To Feel The Pain of Others

Sometime in the early 13th century, approximately between 1209 and 1210, date is not quite established with certainty, was born a man in what was a region in old Persia. His real name was just as indeterminate, Saadi or Sadi, but clearly he grew up in a place called Shiraz.  Today, he is mainly written about as Saadi Shīrāzī, the writer and a philosopher of sorts from Shiraz.

However, his writings, mainly poetry, lived on. Today, one of his writings are written in gold letters above the entrance of the United Nations, translated as follows,

"All human beings are members of one frame,

Since all, at first, from the same essence came.

When time afflicts a limb with pain,

The other limbs cannot at rest remain.

If thou feel not for other’s misery,

A human being is no name for thee". 

Below is, I think, a better, albeit a non-rhyming version, but with a more powerful meaning:

If the sons of Adam are part of one single body

They are of the same essence.

When time afflicts us with pain

In one part of that body

All the other parts feel it too.

If you fail to feel the pain of others,

You do not deserve the name of man.

The irony is not hard to miss. It is on the building of a world body that was created by man immediately after the last world war.  It was clearly meant for the elimination of any more wars between people. The hopes and dreams that it evoked clearly remain unfulfilled, as if the organization has never existed.

Perhaps, it is because it still is an organization made by man.

For what it was created for, it can be said that the U.N. has not succeeded, now almost failing, but not without a lot of effort in the way its hopes are expressed with borrowed words. Below, is a sculpture created by one famous  Soviet artist, Evgeny Vuchetich, that was presented to the United Nations Headquarters on 4 December 1959. 

There is a Biblical quote below it from the Book of Isaiah 2:4 ESV,

 "He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore".

Words, words, words, hollow and weightless, and tragically meaningless, however countless times they are repeated. 

Yet, what has the world got for all the energy and money that went into creating and maintaining the U.N.? If it were a business it should have long gone into bankruptcy. Yet all nations have only succeeded in throwing good money after bad; it still continues to do it today.  If it was created where its first order of business was to prevent future wars after 1945, how many wars have since occurred?

The Parable of the Air

Air that is invisible, like it is nothing, is a lot of something. It is invisible to be nothing so we can see what is in front of us, near and far, yet it is a powerful thing because when in just three to four minutes that we are without it we will cease to exist.  It is invisible but it is how birds are able to fly and airplanes to soar high and far so we may travel over distant land and sea.

Air is invisible but does it not carry so much power when visiting us as a hurricane or tornado? Yes, there is no getting around it, air may be invisible but it is a fierce carrier of energy. NASA estimates that, "In fact, during its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs!" And what is the carrier of that energy?  Air.

What is my point in all of these? 

Air is what is between two men facing each other.  They both share the same air to breathe and it is what caries their voices to talk to each other. But it is also the same air that will carry foul and hateful language between the same two men.

Uncontrolled anger and extreme carriers of hate also use air as a medium for projectiles, drones and missiles to travel through to inflict pain and destruction over distances.

Why?

As we all can see, that is what happens when we lose the ability to feel the pain of another, followed by the numbing of our own pain because ..

If you fail to feel the pain of others,

You do not deserve the name of man.

When a fireman dashes into a burning building to save a mother and her child, he abandons his fear of pain to his body because he felt the pain of another human being.  The sacrifices made by one human for another are proof that the misery of another is the same essence the next person can feel because pain is the language we all understand.

Indeed, it is our greatest fortune that we live in a world where apparently there are more of us who do feel the pain of others. If it were not so, how did our civilization manage to be where it is today? We have reasons to be hopeful but there is so much that can cause us to worry too.

Our desire through the justice system to impose measure for measure the application of pain or anguish to punish the deed of one person against another because we felt the pain of the latter is both tragic yet justified. But is it really measure for measure? Take the case of a serial murderer who killed ten people. Our justice system can only punish him once through the death penalty.  Isn't life imprisonment in solitary confinement more apt because of the seemingly endless days the convicted killer must confront and be confronted by the wickedness of his deeds? The debate started long ago and rages on to this day.

When nations wage war against each other do they not feel the pain of each other's deeds?  

Thus we are back to the futility of the verses written by Saadi Shīrāzī many centuries ago or by the hopes written in the Book of Isiah.

Our hopes and fears can only be alleviated by the fact that perhaps the distribution of goodness over that of what is bad in  human nature leans even if just slightly by a  thin margin but  lopsidedly in favor of goodness to insure that civilization survives.