The totality of our shared humanity
So, where does all this leave us? When discussing our shared humanity with a friend recently, he said, “We have a shared humanity but we don’t have a shared experience.” Indeed, my experience in the UK is very different to fellow human beings living in India, Sudan or Brazil, for instance. Also, apart from our wide differences in experience, we need to be realistic about the negative side of human nature. Human nature is a mixture.
Desmond Tutu (Referred to in: ‘An inspiring friendship’) and his daughter, Mpho have written a book, The Book of Forgiving. In it, they write:
We are able to forgive because we are able to recognize our shared humanity. We are able to recognize that we are all fragile, vulnerable, flawed human beings capable of thoughtlessness and cruelty. We also recognize that no one is born evil and that we are all more than the worst thing we have done in our lives. A human life is a great mixture of goodness, beauty, cruelty, heartbreak, indifference, love, and so much more. We want to divide the good from the bad, the saints from the sinners, but we cannot. All of us share the core qualities of our human nature, and so sometimes we are generous and sometimes selfish. Sometimes we are thoughtful and other times thoughtless, sometimes we are kind and sometimes cruel. This is not a belief. This is a fact.
We are, every one of us, so very flawed and so very fragile. I know that, were I born a member of the white ruling class at that time in South Africa’s past, I might easily have treated someone with the same dismissive disdain with which I was treated. I know, given the same pressures and circumstances, I am capable of the same monstrous acts as any other human on this achingly beautiful planet. It is this knowledge of my own frailty that helps me find my compassion, my empathy, my similarity, and my forgiveness for the frailty and cruelty of others.
IofC very diverse group Action for life was based in India
Tutu and his daughter are right. I’m not suggesting that enhancing the sense of our shared humanity would answer all our problems.
There would still be many conflicts of interests and disputes to solve,
from personal through to international.
But, founded upon such a spirit
there would be a sounder basis
to build from.
“We do not ask of what belief you are, but of what spirit.”
Grigory Pomerants. Russian philosopher