Our most treasured relationships are:
a) our relationship with nature since without it we would all die
b) our relationship with human beings since without it there would be no human society
c) our relationship with our tools since our whole civilization depends on our instruments
d) our relationship with the work of our hands since without our creations we would have nothing to use.
Yet what happened to these most treasured relationships?
1. Our relationship with nature evolved from harmony, to control, to ownership, to exploitation, to destruction, to nature’s revenge or ecological backlash like earthquakes, hurricanes, super storms, drought, global warming. Can we go back to harmony before the ecological timebomb explodes?
2. Our relationship with our fellow human beings evolved from equality to inequality, to slavery, to institutionalized violence, to mass famine, to war, to massive dehumanization. Can we go back to equality before the social volcano erupts?
3. Our relationship with our tools evolved from instruments for the furtherance of life to armaments for the furtherance of death, to nuclear warheads aimed at total annihilation. Can we change our technology to suit the harmony of the earth before nuclear annihilation occurs?
4. Our relationship with the work of our hands used to fulfill us and raise our dignity.
Now gross materialism has ordained that we sell our dignity lower than the commodities we produce. Can we restore our sacred dignity before alienation and materialism eats us?
Something must have gone wrong somewhere. For nature is terribly exploited, but her gifts are not evenly distributed. She provides life for everybody, but only the few gets most of the benefits while majority of the people in the world starve. Those who work manually to produce life such as the farmers and the workers in the 3rd World are the ones who do not eat well and live well. We spend more on the production of tools and technology for war than on tools for the production of goods for the greater life and benefit of all. We have distorted relationships based on divisions caused by wealth and poverty, power, creed, color, religion, and sex. The rich gets richer and fewer while the poor get poorer and multiply. Most often, those who lead us in the political system are the ones who exploit. The primary bearers of culture, meaning, and knowledge cannot find fresh solutions to the problems of our age, but instead become part of the problem themselves.
