The Throw-Away Society

I was thinking today about how many people are just thrown away in our fragmented society. There are so few extended families, so little community to lend a hand, to be a model, to nurture virtue. We value rugged individualism at a cost of a sense of belonging; not just a loss of belonging to family or community but also a loss of belonging to a continuum of time and place.

We have hardened our hearts to the plight of animals and the pillaging of the environment because there is no feeling of connection. We think in linear terms--beginning-->ending. Perhaps it is time to start thinking cyclically. We are all connected, we are all important, nothing is really disposable. Everything is part of a whole and it is all precious.