A Favorable Situation
I think we would have to conclude, if we had access to complete information about the trends and developments in the world, that our present world population is in the most favorable circumstance that humanity has ever occupied. We have already solved or are in the process of solving an enormous number of problems that baffled our predecessors and forbears.
That we have created a few more problems in the process is not in itself tragic. It is just in the nature of any such development. As we tackle and solve the still unsolved problems of the past, as we correct the sloppy, careless treatment of our world that has taken place under the banner of “profit first and to hell with1 the environment,” we really just have one priority. That priority is to “clean up our act.”2 We must become responsible caretakers of this lovely planet that we have been fortunate enough to evolve upon. We must become true to our own natures, eliminate the residue of distress patterns that have become attached to us. We must learn to prevent the spread of patterns by the victim-becoming-perpetrator contagion. We must live sensibly.
Harvey Jackins
From A Better World, page 5
1 “To hell with” means forget about, don’t care about.
2 “Clean up our act” means improve how we have been behaving.