We can determine the personality of a people, the place where they live, by the way they speak. The languages of hot countries are more vowelized, while the languages of cold countries are more consonantized. Some linguists say that this theory lacks scientific basis, although it is evident even to a deaf man that the sub-Saharan Bantu languages are more vocalized than the Slavic and Scandinavian languages.
In a vowel language, the mouth opens more; in a consonant language, it opens less. Certainly, there are no other obvious reasons than the temperature difference. Furthermore, this same temperature difference is already responsible for the thickness of the lips: the peoples of the tropics have thick lips, while the Slavs, for example, have almost no lips.
“Pro-drop” languages and "non pro-drop" languages
The "pro-drop" (null subject) languages are those like Portuguese, Spanish and Italian which have the possibility of omitting the use of the personal pronoun, since it is already identified by the form of the verb used in the sentence. By contrast, the "non pro-drop" languages (with expressed or explicit subject) - for example, English, French, German and other Germanic languages - are those that cannot omit the use of the personal pronoun because they employ poorer verbal forms, thus necessarily needing the pronoun in order to understand the phrase.
Emanuel Mounier's personalism considers man as a subsistent and autonomous being and, at the same time, essentially communitarian. A human being only develops as a person within the community and in confrontation with other individuals in the community or group. In this sense, we can conclude that individualism or selfishness is definitely not the best way for an individual to grow as a person.
This concludes that I, YOU and WE do not exist independently of each other. It is the contrast and the relationship that a human being establishes with his fellowmen, and not with things, that constitutes him as a person. The ‘I’ does not exist without the YOU and vice versa, the two do not exist without the WE, because it takes two people to create one, and WE, more than the sum of I and YOU, is love, harmony and cooperation between I and YOU. All other personal pronouns are superfluous and discriminatory.
For a grammatical Christian
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, (…) for the first things have passed away. And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’…’…I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end…’ Revelation 21:1-2, 4-6
As in Portugal, with the adherence to Christianity, we changed the name of the days of the week and stopped being worshippers of the Moon on Mondays, Mars on Tuesdays, Mercury on Wednesdays, Jupiter to Thursdays, Venus on Fridays, Saturn on Saturdays and the Sun on Sundays, while the rest of the peoples of Europe continue to worship these celestial bodies as the god of each day, so we should also christianize other aspects of our language and grammar.
The English language has 9 personal pronouns, relying on an impersonal pronoun "it" to designate things, animals or ideas; the other European languages have 8 personal pronouns: I, you, he, she - we, you, they (masc.), they (fem.). If we really wanted to adapt the grammar to Christian faith and humanism, we should live as if there were only three pronouns, I – you – we. All other pronouns I call them, not personal pronouns, but discriminatory pronouns.
In the Kingdom of God, in the new creation that Jesus came to inaugurate with his coming into the world, we only need three pronouns, for there are only three truly distinct entities among them. I am different from you, you are different from me, the two of us form a WE. He or she is a YOU to me; I see no reason for these pronouns to exist or even for them to exist in the plural forms. The others, be they (masc.), they (fem.) or you (pl.), are always part of the WE, they are also our brothers and sisters.
I don't see any difference between the YOU and he/she. The only reason these pronouns exist is to discriminate against the people to whom we apply them. For me, there is only the pronoun YOU. Similarly, I also see no difference between WE and you (pl.), they (masc.) or they (fem.); the only reason for their existence is to find in them differences that distinguish or discriminate from us. We would live better if these extra pronouns did not exist, because instead of making our life easier, they complicate it. They force us to find differences where they do not exist or those we find are the ones we already perceive between the I, YOU and WE.
I - ME (EGO)
The ‘I’ is the dynamic unit that constituted an individual conscious of his identity, separate from everything around him, be it nature, plants, animals, things or other people similar to him, and yet different from him. The long evolution of humanity to self-consciousness is recapped in every human being, from conception to the day around the age of six when the child recognizes himself as a person and has self-reflective thoughts.
Evolution from unconsciousness to self-consciousness
The "res cogitans" referring to the mind, thought, spirit and soul, and the "res extensa" referring to the body and matter represent a philosophical dualism that has its origin in Greece and reached its maximum expression in Descartes (1637), who stated that the relationship between the body and soul is like that between the rider and horse.
This way of seeing the relationship between the body and soul or between the physical part of our being and the psychic, spiritual and ethical part is pre-scientific and, curiously, unbiblical as well. The anthropological view of the human being in the Bible is closer to today's science than to Greek philosophy, the thought of Descartes and the thought of the Christian religion of today which is more Cartesian than biblical, despite the fact that we continue to say that we believe in the resurrection of the body.
This is yet another case where we can say that the Bible was right: for today's science, as for the Bible, there is no body without a spirit or no spirit without a body, the two are intimately united. The idea that the soul pre-exists the body, incarnates a body and animates it, and then disincarnates from this body and continues its eternal existence, is dogmatically impregnated in Christian theology as well as in the idea of reincarnation in the religions of the Far East. While few risk contesting it, I think it's another one of the false myths that makes our faith less plausible to scientific and modern minds.
We understand that the history of the evolution from unconsciousness to self-consciousness unfolds in parallel with the development of the brain from reptilian, mammalian to neocortex, as well as the emancipation or severing of the umbilical cord between Homo sapiens and the surrounding nature, a stage described in the Bible in the myth of the expulsion from earthly paradise (Genesis 3, 22-23) or in the myth of Pandora's box and in the theft of fire from the gods described in Greek mythology. From this moment on, nature ceases to be a mother to man and becomes a stepmother, from which man draws out his meagre sustenance, by the sweat of his brow.
Homo sapiens' self-consciousness developed from the relationships human beings established with their environment and with their peers, other human beings. Here we enter into a dynamic of "What came first, the chicken or the egg". I suppose that relationships with things and instruments created for a purpose, as well as the relationship with his fellow human beings, have forced the brain to develop. It takes intelligence to use instruments, but their use also contributes to the development of intelligence. It is a two-way process and there is a positive feedback from one to the other.
In the field of human relations, language acquisition seems to have played a crucial role in the evolution of human relations and intelligence in general. For example, there was a time when human intelligence was so limited that human beings did not know where babies came from, because between the cause and the effect there is a separation of 9 months. For this reason, human beings were not able to establish a cause-effect relationship and this was happening until the brain developed further.
Ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis
For nine months we live in symbiosis with our mother, to whom we are connected by the umbilical cord. During this time, there is no distinction between us and the nature that surrounds us, we are one with it. These 9 months can symbolize the millions of years in which the human being lived in close relationship with nature, as is still the case today with any animal. We can conclude that at that time the pronoun ‘I’ did not exist; this only came into existence when Homo sapiens emancipated himself from nature. For the individual being, the day of birth marks the beginning of this emancipation.
Until the age of 3, the child speaks of himself in the third person and, in most cases, instead of the personal pronoun he uses his own name. For example, instead of saying "I don't like soup", he says "Peter doesn't like soup." From this age onward, the child can identify himself, and is able to look in the mirror and see himself, unlike animals that seem to see another of their own kind. Another sign as the child begins to develop self-consciousness is the appearance of emotions like pride, guilt and shame. Complete self-awareness comes between the ages of 5 and 6.
The YOU-thing and the YOU-person
Martin Buber speaks of the relational ‘I’: : I-IT, in the relationship with things, the relationship between a subject and an object, and I-YOU, the relationship with people, the relationship between two subjects, that is, a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity. The purest relationship of the I-YOU type occurs between man and God, because often other relationships can be perverted and the person relates to his fellow man in the I-IT mode, that is, seeing others as instruments and things to be used. Another kind of perversion is the relationship with things in the I-YOU mode, or in personalizing and spiritualizing things.
Things are meant to be used, that is the truth of our relationship with things. Therefore, any development of affection for things is a fetish, it is a return to animism, it is to recognize them as people. On the other hand, we empty ourselves of our spirituality when we spiritualize things, because every affective relationship is a symbiotic relationship - something of me passes to you, and something of you passes to me. This is the right relationship with people, but not with things since it does not dignify me and it also depersonalizes me.
In the Gospel, we see how the rich young man (Luke 18:18-30) became sad when he did not comply to the invitation to leave everything to follow Jesus, because he could not let go of the riches. This sadness contrasts with the happiness of Zacchaeus for having managed to let go of his riches.
Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10), like the rich young man, sought Jesus because he suspected that happiness was not found in wealth. In fact, even though he was getting richer and richer, he wasn't getting any happier. As in the case of the rich young man, Jesus loved Zacchaeus unconditionally and chose to stay in his house among so many other houses in Jericho, in other words, he chose to stay in the house of the city's greatest sinner.
This gesture of Jesus helped Zacchaeus to take the first step in sharing, in freeing himself from the yoke of riches, by discovering that there is more joy in giving than in receiving (Acts of the Apostles, 20: 35). In making this discovery, Zacchaeus who had the stature of a child, grew to the stature of an adult. For this is one of the differences between children and adults; children find more joy in receiving than in giving, while true adults find more joy in giving.
It takes two human persons to create a third one, given this fact we conclude that everything is both social and individual. It takes two people to make one person happy: the human person is happy or unhappy always in confrontation with another; it is not possible to be happy alone, but it is possible to be unhappy alone. Individual happiness passes through the other, through the YOU.
Pleasures are sought directly, joy or happiness, which is prolonged joy in time, is not achieved directly. As I start a new day, I can say "I'm going to have this or that pleasure," but I can't say I'm going to be happy. Joy or happiness is the return of what I do for the benefit of the other. Happiness or joy is the secondary effect of an act for the general good or the particular good of the other.
YOU (ALTER-EGO)
‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.' Mark 12: 28-31
To love God above all things and your neighbour as yourself. It means that I must keep a distance from things, I must transcend them because they are not at my level: love is due to the Creator and not to creatures. We are only free of everything and everyone if we love and submit to God alone.
When we deny God, we easily transfer the love we should have for Him to creatures, idolizing them, that is, making them into little gods or idols. In my opinion, atheists and agnostics easily fall into the temptation of idolatry and as what they worship is not a single thing or reality, they end up being polytheists, that is, they end up denying the one true God and idolatrizing and worshipping many small realities and things.
If with things it is a virtue to establish and keep a distance, with people it is a defect to keep that same distance because the other is my neighbour. In fact, the other is an alter ego, that is, for me, it is a YOU here and now. This is precisely what is implicit in the second part of the commandment of love. Because the other is my neighbor, my fellow man, a person with the same dignity, with the same rights and duties, what is due to me is due to him under the same terms, the same quality and quantity.
Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! Genesis 4:9-10
Because he got rid of his brother, Cain excused himself by saying that he was not his brother's keeper; to ignore our brother is tantamount to killing him in our conscience. We should always know where our brother is, we should always worry about him. One for all, and all for one, is the motto of the Three Musketeers. We're not islands. Like the indigent beings that we are, today is the other who needs us, tomorrow we will be the one to need him.
YOU or He - She - They (masc.) - They (fem.)?
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. (…) and took care of him. (…) Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ Luke 10:29-37
Unlike YOU, the pronouns He, She, and both forms of They, imply or place a real or unreal distance between me and the other. For the priest and the Levite in the parable, the wretched who fell into the hands of the robbers was never a YOU, even when he was within their vision range which allowed them to see his wounds, and their hearing range, which allowed them to hear his groaning and to see that he was in pain and needed help. For those who are not in solidarity, the other is always distant, even when he is physically near, because he is always a stranger, a foreigner, an enemy, an unknown, a he or she or they, but never a YOU.
He – They (masc.)
These two pronouns, as well as their feminine counterparts, imply, as we have said, a distance from us that is spatial and temporal. The distance is temporal in that it refers to historical people, who have lived or who have not yet been born. This distance fades and they become a YOU the moment we relate to them.
Some think that the pronouns he, she or the neutral "it" in English serve to express objectivity. We, however, believe that the realities, truths and objectivity that WE discover are referred to by articles and not by pronouns; therefore we do not need these pronouns. For example, nature, truth, love, hatred, etc. are abstract entities which we refer to with or without articles.
If they are people from the past, I learn from their mistakes and virtues, and historical achievements, I am united with them by Jung's collective unconscious. If they are people in the future, I think about my legacy, what I will leave them in terms of my work in this world, as well as the kind of planet I leave them, more or less habitable. My efforts for a fairer society and a cleaner planet make them, although far in time, a close YOU, present in my here and now.
In a globalized world like ours, where we know events not after they happen, but while they are still happening, there are no longer spatial distances. We all inhabit the same common home, the planet has become small and fragile. On this planet, where 1% of its inhabitants own more resources than the remaining 99%, no one can say that the extreme wealth of a few is not inversely proportional to the poverty of many.
As someone said, poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the greed of the rich. The distant poor of Ethiopia or Bangladesh is not a he or she, or they, but a YOU to who, I am part of the solution or part of the problem - there is no neutral position.
She – They (fem.)
The history of the human species until practically our days has been like a bird flying with one wing; maybe that's why we go in circles and history repeats itself, and we repeat the same mistakes. Because only the man makes history, the woman is not part of it; her gifts and talents are confined to the domestic world, they are not used in history, politics, philosophy, science, or society in general.
Despite so many centuries of social and historical evolution in social relations, we reproduce the gender inequalities that exist in animals closest to us. That is, we use our mammalian brain and not our neocortex.
In the language spoken in Ethiopia, the distinction between genders is even more striking, because unlike European languages where there is only one form of YOU for both genders, in Amharic there is a masculine YOU (Anta) and a feminine YOU (Anchi). For sure the creation of this difference is not to exalt women, but to dominate them.
I saw this slogan in a high school, "sex-based professions are a nonsense". However, we create jobs for men and jobs for women. In this field, religion, at least with regard to Christianity (and more so in relation to Islam), instead of following in the footsteps of the Master who was the greatest feminist of all time in the good sense of the word, followed the chauvinistic male dominance of the prevailing culture. The Catholic Church continues to deny women access to the priesthood with all kinds of excuses.
Jesus was very different, he treated women and men in the same way, as can be seen in the episode of the woman caught in adultery and dragged into his presence (John 8:3-8).
Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? Matthew 19:4-5.
In relation to the creation of man and woman, instead of citing Genesis 2: 21-22 which says that the woman was created from a rib of Adam, Jesus prefers to cite Genesis 1: 26-27, shown in double quotations; therefore, he does not make a sexist reading of the Bible.
He is the first and only rabbi in Israel or spiritual master in the history of mankind who had female disciples following him in his itinerancy, from the beginning in Galilee to the end in Jerusalem (Mark 15: 40-41, Luke 8, 1-3). Jesus of Nazareth is the only founder of a religion who has not discriminated against women, nor has he ever made any sexist or negative remarks against them.
He has private encounters with both men (Nicodemus) and women (the Samaritan) (John 4, 5-7, 25-27); he ate with sinners and prostitutes; he let himself be touched by them as is the case of the sinner who bathed his feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair (Luke 7:36-38). For Jesus, women are neither a cause of contamination nor temptation, and they themselves felt happy in his company.
One woman poured perfume on his feet, another cried and cleaned them with her hair; the women of Jerusalem mourned his Passion, another wiped his face, they were witnesses at his death, his grave and his resurrection.
We - Us
When Egerton Young first preached the Gospel to the redskins of Saskatchewan, the idea of God's fatherhood immediately fascinated those people who had hitherto seen God only in thunder, lightning, and the roar of the storm.
Listening to the missionary invoke God as a father, an old chief exclaimed, "While speaking of the Great Spirit as you have just done, could it be that I heard you say, 'Our Father'?" "Yes," said Egerton Young. "That's too new and sweet for me,” continued the chief. "We Indians never saw the Great Spirit as a Father. We heard him in thunder or saw him in lightning, storm and snow, and we were terrified with fear."
"The notion that the Great Spirit is our Father is new but sublime to us." The old chief paused, seeming to meditate... it was then that suddenly, in a glimpse of glory, his face lit up like lightning and he cried. "Oh Missionary, did you say that the Great Spirit is your Father?" "Yes, " said Egerton. "And," continued the chief, "do you also claim that He is the Father of the Indians?" "Evidently," said the missionary. "Then,” exclaimed the elder, as if he had just made the greatest discovery, "you and I are brothers!" William Barclay Commentary of the New Testament
Discriminative YOU (plural)
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:27-29
Instinctively, the pronoun WE is music to our ears, it sounds good; it invokes in us feelings of community, collaboration, cooperation, acceptance, love, harmony, peace. In contrast, the pronoun "you" sounds bad since it invokes opposition, wars, controversy, discussion, rivalry, difference, discrimination, enmity.
Someone said that a camel is a horse designed by a group of people. The WE may be all that is described above, a triangle of love and brotherhood, but it can also be a Bermuda triangle, as I mentioned in the article about Karpman's drama triangle, where people, instead of meeting, get lost and dissolve into a relationship of mutual abuse. Man is always a social being, there is no alternative to community, that is, there is no other form of life equally valid. The alternative to a bad community, is a good community, but always a community.
If we are all brothers and sisters, the discriminative plural ‘you’ must not exist, for those whom we place in this group are like us, children of the same Father, from the same continent - Africa - and the differences we present, whether in skin color, shape or color of hair, shape or color of eyes or any other differences, depend on 25 000 years of adaptation to different environments and nothing more than that. The truth is, we all came from a common trunk. Any kind of discrimination is unscientific, ideological and biased, and looks for differences that do not exist.
"Narcissism of small differences" – so Freud calls the differences that we artificially seek, as if, to defend our idiosyncrasy, we had to annihilate that of the other. The same happens in the Freudian archetype of having to kill the Father in order to affirm our individuality. There are much more what unite us than what divide us; in fact, if there was an extraterrestrial threat, all of us, inhabitants of this planet, would forget these little differences and quickly become what we have always been and always will be: a big WE.
As for religious discrimination, I suppose that all religions seek a better world, a more just and fraternal society. The raison d'être of the Church and Christianity is to be the leaven of the Kingdom of God which is precisely this: a society where justice and peace reign (Romans 14:17). The Church therefore exists for the kingdom and not to proclaim itself. If all religions seek the same thing, then there are more things that unite us than things that separate us; in other words, there should be no religious wars.
Truth and objectivity
Polemics and discussions are language wars; the goal is not to discover the truth, but to have superior arguments, such as who has the better weapons to beat the other. It is important to realize one's own feelings when we enter into conversation with others, because the meaning of the conversation depends on these feelings, whether it will be a dialogue or an argument.
Dialogue, from Greek, means to seek meaning or truth through words. Truth is unique in its formulation, but plural in its discovery. Truth is like a puzzle that must be built and of which several people have different pieces. The mistake is to think that my partial view of the truth represents the whole truth, so I try to impose it on others.
The sine qua non attitude so that there is dialogue between two people is humility and understanding, and accepting that if two people dialogue, the truth is divided into two, if three argue, it is divided into three. The point is to recognize the other person’s part of the truth before I propose mine, because each person has a piece of the puzzle that makes up the whole truth.
If the number 6 is engraved on the ground between two people, one actually sees the 6, but the person on the opposite side sees a 9; who’s right? Both are right. Truth is like a diamond. Let us imagine a diamond in the midst of several people; the view that each has is different, depending on the light that penetrates the diamond and reflects its various colours; the colour that each sees is different, depending on their position. The truth is the sum of all possible views or colors.
The same is true of objectivity that we understand as a synonym of truth. Objectivity, like truth, is an abstract reality that is deduced or intuited from concrete and observable realities. Both may exist without subjects, but in their genesis they involved subjects - I and YOU - functioning as WE. Objectivity is a gentlemen's agreement at the end of a process of dialogue.
The WE of marriage
Love one another, but make not a bond of love; let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver to the sound of the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak and cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. Kalil Gibran, The Prophet
The two may even become one flesh, as the Gospel suggests (Mark 10:8), but they are always two people who do not live for each other, but for a common goal to which each contributes his or her individuality. Married love is not the two looking at each other, which would be selfishness of two, but the two looking in the same direction, which can be a child or any other project.
As Gibran says with the metaphor of the strings of a guitar or the columns of a temple, for the union to be strong, each of the two must cultivate space of individuality in order to grow. Similarly, he also says that the oak does not grow well in the shade of the cypress nor the cypress in the shade of the oak; the two need the sun directly on their leaves so they can photosynthesize and thrive. Each spouse needs to read their books, cultivate relationships with their families and friends. The union will disappear if individual freedom is lacking and each spouse does not feel good about himself or herself as a person.
The WE of friendship
It is said that a monkey and a fish were very good friends and played in the river all day long until one day, it rained a lot, the river engorged and the fish tried to swim against the current so as not to be carried away by the rushing water. The monkey seeing what was happening, went to save his friend by bringing it ashore. Of course now deprived of oxygen, the fish struggled between life and death by shaking vigorously, the monkey, seeing this, said, "I just saved your life and you're still protesting?"
The best form of friendship is to be empathetic with our friends: to see reality as they see it and not to try to impose our help on them. It is crying with those who cry, laughing with those who laugh, it is putting ourselves in their place. Far from giving advice, empathy uses silence more than word, feeling more than thought.
Empathy is getting in touch with what's alive in the other person, what's happening to them, is putting ourselves in their place. It is being in their shoes, it is seeing reality from the other person's perspective, seeing it as the other one sees it. Often, when others realize that we are unable to connect with them empathically, they desperately say "put yourself in my shoes". Thinking that I was being empathetic in giving advice to my father, seeking to comfort him during the last days of his life, he silenced me saying, “You speak like that because you are not sick”.
Hearing these words I realized that I was a long way from showing empathy to my father and he made me see that I was not with him. He did not need a quick fix which he knew did not exist, nor did he need advice; he only needed empathy and I was unable to give it to him. We think that by offering solutions, giving advice, comforting, we make the other person feel better, but the harsh reality is that far from making them feel better, we just add to their suffering.
Conclusion - Because my neighbor, distant or close, is anybody, the Christian grammar can only have three personal pronouns: “I”, “YOU” and “WE” resulting from the love, harmony and cooperation between me and you. All other personal pronouns only serve to create discrimination, rivalry and hatred.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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