Developing a Truly Compassionate Society

Abstract

OpinionNow we will discuss how principles of caring human relationship and effective interpersonal communication discussed earlier in this book are applicable to transforming society for the better. Since society is comprised of its individual members, as individual people develop greater levels of unselfish caring, empathic sensitivity, compassion, and ethical responsibility, that naturally begins to ripple out from dyadic relationships, nuclear families, and close, familiar, social circles to produce greater levels of good will, harmony, and constructive functioning, in society as a whole. As individuals mature psychologically by surrendering egocentric self-preoccupation in self-forgetful caring communion with other people who are especially near and dear to them, their heart gradually develops greater levels of love and good will, which gradually expand beyond the confines of their immediate close social circle to increasingly embrace a compassionate concern for strangers, and eventually encompasses all human beings and, indeed, all living beings. In addition to caring dyadic, family, and local neighborly relationships gradually expanding the heart so that individuals then express greater levels of compassionate good will and less antagonistic negativity or destructiveness, even to those outside of their inner social circle, the energy of loving warmth that they gradually develop through their caring relationships also gradually transforms the collective heart or psyche of humanity from the inside, making it less fearful, selfish, brutal, neglectful of the suffering of others, and more compassionate, empathic, warmhearted, tolerant, and ethically responsible. Thus, caring human relationships and the energy of loving warmth or caring that flows between individuals are like the individual bricks and mortar from which the edifice of a stable society or local, national, and global community "house" is constructed, metaphorically speaking.The best or most psychologically fulfilling kind of human society, residential neighborhood, or intentional community not only provides individuals with the opportunity to nourish their physical body, or outer "shell" with paid employment, financial security, and affluent means to purchase material abundance, but also provides ample opportunities to nourish their inner being with relational love-life energy, for enhanced happiness, regenerative vitality, and sublime peak experiences [1], as well as creative actualization of individual and relational potentials, through the development of truly, deeply, unselfishly, caring personal relationships and emotionally close, cohesive, social networks in which individuals experience a substantial sense of inner existential connection and empathic attunement to one another, as well as co-creative/synergistic functioning, as a relational "we"-partnership, viewing themselves and functioning as related "parts" of one another and of the seamless, whole, united community. Such a cohesive human community would be a "seamless whole" in the sense...