“I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.”Taylor Caldwell
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0015591
ReplyDeleteChristmas Morning, Christmas Message, Christmas Moaning?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/1221146/Weihnachten-im-Morgenland?
ReplyDelete"We are never alone" is nothing else but a programm! And surprisingly it is a good programm, much better than Sartre's and Beauvoire's pseudorealistic programm of "aloneness".
ReplyDeleteThe most specifically human need is the need of a witness and "Mitwisser", who is no complice. But man doesn't only need this witness and "Mitwisser" of his life, he needs also an antidote against the poison of a fatal formula: conscience<self-reference<egocentrism<antropocentrism.
In other words, he needs training for an ex-centricizing empathy. He needs the training of anti-egocentrism and anti-antropocentrism, because he is longing for staying super partes, like an extraterrest contemplating earth and life on earth.
An efficient exercise for the training of mirror neurons can only be artistic. The most simple and efficient model for this ex-centric contemplation has always been religion. But also the reading of the great ancient authors can do a lot, if our desire to near a far and extraneous epoche and mentality is prudent and strong. Yet religion is more than the exercise of excentric empathy (sharing the lives of men of the past), it is also the training of a generalized sharing: "We are never alone".