Shoah

Another year passes and we find ourselves yet again at Holocaust Memorial Day; a time of global reflection on just how inhumane the human race can be, when it replaces people with ideas in its collective mind. Inhumanity is born of the abstractions of philosophy, religion and politics alike: a dark mirror to their intended obverse: the humanitarian and humanist reflected in the negative, both sides of that mirror justified by the common ground of those abstractions. But people are not abstractions, concepts or politically-expedient ideas. They are people: all one and the same. The irony is that the world of abstract ideals and concepts lies at the very root of that humanity: we think, conjure and invent these abstractions into being of our own volition.

So, what separates the good thought from the bad? Where are the absolutes that should, by all account, obtain in the balancing of human relationships and society? What differences mark the good actor from the bad? Is it that our philosophies guide our actions independently of ourselves, the progenitors of those ideas, as if our notion of the world is viewed through a smokescreen of our own making, reducing moral and ethical thought regarding our fellow human beings to a set of biased and partial guidelines drawn up by us as if unconscious of the process itself? What of morals and ethics as notions in themselves? They too imply absolute ideals that simply do not exist absolutely: they exist only in a relativistic philosophical realm codified, again by human beings, often to the benefit of a certain segment of society at the expense of others. So, wherefore is moral and ethical certainty? Where are the absolute truths? Mankind has been wrestling with this Pandora's box of intellectual conundrums for centuries, and as yet, has never come to terms with the essential paradox that is the human intellect versus human need. Shalom.