Summer 1972

Page 84

LIBERATION

195

cloned an outmoded position of privilege, he will be both constrained to act and free to act. CONCLUSION

I hope the members of powerful nations will someday hear the Third World's call for liberation as a call to transform their own society from within. Historically we made a decision to become technical, economic, managerial in our relation to reality. The decision was remarkably effective. But, when coupled with the insistence on primordial innocence, it made us lose sight of any reason to respect or listen to the less powerful. According to this perspective, the loser is a loser not through any fault of the winner. It is simply that he cannot pmduce; he cannot contribute to the common weal as the winner can. He does not deserve a voice. For rich and powerful men and nations to hear the poor and weak, to grasp the authentic humanity in their struggle to vindicate their integrity after so long being dominated, to accept the implied accusation and to ask effectively for forgiveness is to be willing to redefine who we are. It entails t..ansccnding the horizons of our culture, breaking loose from the historical imaginative patterns which have molded us and told us who we are. To hear the cry for liberation is to receive, in other words, the grace of conversion.


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Summer 1972 by Chicago Studies - Issuu