Nasty, brutish, and short

The seventeenth century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes once described life as “nasty, brutish, and short.” I don’t subscribe to his philosophy which represents an individualism where life is a war of all against all and where “homo homini lupus” – where humans are as wolves to each other. But sometime that is the way it is for the poor.

The violence among the poor seems to be part of the reality of the poor here. A few days ago a woman I know who works in Santa Rosa de Copán told me of a man from her village, her aldea, who was in the hospital. There had been a fight in the village and he had been attacked with a machete and his right hand had been severed and his back and head were torn open by machete wounds. Another man had died in the same fight. Two of the woman’s sons may have been involved in the attack in some way. But she took him in for the night after he was released from the hospital too late to return that day to his village. Grace in the midst of violence.

I saw him briefly before he left. I was almost moved to tears – not only because he had lost his right arm. Though fairly young, he was nearly toothless. The weight of poverty had already laid him waste before this act of violence.

Last November visiting a friend in Alkmaar, Holland, I saw a stone plaque on the town hall with these words of Seneca: “Homo res sacra homini” – humans are something sacred to each other. I prefer this to Hobbes’ view, but I know that this is a task – not a mere hope.