For What You're Worth

Is our climate change fiasco a function of our lack of regard for human life? Kali Ha of the Hampton Institute asks "would a species that recognized its own worth be actively destroying itself?"  It's thought-provoking stuff.

When we take a look at how we treat each other as people, it is safe to say that we do not seem to value human beings very much. In a system based on materialism and the pursuit of "success," money and power have come to define a human being's value. Consequently, nothing has inherent worth - everything is just a means to obtaining a desired end and satisfying our seemingly obsessive need for recognition and power. In the pursuit of these goals, the environment is being destroyed with a fanatical vigor one expects of an adolescent consciousness whose shortsighted impulse for instant gratification leaves it dangerously indifferent to the consequences of its actions; at the same time, countless human lives are sacrificed in wars over resources while financial tyranny waged against the working class in the form of austerity is plunging millions of people into poverty across the globe. Nothing is off limits in corporate capitalism's suicidal quest for profits. But, when everything has a price, nothing has inherent value.

...The fatal mistake of humanity is its arrogance rooted in the illogical and insanely narcissistic belief that humans are more powerful than nature. A rational species would realize the obvious: that human beings are dependent on nature for their survival. However, it is the pompous mindset of supremacy that blinds one from recognizing the interrelationship between oneself and the outside world, which eventually brings the dominators' unconscious reign to a disastrous halt. It is precisely this separation from nature and all life that has led to an identity crisis - a confusion about our place in the world that compels us to seek meaning and worth through domination, suppression, and conquest of the outside world and each other.

Undoubtedly, we are sowing the seeds of our own annihilation. It is perhaps humanity's unconscious desire to destroy the worthless within, because what is devoid of value is insignificant, meaningless, useless and it deserves no attention or love - and above all - it does not deserve to exist.

In order to stop our unconscious march towards collective suicide, we must undertake the painstaking process of self-discovery and transform the personal belief structures that betray our own sense of worthlessness.[6] There is no higher power, no God, no Messiah that will magically come down and save us from ourselves: it is up to each one of us to expand our awareness and channel the higher ideals of cooperation, unity, justice, and compassion here on Earth. We can only do so once we recognize our own inherent worth and decide to act on our potential as unique creations of an ever-evolving consciousness whose existence is worth saving. Viewed from this perspective, "we are the ones we've been waiting for." Will we heed the call?