Paradigm shift

Interesting essay here.

Excerpt:

...[C]onsideration of the common interest - rather than self-interest - must be our focus, as it is literally our lifeline. Developing a global consciousness isn’t some New Age fancy term for advocating hugging trees. It means that me, you, he, and she, and all of us together must be conscious of the well being of everyone of us, and every person and every thing, while doing our business or even while living our daily lives, whether it’s vacuuming the floor, shopping, or having coffee with friends.

I have long believed that we are all one, even before having the message crystallize for me so clearly in Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God series. I think this is the central (and yet often forgotten or minimized) message of many of the world's great faiths and philosophies.  You can couch it in whatever terms you want. New Age-speak has a host of them that grate on my ear: for example, this from the Namaste Cafe:

What we call "God" is the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent and all-encompassing luminous Presence of Divinity that envelopes ALL life everywhere. This includes every minute electron, atom and subatomic particle of life evolving in any time frame or dimension, known or unknown, throughout infinity. What that means, both literally and tangibly, is that everything that exists anywhere in the whole of Creation is a "cell" in the Body of God.

Wow, that's good weed, man.

Put another way:

Today's world requires that we accept the oneness of humanity. In the past, isolated communities could afford to think of one another as fundamentally separate and even existed in total isolation. Nowadays, however, events in one part of the world eventually affect the entire planet. Therefore we have to treat each major local problem as a global concern from the moment it begins. We can no longer invoke the national, racial or ideological barriers that separate us without destructive repercussions. In the context of our new interdependence, considering the interests of others is clearly the best form of self-interest."

--Tenzin Gyatsu, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, 1990

Or yet another:

"...Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." (Matt. 24:40b)

I'm the farthest thing from a Bible literalist, and yet it pleases me immensely to take that particular passage literally. I think it expresses a Great Truth that desperately needs expressing as the economic vise tightens and the consequences of rampant greed begin to take their inexorable effect. 

You will find variants of the Golden Rule--"do unto others as you would have them do unto you"-- just about anywhere somebody's bothered to consider ethics for any length of time. I think it's safe to say that if you could only pick one maxim to live by, that'd be it. If we are indeed headed for another Depression, we must keep the Golden Rule ever more firmly in mind. To discard it in tough times is to abandon our shared humanity.