REVERENCE FOR LIFE
"I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live"
“...why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only?”
-by Barbora Horská (Intern at Improper Walls)
When hearing of a white male doctor, rushing to Africa to build a hospital, it comes somehow naturally to feel a bit suspicious. Especially considering it happening in 1912 in a place that was still a french colony by then. And indeed, there are those who accused the Alsatian polymath Albert Schweitzer of going to what is today known as Gabon, to exercise an absolute power. Lachlan Farrow, president of Albert Schweitzer Hospital, claims on the other hand that for others he was a European who learnt how to become an african chief, who might have been perceived harsh and dogmatic but only to the point to bring the locals to work on building the hospital for all of them to be treated in.
Unfortunately, the Schweitzer’s own words on the address of the local people don’t give much space to be perceived otherwise than paternalistic at best. Constantly referring to Africans as children and treating them as such is proven not only by his infamous quote from his book On the Edge of the Primeval Forest “I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.” but as well for his refusal to properly train the locals as nurses and midwives. Despite available sources, he instead chose to depend on european staff for several decades.
One could try to defend the man by his upbringing and even praise him for such an enlightened worldview for that era. But while the historical context can help us explain, it should never be used as an excuse. He was after all the one who opposed colonialism and called for reparations for everything Europeans caused to the oppressed nations, the critical theologian, someone who studied variety of religious texts from christianity to buddhism just to establish his own ethics coming out of idea that:
“we are brothers and sisters to all living things, and owe to all of them the same care and respect, that we wish for ourselves.”
All of this then sheds a very ugly light on what this text was initially supposed to be about. The Reverence for Life. The term I personally feel a strong affinity with and was grateful to find as it puts into words the feeling that stands behind my frustration with anthropocentrism. The idea that there is no need to rationally justify care for the environment. Even more, putting very idealistic cause into realistic use, openly admitting there is no such thing as being fully ethical. Acknowledging our limitation while not using it as an excuse to harm, coming to the conclusion that:
“Standing, as all living beings are, before this dilemma of the will to live, a person is constantly forced to preserve his own life and life in general only at the cost of other life. If he has been touched by the ethic of reverence for life, he injures and destroys life only under a necessity he cannot avoid, and never from thoughtlessness.”
We could again argue what these so-called necessities are. Perhaps we could fall into the rabbit hole of endless discussion on human nature where all the aspects of self blend and oppose each other at the same time depending on individual worldview, self-awareness and acquired level of what Jung termed as shadow work. Yes, the “necessity” means very different things for different people and there certainly is more to life than physical survival. It is indeed the thriving we should be talking about. For humans, pleasure and comfort is for sure a significant part of that. Unfortunately enough, the history of dogmatic morals used to control people for centuries created a collective shadow strong enough to destroy whole civilizations over and over again.
While it is natural to be drawn to and feel fascinated by this darker part of us, we should never let it overpower us. Luckily, there are healthy ways for us to explore what we have hidden culturally and personally to avoid the mentioned “thoughtlessness.” It is important to discover our true needs and then freely live in order to satisfy them, but not at the expense of another’s well-being. Whether human, plant-based, fungi or anything else that naturally performs its will to live.
And as we should surely avoid dismissing Schweitzer’s racist comments, we can still find valuable lessons in his environmental ethic on how to reconsider our approach to what is outside of us. But as this teaching comes out of inner realization on a deeper level than rational understanding, we might need to do some more work to put our Egos back into place where we are all siblings of the same age, just different experiences…