CBCP Monitor Opinion Column Lifeguard: Nicolo F. Bernardo
EVERY generation comes up with its list of “wanted” and “unwanted” life forms, who’s in the hits and who’s not. Whether you are in or out for a certain right, a certain liberty, you must pass the certain taste of a “quality life.” The SWS survey that says Filipinos are most resistant to UN probes on human rights (46 % opposed) is perhaps due to a distrust of “might that makes right.” History is so full of it.
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Here’s a rundown of whether you qualify for “humanity” or for human elimination, depending on the beat of the times:
Ancient Greece. In: Male Hellenic. Out: Slaves and women.
Ancient Rome. In: Roman citizen. Out: Barbarian.
Medieval Ages. In: Believer. Out: Heretic.
Age of Exploration: In: Whites. Out: Blacks, Indians, savages.
Enlightenment: In: Rationalist. Out: Madman, the abnormal.
Romanticism: In: Bourgeoisie. Out: Commoners.
Modern Age. In: Arian. Out: Jews, “subhumans.”
Postmodern Age. In: Deviants, inhumans, quasi-human pets and robots. Out: Human embryos, “Pre-embryos,” fetuses and “vegetables.”
Notice that the name-callings and human classifications—cool in one generation, strange to another—are themselves effects of discriminations (i.e. others are ‘more equal’ than others) based on gender, citizenship, religion, money, race, status, or life phase. The summit of rights and privileges goes to the “favored life.”
But we can never be happy as long as our humanity or happiness hinges on a desired status, function, or identity rather on the value (and marvel) of life itself. It is all right to have more of life, for as Aristotle said, “living is not enough, one must live well.” Yet one cannot live well if one believes that life is always worth to be made well, whatever happens.
A Manila Standard columnist had it saying, he’s “pro-quality life” not “pro any life.” (Who is?) So I ask, can you have quality life without a life to qualify? Besides, pro-lifers value first and foremost human life, and certainly it’s not just any life. Our real worth flows from our human dignity and individuality, from being not having. Common sense will tell you that as a living organism you must have the right to live from the first instance of your being, and other rights—health, education, privacy, employment, etc.—equitably follow needs as you grow.
Do you want to know where your value lies? Ask yourself, what is it that you would rather die for, or kill for, than lose? Is that thing really worth a life? Worth your life?
Whatever your answer is telling on current views on human fulfillment and human rights. Many of our problems are the dues of inverting the pyramid of needs. We go for certain rights and wishes over the most basic rights and needs of others still unaddressed—right to security over right to life (‘preemptive’ war), right to justice over right to life (death penalty), right to self-determination over right to life (suicide), right to property over right to life (slavery), religious rights over right to life (terrorism), right to health over right to life (stem cell research), women’s rights over right to life (abortion), the value of wealth over the value of life (population control). To the point that some would cook up new rights—“reproductive rights,” and perhaps soon, urinary rights, skeletal rights, nervous rights, excretory rights, dermatological rights, etc. to demand a want that weights heavy on the most basic. The victim of this misappropriated ideology is the person himself—exchanging an intrinsic worth (life) for an extrinsic one. And every time we devalue a human being, we also devalue ourselves.
Or there they go again asking, is the “embryo” human in the first place? That rings a bell to long-held queries for granting humanity and personhood like, “is the slave really human?” “Are Blacks savages or humans?” “Is the Jew subhuman?” “Is the woman second-class human?”
When we are to decide whether an entity is “human” based on changing biological, philosophical, social, religious, or political apprehensions, we better dispense with the question and simply let that “life form” be unless it’s a real life threat to another. We do not determine human life. It determines itself with all its given human potentialities. Human beings are both being and becoming. The embryo is itself self-defining, self-determining. It lives its own life programmed to its human genes. The embryo is not a potential human being. It is what a human being is, and how a human being looks, at that stage. It would never be human if it never is. The material causes (parents) are not human if the effect (offspring) is not.
So again, human rights? These are not subject to who’s who choice. We don’t choose one life from another. Not even presidents can choose to protect the unborn but to hell he/she cares for adults dying in wars or killings probably because babies can’t make political stands as adults do. Pro-lifers themselves must learn this from history. One is supposed to save the most vulnerable life but must never neglect another. Following Mahatma Gandhi, John Paul II and Mother Teresa, we have to be consistent right-to-life volunteers and work even for the basic necessities of living.
Life is the first we gain, and the last we give. It’s a lesson to live about where to put our values as we eventually lose all that we have (including our loved ones) and like the Greek Medea we say, “Everything has gone, except myself.” Tao and s’yang tutuklas ng saysay ng kanyang buhay, at buhay n’ya mismo’y saysay. Man has to find meaning for his being, and his being is itself the meaning.
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