Re-humanization is the challenge for 2024
On the Pope's closest rabbinical friend, the toll of famine, and how a small resolution for the new year could change a lot
The one New Year's resolution that would leverage more good than any other would be simple to describe, but require a great deal of conscious effort to implement. It asks (only, but also all) this: That every day for the entire year, each of us would choose to pause for just a moment -- ten or fifteen seconds -- to thoughtfully consider the complexity and richness of the inner life of just one other person.
■ We face significant challenges in the year ahead: Artificial intelligence is able to mimic human behavior like nothing we've ever seen before, raising thorny issues about how it should be treated and about how our habits of using AI might change how we treat other human beings. We see wars continuing with staggering death tolls. We see government oppression and food insecurity and unreliable and unsafe water supplies affecting millions, and it's hard to avoid reducing other people to numerals.
■ But if Rabbi Abraham Skorka, who co-wrote a book on interfaith dialogue with Pope Francis (before he became Pope), is right, then the only really durable way to break down conflict is by humanizing the others around us.
■ If everyone stopped everything every day to ponder the inner life of everyone around them, the world would grind to a halt. The gas station cashier cannot stop everything to "dialogue" with every person stopping in for a Mountain Dew and a candy bar.
■ But if one person tried to ponder the richness of the existence of just one other person encountered in their own life every day, that would be more than the capacity of a 737 after a full year. And if everyone did the same thing, it would be a profoundly different world.
■ De-humanization is the root cause of almost every one of our most sinister troubles. No one commits a war crimewithout first reducing the victim below human status. Most atrocities are the same. Even crimes and lesser injuries often require objectifying the other person. That's a habit that can only be broken by replacing it with something better. The vastness of the universe is too much to behold at all times, but it's worth considering from time to time. The same goes for the richness of the human universe.
