The value of life

If life is linked to a quantitative and qualitative progress, the life of everyone, and therefore also that of the poor, then it is worthwhile to commit to development in order to quantitatively increase life. This can be the first step. The second, consequent to the first, starts from the realization that life has been given to us with an enormous amount of waste.

You get the feeling that whoever created us used their pierced hands. One could very well love, believe in God, seek serenity with much fewer stars, with 50 thousand species instead of 500 thousand ... This thought, a little strange and veiled in romanticism, leads to a second indication: in the world there is an enormous amount of potential life, that is, we have been created and placed in a world that has in itself an enormous potential for life even under exploited. The potential for human life is actually very great, due to this "waste" (waste of course in a good sense) and this great profusion of life in the world. Then life is not only necessary, but life is believing in the world and having a positive awareness of it, believing that the things created and that we have at our disposal have a meaning beyond their being.

Life, therefore, is not only necessary for the realization of man, but it probably has a value in itself. This is why we believe in life and in the activities we do to promote it, not only because they serve someone else, but because they are part of our vocation, of our being men, of our meaning on this earth.

This idea comes precisely from the feeling of "waste": the enormous quantity of things that exists cannot be connected only to an instrumentality for a few or many men, but must have a meaning in itself, a proactive and planning sense, a optimistic and creative value.

from “Progetto” (now “NP”), 1992, n. 4

Giorgio Ceragioli
NP May 2022