We live in a world filled with loving and caring people. We all crave a world filled with love and care.
Yet most of us doubt that we can experience a loving and caring world beyond our own private lives and homes.
Why? Because the ethos of the capitalist marketplace, which places greatest value on money and power, has infiltrated our personal lives, shaping our unconscious and conscious beliefs about “human nature.”
In the economic marketplace we are taught to look out for ourselves, maximize our profits, and do what we need to do to get ahead. Predictably, we then build walls around us to protect ourselves. The powerful drive within all of us to be loving and caring seems so “unrealistic” in this situation.
To successfully transform our society from its current obsession with acquiring material goods, we need to help connect people with their deepest yearnings for a world of meaning and purpose. We need to place priority on the extent to which institutions and policies nurture our capacity to respond to other human beings as embodiments of the sacred and to respond to the grandeur of the universe with gratitude, awe, and wonder.
Then we will begin to rebuild trust in each other’s goodness and start to believe that compassion and kindness can flourish not only in our homes but in our communities and our workplaces as well.
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