The Gregorian calendar is no longer a Christian calendar nor does it have a Christian or Western legacy. The Gregorian calendar of today brings humanity as a whole together regardless of the differences in languages, religions and orientations.
The world will soon bid adieu to a year with all its goods and bads, positives and negatives and is welcoming a new year with renewed hopes and aspirations, the year 2023 while we are still at the onset of the third decade of the new millennium.
It is a new millennium, however the human conflict still arises every now and then in various forms the latest of which is the Ukrainian war that affected the whole world while concerns of a new world war are looming on the backdrop of the East-West struggle and a wide expansion in armament, augmenting economic conflict and the spread of biological war.
All these factors are gloomy indicators of the coming reality particularly if the world is led by the politicians who are obsessed with creating a leadership out of the people’s blood, and priests who are living in an inherited metaphysics of the inevitability of destruction for the saviour to come and the beginning of eternity, and philosophers who justify the politicians’ deeds, artists, intellectuals and opportunists who run after short-lived personal benefits pertaining to egos, identities or ethnicities.
Human societies will, by no means, be emancipated from the bond of conflict that was synonymous with humanity from ancient time which is why wars, famines, destruction and displacement are taking place.
Some of these conflicts have turned into doctrines and fanaticism that are advocated by some people and contests that are glorified by poets. Such examples ever re-emerge in various forms and shapes.
In order for the human societies to liberate themselves from such conflicts, they should be freed from the interests of the politicians, the fantasies of the priests and their populist rhetoric that on the one hand justify the evils of the politician and realise the metaphysical illusions, on the other. Illusions are made by humans under the pretext of emancipation and to refuel conflicts. Humanity needs to be freed from the opportunists who consider nothing other than their personal interests.
It can only happen if and when we emerge out of the politicians’ box, the social and religious identities to the openness of pure human principles. Only then will we be able to achieve a universal human order that knows no distinction among people, only when we look to wider human space that is designed to confront conflicts that murder people and disintegrate human society.
After the first and second world wars, the human mind spawned a universal order that generated human rights, which in turn created stability, the benefits of which we are still enjoying.
On the contrary, the authoritarian state exercised superiority over the citizens as humans. The more the rights of citizenship were correlated with humans, the more they were freed from the tyranny of the authoritarian state.
However, the international charters of human rights are retreating due to political manipulation and personal interest.
Notwithstanding, human rights charters were the basis of the transition from pure humanity to the procedural state, the pragmatism of some procedural states caused them to control the bounties and interests of other nations in the name of human rights.
The crisis of veto whereby five states out of 193 states possess an unfair authority over the rest of the states should be resolved. The veto is an embodiment of negative pragmatism. The use of force should be resorted to only to realise justice.
Hence, states should waive off the use of force in international relations. The use of force should be resorted to achieve the interests of all countries rather than the narrow and negative interests of certain countries. That should be known to the philosophical and the religious mind so as not to copy negative human experiences.
Human societies have aspirations to realise their dignity and surpass destructive wars and conflicts.
They aspire to end tyranny, pragmatism, narrow interests, discrimination, human trafficking, biological warfare, armament, poverty, ignorance. This can be realised by cultural minds that are aware of itself as an identity that is independent of any personal interests or any forms of pragmatism.
With the new year 2023 around the corner, we hope to overtake the repercussions of the ongoing war in Ukraine and the ongoing events in the Middle East in general and the Arab particularly in Palestine, Syria, Yemen.
I hope that we overcome sectoral rhetoric to the united human rhetoric that achieves human dignity.
Realistically, we can endure living in the past no more. We can no longer bear negative identities which harmed the whole human society.
Badr al Abri
A writer is the author of 'The Jurisprudence of Extremism'
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