The title says it all.
What's required is an advance in the level of collective consciousness toward greater universality.
Adam Smith, author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776), held that there were three social drivers — love ("mutual sympathy"; he also was a Christian who took it seriously), commerce (self-interest based on self-love), and force (exercise of power). The liberal revolution at the time of the Enlightenment involved moving beyond force as the chief social driver. Smith held that love was preferable, but that the general level of love was insufficient for a chief social motivator. Therefore, he settled on commerce.
But commerce does not avoid or transcend the love of power, nor does it result in mutual sympathy. Hence, capitalism as an economic system based on self-interest as the power of self-love is incompatible in practice with popular democracy as a political system.
1 comment:
That’s about it in a nutshell: there is simply not enough kindness in the world.
Kindness is a human potential. Without it, all mental effort is circular. As has been said many times: - if humanity wishes to become strong, become gentle; if we wish to be rich, be generous; if we wish to be wise, be simple. With kindness, most of the toing and froing in this world, would go into recession.
For me, kindness is an evolutionary energy; a seed waiting to blossom, coiled in the human heart. What we are looking for is within. In human history, kindness is the only thing we have not tried yet.
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