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Revolutions and continuities
This idea succeeds from a fact that it is difficult to deny: in human history, there are consistent changes.








 

It does not only happen in our time: in other times and places, the idea that the human world leaps, that there are revolutions and progress that provoke new ways of thinking and living have achieved great acceptance.

That is why it is common to speak of revolutions: scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, technological revolution, the computer revolution, medical revolution, cultural revolution, political revolution, artistic revolution, and a long-etched revolution.

This idea succeeds from a fact that it is difficult to deny: in human history, there are consistent changes. It is not the same to live in a village where you have to go to take the drinking water that is in a well, you live in a city where the water comfortably comes home through a complex system of pipes. It is not the same to face disease with some herbs that, it is expected, have healing properties, that face it in a hospital full of appliances and with a wide range of intervention strategies.

However, paying too much attention to revolutions and changes implies the risk of leaving aside elements of continuity that cross all times and all places. Because the man of the cybernetic world has fears and anxieties, as Neolithic man also had fears and anxieties.



Someone will say that millions of children died millions of years ago because the health revolution had not arrived. It is true. But a greater permanence in time of so many men and women who died in the past in an early manner does not eliminate what is constant in human nature; for example, have wishes and seek the realization of short or long-term plans.

In every human being, there is a series of constant elements, which are valid for those who live in a skyscraper as for those who hid in a cavern. What are some of those elements? We're free and we're part of a group. We are impulsive and we can think with greater weight certain issues. We are infatuated and have a hateful capacity that can be destructive. We are fragile to the elements and able to use the force of the wind or the atom to channel it for the benefit of itself or others.

There are revolutions and there are continuities. Above all, there is a continuity that we cannot turn off with readings, parties, or with a passionate dedication to work (performed in the field or before a computer): the one that arises from the desire for immortality.

We are indeed born without anyone asking permission, as has been observed so many times. But a lot of what we choose every day is up to us. In the wide range of choices at our disposal, we more or less vaguely perceive that our temporal happiness and that of those who live more or less near us are more or less vaguely at stake. Moreover, more deeply, we are aware that what is given after death also depends on what we now do or stop doing.

Therefore, both the man who left a hut to go hunting, as the man who leaves his house to go to a highly sophisticated office, knew and know that one day will come the time to say goodbye to this uncertain world to introduce us in the mysterious world of the eternal, in the horizon where God is everything and where only worth having lived according to justice, love and truth. Three words that no revolution has been able to leave behind, because they are inscribed indelibly in the heart of every human being.








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