Maha Nasser: Have we really risen to the level of humanity?
When man's life began on this earth, he began his life as a human kind. Humans are a type of mammal that eats, drinks, mates and reproduces by birth. Just like all other mammals. But man is distinguished from the rest of the creatures by the awareness and supernatural energy that he possesses. Over the ages, he has been urbanized and developed, and instead of living in caves, today he lives in huge and sophisticated buildings that provide comfort, safety and stability. Instead of using animals to get around, he built vehicles that would enable him to travel the world in hours. Of course, culture and art helped man to civilize and free himself from slavery and made him more aware of what was going on around him. When literature, painting, music, and then cinema, television, drama, newspapers and other means appeared, which connected the world together and made peoples learn from each other and be influenced by each other. Until we reached today the era of technology, the era in which one can obtain information with the click of a single button. The era when the world became like a small village. I can only say that we are a lucky generation. But despite the qualitative leap that man has reached at an accelerating pace, which began with the beginning of the industrial revolution in the last century, there are still some people who live by their human nature and not by their human values.
It is true that most people's today are civilized. But the concept of urbanization for them is living in luxurious homes, riding luxury cars, eating with fork and knife, wearing beautiful and expensive clothes belonging to international brands, and sleeping on comfortable beds. We are in the era of bragging about everything, and if that indicates something, it indicates the deficiency within us. Some did not understand that the concept of urbanization is to transcend our spirits, and to overcome our selfishness. Because overcoming selfishness is the true test for us in life. And we will not be able to be a real human being unless we transcend our spirit and rise above the material things of life and overcome the ego. Reflect on yourself well! If you envy others for what they have, if you do not accept other people’s differences from you, whatever these differences, in their colors, beliefs, language or ethnic differences, and If you feel racist towards people who are different from you. If you are jealous of the success of others, if you feel that you are better than others as well, and other negative feelings, you did not rise in your spirit and did not elevate your humanity, and I will not be able to say that you are a human being. Because you live by your human nature and not by your human values. You should watch yourself well, or criticize yourself if I may say so. Are you a positive and righteous person in society, because you are compelled to do so by the command of the law, and if the law is absent, you will not be like that? For example, do you throw garbage in the garbage bin because there are laws that tell you to do so, and if you do not, you will be punished, but in the absence of a law and no one will be punished for throwing garbage in the street, you will do so. I regret to say that there are many people who were good in their societies and positive, but they used to do so because of laws and regulations, and when the law lifted its hand from them, they turned into barbarians. Chaos filled their cities and homes. In fact, I pity the people who still feel these negative feelings, because they are related to matter more than they are related to the soul. A person is a soul and a body, which in other words is energy and matter. Whenever a person is connected to the material side more than spiritual, the negative feelings such as selfishness, envy, racism and other negative feelings overcome him, as well as life's problems, concerns, psychological and physical pain. The more he tries to rise in his spirit and relate to the spirit, the positive emotions overwhelm him, such as the feeling of love for others, the desire to help them, his acceptance of their differences, and the justification of their mistakes. Therefore, we must always balance energy and matter.
Every day that passes by a person is a divine gift and another opportunity for us, in which we must work a lot and learn a lot as well. Therefore, you must know the value of your presence in life and the purpose of your presence in life, in addition to the message that you must deliver. Matter does not overpower energy, and do not live in heedlessness without realizing the purpose of your existence. When a person sleeps, he does not realize what is going on around him, for example, whether it is raining or not, and what is going on during his sleep, but when he wakes up, he realizes everything. And there are some people who live their whole life asleep and do not realize the true meaning of life or the true purpose of their existence, and they wake up in the moments of death, only then they realize everything and know the wisdom of their existence, but it will be too late. Therefore, I say that every day we live is another opportunity for us to elevate our humanity, accept our differences, help each other, forgive each other for our mistakes, love each other and express that love. So, the real urbanization is your acceptance of the difference of the other and your acceptance of the other creatures that live with us on this planet as our partners on this planet and they have the right to a safe life just like us. Real urbanization is to have a law within us that holds us accountable if we make mistakes, not that we turn into savages in the absence of law, and it does not matter in which country we are or which law we submit. Today there is a lot of suffering and seeing suffering without being able to do anything is suffering in itself. We live today in a time in which we suffer many scourges. Wars on the one hand and disease on the other, not to mention natural disasters. So everyone is not okay and we need each other to be okay.
Now, with the onset of winter, we may not need warm coats, in order to protect us from the winter cold. But we need much more than that! We need warm hearts that protect us from the harshness of life, not only from the cold of winter. We need to feel for each other and support each other. We need a sincere smile, to loving souls.
