The Scandal of Human Civilization or the Mockery of the Family of Man
The Partitioning of the Family of Man
By 2023, human population present on the earth will clock 8 billion, according to the United Nations’ Commission on Population and Development. This means that the family of man will have 8 billion siblings by 2023. This means that the human family has about eight billion members. But sadly, there is no family of creatures that is more divided than the family of man; there is no species in the world that is more factionalised than the human species. Though man is the quintessence of creation and the master of the earth, he is the most disunited; though human beings are the only rational animals, they are the most disharmonious. This situation mocks the family of man and accuses it of being the black ship of the house. The mockery of man arises from those situations when people segregate between themselves and ‘other people’ or between their people and ‘other peoples’ or between themselves and the rest of mankind. The many forms of unhealthy and unnecessary barricades, is what we called the partitioning of the family of man.
The Badge of ‘Other People’!
As one among the 7.9 billion people currently on the earth in 2022, all other persons outside of me are rightly called ‘other people’. This is to say that, in the literal sense of the words, irrespective of how related or dear some persons might be to me, every human being on earth is to me ‘another person’, or ‘other people’. This is true! Therefore, every human being has those he correctly refers to as ‘other people’ without any intent or insinuation or implication of distancing or disregard or disinterest. But the designation ‘other people’ does not always refer to everyone else other than ourselves, as it should do. This is the problem! As it is, ‘other people’ is used more or less as a badge to designate, not all, but some; and indeed, ‘certain’ people.
Advertently or inadvertently, with the allusion of ‘other people’ we draw some people to ourselves and push others afar; we create an unconscious mental chasm and schism that subverts and sabotages the brotherhood of all humanity. And this is a common mentality! Perhaps with or without our intending it, the mental attribution or outright ascription of persons and peoples as ‘other people’ has caused several forms of derelictions and desertions among members of the same human family. The bracketing of ourselves and the barricading or blocking out of ‘other people’ has created cleavages and unnatural severances of unimaginable depths in the fabric of humanity, way beyond the natural and healthy variants that the creator built into our nature, such as race and nationality. The narcissistic badging and barring of persons and peoples as ‘other people’ is an unfortunate mindset that results in the many realities of the partitioning of our common humanity. This situation worsens in an age of individualism, in time of pandemics and isolations.
So, Who Are ‘Other People’?
Typically, more than we readily realise, the badge ‘other people’ is used to segregate among persons or peoples, as already underscored, rather than to refer to everyone else but me or us. Habitually, ‘other people’ is used to designate those perceived as less important, less close, less useful and even less valuable to us. Other people are those whose existence are believed to be inconsequential and irrelevant to us. Again, in reality, the tag ‘other people’ refers to persons outside our circle of families, friends, folks and favourite groups. But, as always, as our exigencies expand, this circle of accepted persons and peoples also expands, to include such groups as our race or region or religion or nation. But never does it include everyone, as it should do literally! Regrettably, with this mental apartheid of ‘other people’, many of our siblings of the human family are left out of our interest and placed outside of our solicitude. Often, again unfortunately, the barricade of ‘other people’ feeds into the negative vibes of individualism, parochialism, racism and unhealthy nationalism; it wrecks the common good of our humanity.
How Much Do We Need ‘Other People’?
‘Other people’ are usually those persons or peoples, individuals or nations, tribes or territories, classes or castes, races or religions, etc, that people perceive as less important to them! But, is it possible that in our common world, a common environment and a common system, there can be those that are relevant to us and those that are not? Can there be peoples and places in our mutual earth whose being has nothing to do with us and whose wellbeing is unimportant to us? Is it true that there are peoples and places in our common earth whose existence are negligible? In the family of man, are there people who matter and those who do not matter? Is it true that ‘other people’ are not important to us? Is it true that distant people are not crucial in our lives? Is it true that unknown people do not contribute to our everyday wellbeing?
Do we have any fundamental need of persons and peoples, tribes and territories, places and parts that we do not know or see and who we may never know or see? Have we any reasons to be concerned about the wellbeing of people very far away from us? And how much of such people do we need for a good or comfortable life, or in fact, for our very survival; so that we should be concerned of them? What is the reason we should care about people who have no direct impact on our existence? Why should we care about ‘other people’? This book attempts to respond to these inquisitions.
How Many ‘Other People’ Do We Need for a Good Lifetime?
Again, most importantly, we need to find out: how many people are enough for us, for whatever need of human beings or their services we may ever need in the course of our lives? Can we count the number of people one needs for a lifetime? How many would they be? Also, who and who are the people we need in life and we would be just okay? Who and who are the people ‘necessary’ for a good life? And who are those that are not necessary? We can also put it more directly, who are the people that are useless to our lives? Who are the people that do not have any impact at all and in any form, on our lives; such that they are not relevant to our existence on earth? These are existential questions, each and every member of the family of man, ought to ask and answer him, to enable him or her to apprehend and appreciate the reality of the ‘familyhood’ — the sisterhood and brotherhood — of all human beings, as well as the inter-dependence which nature built-into the system of the race of man.
The Scandal of Civilization — the Mockery of the Family of Man
Let’s also call this situation the folly of man! It is the flop of civilization! It is man’s miscarriage of priorities! It is the utmost crisis of the human species! Man’s crisis of identity! It is humanity’s deficit of kinship, so that he has forgotten to be his brothers’ keeper! The mockery of man is humanity’s apartheid against itself. It is the weak link of the human species! It is the failure of man to know his root! It is the scandal of the wretched and the affluent in the same family of man! It is the dilemma of sections of humanity impoverished in the midst of abundance! It is the refusal of arrogant man to see himself in his kinsmen and to accept all humanity as his kindred!
The scandal of civilization comes from the surprise that those who built cities and skyscrapers have not been able to build fraternity and fellowship among themselves! It is the reproach of the animosity among races and religions! The mockery of man is seen in the political intrigues of the dichotomy of the so-called first world and third world countries; the strange persistence of highly developed and underdeveloped nations in the same universal cosmopolis — the global village of the 21st century. The mockery of man’s civilisation is the contradiction in the persistence of ‘primitivity’ in a pristine world, or rather, the possibility of primordial living situations alongside glistering and lustrous cities, both around the same equator and along the same latitude.
The mockery of man is seen in society’s zealous defense of the right of a woman to abort her baby boy so that she can breastfeed her cat or so that she can be free to swim during the summer vacation. Is it not a scandal that man apparently considers barely every other species as endangered, except man himself; and works to protect other species, more than his own species? Is it not a mockery that, nowadays, man apparently concedes more rights and even budgetary allocations to other animals and the elements of nature, more than to any concession for his own family members, for ‘other people’ far or near from him? Man is also an endangered species, though he pretends it is sarcasm to say so. The same man who has conquered the gullies and valleys of the crust, the depths and breadths of the seas, the highs and heights of the skies, is yet to conquer himself. Man has studied and understood how barely everything functions, except how humanity can live in the confraternity proper to a family.
This is the scandal that mocks the laurels of man’s civilization! The obstacle that man has is man himself; it is the self, himself, herself, themselves! It is so because man has failed to put humanity in the centre of need; man has rather put his human family behind, but has put his nuclear family at the centre. Each man puts himself, herself or themselves in the front and in the centre of everything. Everyone puts his small family above the human family. Everyone puts himself or herself or his race or his nation or his religion, in the centre of need, putting humanity itself — his first and foremost family — behind. This is the problem! This is whence come the mockery of man and the scandal of human civilisation. This is the synthesis of human hubris! This is where man missed the mark! This is humanity’s utmost failure! This is the bane of our common world!
Some of the Foes of Our Common Humanity
In the light of the foregoing, the badge of ‘other people’ is without doubt a foe to the common good of our common humanity. The ego of the self and the instinct to preserve the self and the things that belong to it, is the reason for the barring of ‘other people’. The ego has been allowed to becloud the reasoning; the needs of the self have been allowed to override the common good. This situation has grown and festered and has trans-mutated into several forms and phenomena. These many formations of the same desire to supersede the common welfare of all with the particular welfare of one or some, are what has been termed the foes of our common humanity. The ones that quickly come to mind are individualism, racism, parochialism, nationalism, among others.
These are aberrations of the gift of individuality, ethnicity, particularity and nationality. They are harmful in as much as they seek to negate or relegate the collective destiny and community dimension of all humanity, while over-exaggerating particular interests; they over-emphasize individuality and independence or separation to the point that stifles collectivity, complementarity and confraternity. Though we all possess a common humanity, belong to a common earth, inhabit a common world and share a common exigency, individualism yet thinks only of individual persons or individual families; racism is yet concerned only about one of some races among many; parochialism is yet interested only in parts or places; while nationalism, yet wants the whole world to revolve around one or some nations. These and similar tendencies are harmful to the family of man and to the conspicuous reality that broad interdependence is the way to collective human wellbeing.
Michael Richmond Duru
20th of January, 2022
https://michaelrichmondduru.medium.com/subscribe
