Anand Amaladass S.J.
The basic needs of human beings are said to be food, clothes and shelter. This would mean that human being is just reduced to material, physical existence. Human being is also spirit, which makes a lot of difference. Even when people have all these basic physical needs met, they are not fully ‘human’, they are not happy, content and fulfilled.
That means, there is another deeper need. That is, the human beings want to be accepted, recognized and appreciated by fellow humans. Man is social in the sense that s/he belongs to a community of people. This sense of belonging gives him/her security, worth, dignity. Even then the spirit longs for more, to reach out beyond this limited existence.
The human being is a person, which distinguishes him/her from the animal world. That is to say, s/he is unique, unrepeatable in any manner whatsoever, cannot be cloned; secondly, s/he is incommunicable, cannot be absorbed by another in any manner. That is the reason why we find it difficult to understand another person fully, even though we may be very close friends; thirdly, it subsists on its own. It is the core around which an intellectual being’s nature is built. This nature has intellect and free will. This core is unperceived. From this incommunicable reality stems human equality, dignity, responsibility.
Option for the Least is Biblical
Option for the poor in the biblical sense does not mean that people with means enjoy the option of helping or not helping the poor; rather, the poor offer an option to those comfortably well-off to join or not join the company of the messianic king in the new Jerusalem (Zechariah 9, 9). For, the God of the Bible stands on the side of the poor. “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.” (Matthew 25, 40)
It is philosophical
The most important Indian symbol of the reconciliation of the opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) is the Zero. In mathematics it means ‘naught’, but for the Indian mind the Zero is bindu (in architecture), ‘dot’, ‘seed’, ‘semen’, an unlimited entity. Zero and Nirvānam are called Sūnya, the Void, which means ‘excessive’, ‘swollen’ (from the root, śūn). Richard Lannoy thinks that ‘the Zero should be regarded as the matrix of negative and positive, the fulcrum, the hub of the wheel.’
It is aesthetic.
Philosophically seen the Zero idea is a meditation on the paradox of the maximum potential contained within an irreducible minimum. This idea is expressed by Mies van der Rohe (member of the Bauhaus movement) in the technological realm as ‘less is more’. The person who fully comprehends the mystery of the Zero is the one who has reduced himself to the ego-less state under normal conditions. This is in simple terms ‘weakness in power.’
It is economical
The phrase “Small Is Beautiful” came from a principle espoused by Schumacher’s teacher Leopold Kohr (1909–1994). The concept is often used to champion small, appropriate technologies or polities that are believed to empower people more, in contrast with phrases such as “bigger is better”. Schumacher’s philosophy is one of “enoughness”, appreciating both human needs and limitations.
It is ecological
As in the rain-forest, everything in the universe finds its place, flora and fauna, big and small. No one is excluded.
It is spiritual
St. Paul would say: “When I am weak, then I am strong,” (2 Corinthians, 12, 10). Gandhi said repeatedly, “I must reduce myself to zero”. Gandhi’s choice of the spinning wheel as symbol of weaving the destiny of India had its aesthetic association with Kabir, the weaver-poet, (who stood for Hindu-Muslim unity). The Zero idea is aesthetically and theologically very significant.
