Jonah Mancini

I came into my room after class today and sat down at my computer in order to update my blog. I opened up my web browser and saw a title that splashed across the Yahoo home page, “Stephen Hawking asks, how will the human race survive the next 100 years?” This move me to deep thought about us human beings and all that we are capable of. Perhaps it is because I am a religious individual who attributes all good things to a higher being (that is the Creator), but I was not as negatively disposed as Dr. Hawkings’ questing seemingly expects one to be. His question would seem to imply that it is only though braving extreem challanges or through a major upheavle in current social/political/environmental practice with little hope of success will our race continue its postarity. This is not to say that I am blind to the current situation in our world today or even to the situation currently in the country where I now dwell (Israel), but I guess what it really comes down to is what I see potentialy dwelling in the hearts of men. People like Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Darlene Large, people who’s hearts bleed for those in pain and suffering. Just as the human condition enables world leaders and governments and mega-corporations and religious oppressors to create and maintain corrupt institutions, it also produces a subset of people who serve for the betterment of mankind and the world they live in by working within the current corrupt institutions whatever they may be and here by seasoning the otherwise bitter taste that is the Human race.

In my opinion, this is much of the force behind many of the teachings that Jesus Christ made, namely; “Love your neighbor as yourself” (though the Christ was not the first to make this claim, but was well founded in Jewish law and history leading up to Jesus?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ day as recognized by Jesus himself). The Jewish law found in the Torah instituted a system that allowed for the non-existence of poor or oppressed groups, but rather a complete sense of unity where debts could not last more then 7 years and no payment be taken for a debt that would be debilitating to the payee. Biblical perspective would also not only say for our neighbor but also for the environment (this includes dolphins, trees and the like - here’s one for the tree hugger) for it was the first command given by GOD to mankind when he was placed in the garden. There are echoes of this throughout proverbs and found more explicitly in the Torah. Not unlike people, there was a year, one in every 7, where the land was made to rest from its being worked. Also found to be informative to this matter is the well noted blessing Israel (Jacob) gives to his children, and more specifically his sons Simeon and Levi. It is stated this way:

“Simeon and Levi are brothers– their swords are weapons of violence. Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel.”

The credit of violence was not attributed to them only for what they had done to their fellow men, but also what they had done to livestock and for the whole of this were duly cursed. And just as the human condition produces warriors within the corrupt system for the salvation of the oppressed, it also produces warriors in kind for the sake of our good earth. As I see it, there is hope for mankind, a hope that looks beyond the next 100 years, beyond the next thousand years. Part of the human condition is that there is an everlasting hope for continuance. And I do believe with my whole heart that this hope will prevail.