We turn on the news every day to find out what is new. But nothing seems new. It is the same picture over and over again, though with different actors. International, national, state and local atrocities, assassinations, terrorists attacks are running rampant.
We are getting so used to the world’s madness that it bothers us no longer. We at times blame the madness on racial, ethnic, language and religious issues. We seek to remedy the illness by addressing one ore more of these issues.
However, these individual issues are only symptoms of a more serious illness. We need to deal with the root to our madness which is our lack of considering and understanding what it is to be human. What life is all about! Not only human, but all life! Existence as such!
When our humanist Founding Fathers pondered the question of our humanity they saw it as self-evident that the foremost right with which we humans are endowed is LIFE.
Life, in all its complexity, was for them the central theme of being human. Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness were only secondary to a humanly endowed life! We are so preoccupied today with individual liberty and the self-centered pursuit of wealth and power that we destroy the foundation for it all: LIFE!
As Americans we ought to listen to the founding principle and consider it all important. Dealing with a symptom will only alleviate the madness momentarily while it at the same time makes the true illness more serious to the point of no remedy.
Jake Hjorth
Grand Marais
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