A Radical Personalism

"Every human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history with its empires, its wars and revolutions, its blossoming and fading civilizations."
-- Nicholas Berdyaev

Nicholas Berdyaev was an important influence in the thinking of Peter Maurin, co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement. His importance to Maurin was his radical personalism: he believed that social institutions exist to serve the person: to the point of each person's full development and liberation. This philosophy is the stunning opposite of the "Darwinian" economics and politics of the dominator paradigm.

For me, the philosopher Simone Weil most clearly and profoundly articulated the essence of radical personalism with this statement: "We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love." There you have it in a nutshell: both the vision and the plan of action: nothing less than a total "rEvolution"! And this is a "rEvolution" that recognizes every "you" as field general: who are you going to help? What will your course of action be? How will you engage? Will you recognize the mutuality of your liberation in mercy and justice? When will you begin?

Radical personalism is the "bread and roses" of the new solidarity paradigm which is -- right now -- coming into being. As the corporate state maximizes its power (and yet scrambles in fear and delusion), a new world of equality, justice, kindness, earth reverence, and love-in-action is already being born in countless hearts and lives. This "sanctity of passion" is the finest tribute any human being can render to the Holy One: to live in such a way that body, mind, and soul are fully alive and engaged in the transfiguration of time and place into the "beautiful now" of the New Creation!

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