The
man that saves me from the fire has no face,
no citizenship, no religion. He's my savior.
So it is that I have to see my neighbor.
Happy new year, neighbor!
Who is my neighbor?
This is seemingly simple, my neighbor is the other one.
Yes, but otherness is so infinite that it is impenetrable!
Who on earth is the other one?
When I
look at the other one throughout the world and under all possible
circumstances, I see he is so
various, infinite or indefinite in every respect, that I catch
myself seeing a large number of others and doubting if each of them is
my
neighbor.
In
1492, the year Christopger Columbus discovers
America the dwellers of which, Caribbeans and Rad Indians, we Europeans
are going to slaughter, Isabella of Castile expels the Jews
from Spain. A Caribbean, or a Red Indian, or a Jew is not the
neighbor
of an European.
Twenty-one
years later, in 1517, Martin Luther founds Protestantism. The Catholic
and the Reformed are going to kill or harm each other for centuries. A
Protestant is not a Catholic's neighbor and so conversely.
Even
once resigned to different religions, Europeans do not experience love:
All in all they're interested in the other one not much apart from
destroying him, which was done only 100 years: World War 1, 70 years:
Auschwitz, or 25 years: the Gulag, etc. ago. Little time actually,
almùost nothing on a historic scale.
For instance, Mr
Sarkozy yesterday or Mr. Hollande today. Is he my neighbor, since I am
assailed with an irrational apprehension whenever I think of him? Quite
frankly I have doubts not about the Evangelical principle, but about my
real knowledge of what my neighbor is whenever I think of a man to whom
I as a man of God means less than his dog. I have to learn much about
what the other one is to me.
Otherness is still nothing but the
withdrawal of each man, to his self, his family, his village, his
ideas, simply to exist, since he does not exist for the other one.
Oh! We have not been short of humanists to call on us to love, from
Jesus to Erasmus and Albert Camus… in books.
But in reality I am unsure if things are better.
Things
are better but just seemingly. The other one takes up my job, he puts
his durty feet on the seats of my train or bus, he takes my family
allowance and my national health and pensions money. The "witches of my
neighborhood", as Montaigne
said, are still there with their veils on their heads, or bubus, or
gossiping tongues.
To think that lots
of people are interested in
their dogs, their cats or in extraterrestrial aliens before they are
interested in their neighbor.
All things
considered, the neighbor is still someone to be created in my mind.
So
it is highly appropriate to wish my neighbor to be born within me by
the day in 2013 and wish my mission to be unfailingly spreading two
concomitant ideas: Man has to be
penitent, that is, to
love, forgive, make peace, look for spiritual intelligence and freedom,
and penitents
have to look for other penitents
and so on, ceaseless series of penitents
looking for penitents in the course
of the generations coming.
This is the fundamental Message of The
Revelation of Arès.
Work will not be in short supply in my old years.
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