2020: A Human Crisis

We face a human crisis, a world where the value of human life is no longer seen as fundamentally valuable.

Here’s a lecture from 70 years ago where Camus speaks about a world where the reaction to human tragedy is anything other than horror–this isn’t the old tragic past– it’s the world we live in today.

In his lecture Camus tells us about the spirit of the french people and how they endured and reacted to these tragedies, find the link below.

The deaths of 184K Americans are a statistic and or a human sacrifice for the economy. There is no one to be held responsible for these lives. (for comparison 214K people died in the Civil War)

The Beirut explosion which entered our media sphere as quickly as it entered it has left people to ponder whether this was a murder by incompetence or a conspiracy.

We know that there are children at the border suffering conditions that are essentially those of a concentration camp.

The BLM movement highlighted the disregard for the lives if black women and men and was met with even more violence.

There are acts of what one can only call terrorism from white supremacists, and our government’s response is what we can only call fascism.

And the day to day bystander who rather than wear a mask and act in the interest of the greater good justifies their selfishness with poor logic and obscure argumentation. They only shows themselves to be selfish and ignorant.

In his lecture Camus speaks of an American spirit – optimistic, joyful, pragmatic and driven by life affirming qualities. This is not the spirit we see today, where resentment, hatred, fear and conspiracies have taken over.

In today’s world we can contemplate the death or the torture of a human being with a feeling indifference, friendly concern, scientific interest or simple passivity.

Yes–there is a human crisis, since putting a person to death can be regarded with something other than the horror and scandal it ought to provoke. Since human suffering is accepted as a somewhat boring obligation on a par with getting supplies or having to stand in line for an ounce of butter.

It’s too easy in this matter to simply accuse Hitler and say that since the beast is dead the venom is gone.

We know perfectly well that the venom is NOT gone–that each of us carries it in our own hearts, and we can sense this by the way that nations and political parties continue to regard one another with the vestiges of anger.

I have always believed that a nation is accountable for it’s traitors as well as it’s heroes, likewise civilizations specially the white man’s civilization in particular are as responsible for their perversions as for their successes in this light we are all answerable for the legacy of Hitler

Viggo Mortensen (yup Aragorn) is a performer of the highest caliber fluent in multiple languages including french. In this video he reads and translates a lecture from Albert Camus from 70 years ago.

Albert Camus is an Algerian French philosopher of the post-war era, few could have stared at the darkest side of humanity and come out on the other side with a philosophy of optimism I absolutely recommend listening to this lecture.

Camus’ Speech starts at 16:23

The world is neither better nor more reasonable, we still haven’t left absurdity behind, but we have at least one reason to force ourselves to change our behavior and this is the reason we’ve been missing:

The world would still be a desperate place if men and women did not exist…. But they do, along with their passions, their dreams and their communion, a few of use have combined a pessimistic view of the world with a profound optimism for human kind.

We can not pretend to escape from history for we are IN history, we can only aspire to do battle in the arena of history to save from it that part of man that does not belong to it!

Man without turning his back on history, will no longer be enslaved by it.

Hope this is brings you some sanity and energy to fight the good fight.