Everyday we are in a battle to hold on to our humanity within a system that is dehumanizing us. Can we crack through the bureaucratic fog to see the flesh and blood people standing in front of us? The waiter. The manager. The return clerk. The bank teller. The secretary...On and on it goes. If we are not careful, if we are not vigilant, if we are not prayerful modern life will dehumanize us. It is a demonic force that must be resisted. I keep going back to something William Stringfellow said, we must struggle to live humanely in the midst of the Fall.
~ Richard Beck
Please do read it in its entirety, in particular for the concluding story.
Last week my students and I talked about how our choice of verb in a sentence 'frames' reality - we choose how to describe a particular scene in the most effective way for our hearer but our choice of words inevitably also closes off ways of perceiving the same scene and guides our hearer to what and who we consider important.
We also learned about verbs of seeing. 'See' is a sense, so it is uncontrolled, while 'look at' is directed perception because there is more conscious, deliberate control of the action and its direction. When we look at something we deliberately hone in on a particular object in our line of vision. When we see, though, we also do this, just unconsciously. Even when we 'see' we have learned not to give everything in our line of vision equal weight. Dehumanization feeds this - we learn not to give all human beings equal weight, and we have to fight it, not so we can go around looking at everything (especially while driving) or hugging every passerby, but just as an awareness. Every pair of eyes is a connection to God, and every one has equal dignity, as Jesus (among others) has demonstrated.
I'm not sure this is terribly coherent but I've just had a huge meal out with my visiting parents at Milestone's and I think I have pasta stuffed right up to my fingertips and almost certainly into my brain.
2 comments:
I adore Richard Beck's blog, the content within it.
I'm quite getting to adore yours too. This is SUCH an important thing, to be able to see other humans with human eyes and to know they're human.
It can get a 'lil disheartening to realise what our society has produced. There seems to be an awful amount of people out there with narcissistic personality disorder treating other people badly. But of course, those people were so often treated badly in the first place themselves.
Surely this is just one of the most important issues of our time, considering how fragmented and almost-falling-apart everything is. I know for myself, when I feel like I'm in that space where I can really, REALLY see, seeing with somewhat less blinkers than usual, or feeling like I tear a little crack in the paper and see a little clearer (what some may call God and some may not but it delights me how the two join!!) we are so important, we so matter, all of us.
It's like we are this untapped potential walking around (not that I really like that term potential because it starts sounding a bit rah-rah pom-poms and I don't really mean it in terms of being a better person and able to therefore be a better consumer of whatever your fancy is. More that so many of us are so untapped when it comes to really knowing how to tune into another person, to listen, to try to understand. It's a bit difficult when everything runs so damn fast, but it's so important that we do. I think we're all starving to be noticed, really noticed, and the sickening narcissistic version of that is masking something very vulnerable and needful underneath.
Sheesh, sorry I wrote a novel in your comments :) Keep writing, I so enjoy the things you write about.
Sue, thanks for your comment. I love the idea of tearing through paper to see more clearly. I agree we're all starving to be noticed - I know I am. I think we have to remember what is easy to forget, that if we try harder to see others we'll be more seen ourselves, at least I think so.
Here's to things not being so damn fast.
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