The Human Person is Meant for Love.

Episode 4: of Dr. J’s Daily Chats. I made a short video, posted on the Ruth Institute Facebook page on April 30. Here is the text. This will be the part of a series on the subject of truth. Speaking of truth, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.

Last time, we talked about the problem with experts. They know what they are talking about. But they only know about their own field. Their opinion on any other area of endeavor may be no better than anyone else’s.

Under the influence of infectious disease specialists, governments around the world are requiring extreme “social distancing” measures.

I’ve heard some heartbreaking stories the costs of these mandates. Elderly people living in nursing homes cannot have their loved ones come and see them. One elderly mother was inside the nursing home, with her son looking inside the window. She was crying for him to come in and hug her. She couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t come in. Some elderly people in this situation become depressed and stop eating. They are not allowed to hug their grandchildren.

I bet we can find a geriatrics specialist who will explain that this is not a healthy situation for the elderly.

Speaking of hugs: Babies need to be held. Babies need to bond, preferably with their own parents. We could easily find child development specialists who can explain to us that the failure to thrive syndrome is a real thing. These are babies who have no identifiable illness, who are fed, clothed, and properly medicated. But they do not grow or thrive and sometimes even die.

In fact, what child development experts now call “failure to thrive” was originally called “hospitalism.” The failure to thrive syndrome was discovered in hospitals in the early twentieth century. The staff was trying to keep the children free of germs.

The child development experts will tell you that keeping a baby free of germs by no one ever touching the baby is a “cure” far worse than most diseases.

What do the elderly and the new-born babies have in common? They are unavoidably dependent on others. In our modern age, we tend to think there is something wrong with people being dependent. We think independence is the natural state of human life. But the fact that babies can die without human contact shows us that human contact is not optional.

It is a basic fact: absolutely every single person comes into life as a helpless baby. Everyone is dependent on others, at some point in their lives. It is the only truly universal human experience.

In fact, I would go further and say this: the human person is meant for love. As Pope St. John Paul II once said, “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own.”  As far as I know, every branch of Christianity agrees with this.

That is why we cannot blindly accept the absolute priority of avoiding the spread of germs. We can’t go on like this. We are social creatures, meant to love and be loved.

We need some way of balancing our competing needs, and the competing forms of expertise. I will tell you more about that next time.

By the way, guys like Jeffrey Epstein know nothing of love. And he did not kill himself.

See you next time.