Transcript of Thought For the World's thought for the day

Jon Pullman

3rd March 2008

I have often heard it said, especially of us well-fed, well-maintained, safe and free citizens of the western world, that there has never been a better time to be alive. Well we certainly have the substantial benefits of technology, scientific knowledge and progressive political systems for unprecedented levels of health, wealth and security.

But are the most fundamental challenges of the human condition really addressed by these modern advances, and do they properly equip us with the means to bring peace and justice to the world.

In the ever thickening melting pot of beliefs, cultures and ideologies in which we find ourselves, the opportunities for global connection and mutual understanding have never been better, but by the same token, nor has the potential for confusion, bewilderment or despair. So many truths, so much information, and such diverse claims for the solutions to our problems.

If those seemingly, omnipresent, 24/7, multi-media news feeds, effectively throw light on anything, it is our failure, for all our supposed cleverness to prevent, fix or manage a great deal of very important things. As one dyke is plugged here, another springs a leak over there. As some human achievement is celebrated in one place, so a dark scandal is emerging in another.

Of course, the basic necessities of food, shelter and protection from harm are pre-requisites for anything else while human rights, fair trade, health, education and jobs are core elements in any functioning, well-adjusted society. Governments, laws, bureaucracies, and international institutions are all established to facilitate such things.

Nevertheless, a clear distinction should be made between the collective and the personal, because while these structures are the agencies of group will for practical purposes, they are not necessarily fit for giving us meaningful lives as individuals.

Global poverty, climate change, and civil freedom are legitimate issues and our willingness to understand them, to recognise their importance, and to engage in whatever ways we can to help, are all part of living a good life.

But monumental challenges such as this are forever with us, and meanwhile we all get born, live and die. Together with our manifold social obligations, we have a responsibility to ourselves too, and one which no state, ideology or cause can fulfill, or dictate the terms of.

The inner leaps of wisdom by which the deepest understandings of our short sojourn in the world are achieved cannot be hastened by even the most liberal of democracies. Nor can any prayerbook, pilgrimage or ecclesiastical intervention place the joy and appreciation of being alive into the heart of another without that same heart's readiness

In the instinct, often born of necessity, to embrace the simplest and bravest opportunities for enjoying our own selves, lie the beginnings of our humanity because a response that is rooted in the sheer fact of existence, regardless of where we happen to be along the spectrum of political or economic good fortune is the ultimate acknowledgement of what we really are. And crucially, it carries within it the hope for a better world too. For by working from the inside out, we first make good the place from where every other thought and deed has its source.

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