幸福：優先順位を正しく決める

This article opens up a topic that has value at many levels.  The concept of measuring "progress" seems to have the potential to be quite inexpensive while simultaneously being immensely relevant to our lives.  Yet it also depends how this measuring process is framed, so perhaps the simplicity is a chimera that will be yet another battleground between competing political philosophies and hence worthless except as another way to separate us and cause endless fighting, suffering and misery.  At a personal level, the concept of progress exists in our minds as a conceptual shield that we unconsciously adhere to in order to protect our individual selves from the fear of change.  I think it's obvious that change is not always good and I (rightly, I think) fear that change is often not good at all; hence justifying our instinctual fear.  In a very real sense it comes down to dealing with loss, or potential loss, while simultaneously trusting that those who promote the changes in our world have sufficient wherewithal to deserve to hold the power that moves us.  The old must be destroyed in order for the new to arise.  It’s much like watching a newborn baby move through a series of developmental stages in his or her infancy, and then later through childhood.  It can be heartbreaking to see a joyful stage pass, yet another always seems to unfold to take its place, and it too is fulfilling like a kaleidoscope of permutations that continually evoke joy.  A more abstract sense of this is represented in an age-old concept that is perhaps best represented in the popular image of the dancing Shiva... In one hand, Shiva holds fire which is symbolic in its destruction of the old.  Another one of Shiva’s hands symbolically creates the new (progress) through the castanets.  All of these processes are rendered simultaneously while Shiva effortlessly dances on the dwarf of ignorance.  And here is where the danger lies... in our own institutionalized ignorance.  Are we unwittingly the dwarves who are initiating the changes that we call progress or are we fortunate enough to replicate the Shiva consciousness?  Are we capable of telling the difference and have we examined our unconscious assumptions?  No – no of course not.  Perhaps we imagine ourselves to be the protagonists when we are not.  Are we that evolved as a society?  If you are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs it's painfully obvious that we are stuck at Stage 1 (safety needs).  So if we look in the mirror, how evolved are we really?  Really?  So we speak of progress but by whose measure?  In America we have basically three views, that of Republicans, Democrats and if we are open minded enough, Libertarians. So maybe we should consciously forget about measuring progress by some biased standard and instead simply focus on measuring our collective sense of well-being.  Well being is just that - a misery index framed in positive words.  We are compelled to frame this idea in the positive.  In fact it’s critically important that we do - because in order to grow and evolve, we have to fight negativity at every level.  It has to be an imperative on our behalf to embrace the positive, for that is our only hope to somehow find a higher level of consciousness; call it God if you will.  Either way we have performed a spiritual alchemy on all of the potential red herrings due to a particular stripe of political polarization and created something positive, hopeful, and ultimately fulfilling.