My Message

And we do not respect the other person: this not-we with whom we live, with whom we deal, and with whom we make up a single human existence. Often we deceive him and scheme against him and deny him his right to freedom; and often, too, we mock him, diminish his worth, and degrade his standing — for no reason but that we do not respect ourselves, and so find no truth, no good, no beauty in anything beyond ourselves.

Thus has our failure to respect the other person brought upon us this false, barren existence, in which nothing is born but thorns and from which nothing springs but emptiness. Have we ever thought — and very seldom do we think — why woman occupies among us this lowly station, wavering between an artificial modern elevation and an old, deep-rooted abasement? And why, of all pursuits, nothing flourishes in our society but politics and commerce? And why we can scarcely find a single social undertaking in which dealings are so ordered as to be safe from chaos and dissolution? And why we bury the truth, and turn away from it, and proclaim everything but it? And why we abide by the law only under compulsion, and trust one another only warily and fearfully?

The truth is that this affliction of ours is far deeper than it appears. The person, at bottom, has no existence in our life. We think in nothing but the mass and the number; we take account of nothing but the "I" and the "you"; and of concepts we grasp only the impersonal ones: the nation, nationalism, the people, the community, the party, the state. As for the person — for whose sake all things exist, and without whom nothing exists at all — him we despise; we turn our backs on him and build between him and ourselves an impregnable wall of doubt, charlatanry, selfishness, hatred, and envious disregard.

How often we have called, and still call, for the mending of our condition: we demand rulers of stronger character, cleaner hands, and truer knowledge of the country's real interest; we demand a parliament that represents the people's hopes and rights, protects its interests, and enacts for it the laws that secure its tranquility and progress; we demand officials who do their duty in conducting the people's business without bribery, favoritism, or foot-dragging; we demand this or that economic and social system which we imagine will establish justice among the individuals of the people, giving each his lawful due; and finally we demand of the foreigner that he leave us alone — that he not assault our independence, nor meddle in our affairs, nor bestow a part of our homeland upon the vagrants of the earth.

We demand all this, and things past counting and reckoning, repeating them every day in our speeches, our conferences, our newspapers, and our conversations. But the fundamental thing — without which nothing is given us and nothing can be gained — of that we are utterly ignorant. That fundamental thing is the person: the person in whom alone lies the power of life, by whom alone the locks of existence are opened, and upon whom alone the grace of heaven descends.

If we truly wish to exist in fact — a worthy, effective existence in civilization and history — then we must, among all else that is required of us, turn away, with earnestness, sincerity, and love, from the mass and the number, from the misleading concepts that express nothing, and from the "I" and the "you" and their strife, toward the "he" — the other person — to respect him, to love him, and to be faithful to him.