A character in a novel I've just finished reading says of modern (Italian) society that "our problem is that we've ceased to believe in the things we used to believe in, but we have failed to find anything new in which to believe." Those words will stay with me for a while, and I find in them an essential critique of modernism, or post-modernism I suppose, that we ignore at our peril.
The new atheism propounded by Dawkins et al with what one can only describe as evangelical zeal can be very persuasive, but ultimately in this new unbelieving world there is a silence at its heart that ought to be more terrifying than we allow it to be. This silence is not so much the absence of God as the absence of Good - or, indeed, of any moral absolute that might encourage us as human beings to feel we have anything more in common than a genetic identity that is the result of chance mutation.
But this has less to do with the annoying buzzing of the new Darwinians as with the fracture of society into virtual communities, a dubious privilege granted us via our ready access to swift transport, good communication facilities, and the various manifestations of the electronic media, along with, of course, the freedom and prosperity to use these as we choose. Virtual communities may seem superficially similar to real communities, but of course they are not, not least because we can edit out those we find difficult or irksome in a way that we can't so easily in the traditional geographical community, and, I suppose, because we can hide and pretend more easily. We're much more able than we used to be to choose and live out our own version of truth without being even in serious contact with other interpretations of reality.
"And who is my neighbour?" Jesus was asked. Not an easy question even then, and clearly a harder one today, but the answer is still the same. My neighbour isn't the person I like, or the person who thinks like me, or the person who belongs to the same clubs as me: he or she is the person who is in my power, because I can help them, support them, comfort them, befriend them - give them things they need, enhance their own freedom to choose. Or I can choose not to.
On the Jericho road, two people went past on the other side, one man - the least expected - stopped and helped. There are still plenty of Good Samaritans around today, I'm pleased to note, and I should I'm sure take comfort and hope in the fact that something intrinsic within us seems still to motivate good and kind and often sacrificially courageous action on the part of my fellow human beings. Even so, though, am I right to worry that to act in such a way is to swim against a stream, a tidal flow, that - while making us feel more powerful and in control - in fact restricts our vision and takes away the incentive to recognize our neighbours and to care for them as we should?
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