We can, through personal reflection and a bit of dialogue with concerned fellow citizens, begin to see and identify some of our commonly held perspectives – perspectives that have become habitual starting points for our thinking… and therefore have determined our actions. Economic desires, legal action, and exercising rights are certainly among the most common of these perspectives.
With a bit more reflection and reflective dialogue we can see how these common perspectives work to blind us to, or at least make obscure, higher notions. We notice that economic desires work to obscure virtue and virtuousness; legal action – reliance on law – distracts and seduces us away from the concerted effort required to develop wholistic and genuine ethics; exercising rights not only blinds us to dignity, but also greatly inhibits our ability to come together to create real solutions – solutions not only right for the one, but right and good for all.
What emerges from our reflection and dialogue is not a condemnation of these common perspectives (economic, legal, rights), but rather a real, yet somewhat unsettling, recognition of their limitations. We become aware of their lack of wholeness: Their lack of including the whole of humanity and the whole of life. We can see the output of these perspectives as more often leading to separateness, fractionation and, if unchecked, divisiveness… hindering our coming together in a process of accessing and building the wisdom necessary to provide the guidance required for developing wholistic ethics and wholistic ways of living and working. We need ethics that not only regenerate an inner sense of goodness in the ways we are living, but provide a true sense of hope for us and our children… ethics that can bring a renewed sense of faith in our ability to generate real and lasting solutions to the multitude of major issues facing humanity – issues such as environment, peace and health.
The new perspective needs to be one that includes each and all, honoring the uniqueness of each, yet good for all… one that serves humanity, not selfishly, but wholistically… one that recognizes that ultimately our well being is directly and totally affected by the well being of earth and her planetary life-giving systems and processes. The new perspective needs to be one that acts from the truth of our intended membership in the whole of life: We are created living beings, as dependent upon earth’s vitality – clean air, clean water, and vigorously healthy living systems (for example, estuaries) and processes (for example, pollination) – as are all of our fellow creatures of earth; and one that recognizes that we have a common Source, the Source of the ongoing creation.
As we are working on this new perspective, we hope that we the people will be able – in our heart of hearts – to say that we feel good about “how we are living” and “what we are living for,” and that we will be able to consciously and in good conscience say, “We as a people are doing okay.” To do so requires we be ever vigilant to see that our perspective is sufficiently whole and imbued with sufficient rightness and goodness.
