par excellence. and that which doesn't look like me we would like to quench, lest "that opposing view" takes control and then the world as we know it would be over...

fear. control. in the midst of dealing with this we seem to constantly forget human dignity.

my understanding of human dignity defines it as a glimpse of the glory of god in each person expressed and manifested in each one through the uniqueness of their creation.

the easiest way to control something/someone is to minimize its existence.

case in history, hitler. hear me out, i'm not minimizing anything that he did, his crimes were crimes against, well, at the risk of being redundant, human dignity. but no one person could act alone. yet not many of us could name his #2, #3, all the others around him that with him made possible the violence towards so many. by centralizing all of our thoughts and emotions in just one human being somehow to this day, just 61 years after the end of ww2 we would like to delude ourselves into the notion that this particular ideology has been taken care off - when the essence of those crimes is still alive and well in our very modern and/or post-modern society. and to use him as an example from the other point of view, his actions were out of wanting to regain control of what he thought was his.

where am i going with all this? i believe as a human society trascending the boundaries of race, religion, ethnicity, nations, etc. we are all guilty of minimalizing the human dignity of those around us. and that's where conflicts arise, each party so immersed in their own ideology that it is almost impossible to get your head up for a quick breath.

whenever we minimize someone else we become idolaters - the minimization of something/someone usually means that something/someone else is being exalted. most of the times it is our own self that gets exalted. sometimes it is our way of thinking, it gets cloudier and cloudier to the point that we can't see our idol basically because it is all that we can see.

and that makes me sick to my stomach. the idea that i am capable of doing such thing revolts me. the idea that most civilizations have functioned out of this paralyzes me.

right now all i can do is acknowledge and be aware that most if not all of the time i function out of my reality and my experience, which includes all the joys of life as well as the hurtful moments, those that have mostly healed and those wounds that are still tender, even those that are still gushing.

i can only pray and hope that as i move into this awareness more and more i don't project that which is mine unto others - and if i do, that i'm aware of it. i refuse to treat anyone as anything less than a human being. and i would hope that others around me would do the same. i don't want to control and/or manipulate. i can only hope.