Page 7 - Issue 31

often extremely urgent , and each of them as well as the vital
concerns can claim ultimacy for a human life or the life of a
social group.

FALSE and TRUE ULTIMACY.

(An) example – (of false ultimacy) is the ultimate concern
with “success” and with social standing and economic
power. It is the god of many people in the highly
competitive Western culture and it does what every ultimate
concern must do. It demands unconditional surrender to
its laws even if the price is the sacrifice of genuine human
relations, personal conviction, and creative eros. Its threat is
social and economic defeat, and its promise – indefinite as
all such promises – the fulfillment of one’s being. …

NATIONALISM as ULTIMATE CONCERN

If (faith) claims ultimacy it demands the total surrender of
thos who accepts this claim, and it promises total fulfillment
even if all other claims have to be subjected to it or rejected
in its name. If a national group makes the life and growth of
the nation its ultimate concern, it demands that all other
concerns, economic well-being, health and life, aesthetic and
cognitive truth, justice and humanity, be sacrificed. The
th
extreme nationalisms of (the 20 ) century are laboratories
for the study of what ultimate concern means in all aspects
of human existence, including the smallest concern of one’s
daily life. Everything is centered in the only god, the nation