Kindness and Civility
In our small world, we don’t always agree on the best course of action. Previously, I’ve lobbied for natural priorities, like giving up our bus seats for the infirm, encumbered, parents with kids. But it’s not always so clear. To live together harmoniously, despite all our differences, we need civility and kindness arising from fellow feeling as a priority.
Enlightened people know this.So much hinges on our cultural bents and biases. Because there is a wide range of disparate assumptions, views, values, beliefs, expectations and priorities, let alone individual wants and needs, access to accurate information, the ability to assess, question, and understand where others are coming from, it’s no wonder we keep bumping into each another, not perceiving that our misunderstandings arise from not having a common denominator.
In the culture of community, the bottom line is not fiscal
impact, but the well being and fellow feeling of its members. Together we thrive, getting by with a little help from our friends. In the culture of corporate America, it’s me first and big bucks. What happens when cultural values collide? If we apply the business bottom line to community and academic life, as if applying the rules of bakery to medicine, we have a mess. No. Don’t put patients in the oven at 350.Interestingly, enlightened businesses are incorporating community values by profit sharing and respecting rather than commodifying and exploiting employees and customers.
This is a new era, new century… I’d say the women’s century. Time to realign and embrace what supports the ongoing well being of watershed, biosphere and all denizens. Mercy as well as justice, grace as well as power. Does anyone still consider this idealistic, hence unrealistic? Look at the operation of systems. In an ideal state, a car functions as it was
meant to and there’s nothing unrealistic about that. Of course things break down, wear out, become obsolete. They always do. Our work is in repair, in rising to occasions, members of the human and planetary community, not mere consumers,top or under dog. Thank you, Darwin. Onward.
Kindness and Civility
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.