Where were you born?
Category: Active Axiology
Apr
24
Edward Korbal, co-president of the RSHI Board, shares a series of prompting questions on birthplace inspired by a recent board meeting discussion and Chapter 1 of Freedom to Live. These provocative questions could serve as journal prompting or rich discussion.
"Whether you are a national or a foreigner depends upon the accident of birthplace. I could just as well been born a Russian, an Englishman, or an American. For the state to value the nonessential accident of birthplace higher than the essential of birth itself, one’s life, seemed to me degrading and undignified. It seemed to me that I was born to live for humanity, that the importance of being born was that and nothing else."
Freedom to Live: The Robert S. Hartman Story; Hartman, 2013, p. 15
I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA – I am an American. But I could just as well have been born an Australian, a Ukrainian, a Cuban, or a North Korean.
Where was your birthplace?
Does your birthplace determine your value?
Hartman spent his life searching for the answer to the following question. What is the value of a human life?
Recently, I was heartbroken by a comment made by one of our Institute Board Members during our quarterly Board Meeting who shared with us that they will likely face some challenges in getting a travel visa to attend our annual conference here in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in October.
This caused me to reflect, and I am also posing the following questions for your reflection:
Is their freedom to live of less value than mine? Than yours?
Who gets to determine this? The accident of our birthplace?
Does the value of a human life change according to the time, context, and circumstances in which you were born and in which you currently live?
What is the value of your life?