“Our hearts long to trust and be trusted.” Karl Jaspers.
What is the human world without trust? It is a world of lies and deceit that has lost its common purpose. Only in sharing the truth can there be trust. Without trust there can be no hope, no true happiness.
Every one of us seeks trust. If we feel we can no longer find it in our leaders or institutions, we must seek it out in each other. It is there we will find trust, hope and happiness.
A summary of Karl Jaspers’ writing, “Sunk in the noise of nationalism and technology, people become intellectually and emotionally stifled, stuck. The crowd rules. Slogans and rhetoric pass for meaningful conversations”. Marietta McCarthy, How philosophy can save your life. Penguin Australia 2009.
What have we learnt? A German survivor of the first and second world wars, Jaspers was an early 20th century philosopher. He still speaks to us with relevance, as if alive today. Nationalism is destructive. Those who seek advantage through manipulating others naive enough to follow blindly, to adopt the slogans of ill considered electronic media and rally to the flags of puppet masters – will be perpetrators of great harm.
However, Jaspers was not without hope. “Amidst discussion, a silence is possible in which people may listen together and hear the truth.”
Are we still able to effectively hear the truth, to discover and explore the scant remaining silence? Or have we sunk so deep into the swamp of nationalism and the noise of technology to be beyond positive, constructive, truth seeking communication?
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