To save a life is to save all humanity
“Whoever kills a soul, it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves a soul, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.”
The Qur’an 5:32
The White Helmets are a group of Syrian citizens that perform search and rescue for people caught in military attacks and bombings amid the country’s long running civil war.
Their work is dangerous and deadly. They risk life and limb amid sniper fire and unexploded ordinance to rescue the living and the dead from the rubble and carnage.
In the city of Aleppo alone, 13,500 people have died and 23,000 have been injured since the civil war reached the city in July of 2012. Across the country, more than 200 White Helmets have been killed coming to the aid of fellow citizens and military combatants on all sides of the conflict.
‘Any human being, no matter who they are or which side they are on, if they need our help, it’s our duty to save them,’ says Abu Omar, a White Helmet volunteer from the city of Aleppo.
‘Every morning, I wake up and do this because it’s my duty, my humanitarian duty. In the White Helmets, we have a motto: to save a life is to save all of humanity.’
Obu Omar makes no distinction between man, woman, child or soldier, regardless of racial, political or religious affiliation. His ability to see the oneness of humanity is a profound observation because it is so often ignored or forgotten.
Let’s remember that humans are one species (homo sapiens) and share a common set of genetic, behavioural, cognitive and anatomical features. And while there is endless variation among us — such as skin colour, language, culture, and religion — we are one mob. We are diverse but we are one humanity.
This is an unassailable fact and yet one glance at the news reminds us that it’s a fact under continuous attack across the world. Bigotry. Discrimination. Xenophobia. Racism. Conflicts and clashes rooted in imagined differences. Killings and violence based on a blinkered amnesia concerning our common humanity.
A belief that we are fundamentally alien from each other is an example of a category mistake. [i] For instance, the racial bigot who hates or fears people from another ethnic group mistakenly believes there is a fundamental and unassailable difference between his ethnicity and people from another ethnic group. Like a man who misconstrues a mirror for a window, the bigot defends his belief because he believes it to be a fact, not a perception based on a category mistake.
‘We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness,’ said the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.
This statement speaks to the indivisible oneness of all things, which is the fundamental insight of Buddhism regarding the nature of reality.
One’s sense of being separate from others is a perception rooted in a socially and philosophically-constructed belief arising from dualistic thinking, which has captured modern western thinking especially since the writings of René Descartes.
Dualism says the universe and its constituent bits, including all sentient beings, is out there, external to me. This is a category mistake because we believe one thing is another. This illusion also informs the mistaken belief that “I” am a separate self from “you”.
When I wake up from this illusion, I dissolve the boundary of otherness I create between me and another: I realise that I am my brother, my sister and all humanity.
This is why saving the life of an individual is to save all humanity. This is the truth that Abu Omar knows in his in bones and lives each day as a sacred duty.
For me, Omar’s example invokes a big question. When I dissolve the imagined boundary between us and see that you are my brother, my sister and humanity itself, what’s my sacred duty?
[i] Ryle, G (1949). The Concept of Mind, University of Chicago
Dan Gaffney MA, MPH is a teacher and author. This is an excerpt from his new book and podcast series, ‘Journey Home — Essays on Living and Dying’ was published in November 2019.
