Look Who it Was Random video

On the Possibility of Transformation

962 views · Published 2 August 2008 · 2:10 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Footnotes2Plato · 2008 · Nonprofits & Activism

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http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0807/frontpage/real

"What unlocks social transformation is a shift in values, because values are at the core of a self-organizing human system. To value something is to care about it deeply, making it the True North of our internal guidance system. Values give meaning to human action and legitimacy to institutions, for they define what is good, true, and beautiful. As such they direct human action. We do not simply maximize our individual economic outcomes as the economist's "rational actor" model would have us believe: we do pursue our interests, but that depends on what we think our interests are, which is a matter of values and social norms.

We can detect the beginning of a values shift in the unnamed spiritual hunger felt by many today. As capitalism threatens the life of the planet, so too does it threaten the life of the human spirit. For many people, the endless cycle of work and consumption leaves them feeling dead inside, unsatisfied, alienated from what really matters. In The Left Hand of God, Michael Lerner writes of the interviews he and his colleagues did at the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, finding among middle Americans a pervasive sense that their deepest life energies are being depleted, that life is filled with meaningless activity, that they are going through motions imposed on them by outside forces. The interviews speak of a hunger for something more—for work that contributes to a larger good, for lives of purpose and meaning.

If we are to move beyond the current destructive phase of
capitalism, we will do so because we tap the spiritual energy that progressives have yet to tap in any coherent way. Values hold the key. The hungers of the heart can be the bedrock on which we build a new social order."

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