Development As Development Of The Heart: Why Are We So Poor?
Dr. Vagisha Gunasekara
What is the biggest ethical challenge facing us today? The reality that we have let economics guide our lives, and in doing so, we have devalued people and the associated virtues of respect, cooperation, empathy, and compassion. The primacy that we have allotted to economics underlies and complicates daily challenges we face; do the following – “stressed and tired”, “juggling work and home”, “surrounded by selfish individuals”, “led by uncaring politicians”, “in strained relationships”, “constantly pressed for time”, “never enough money, even for the basics” sound familiar? In other words, we have been carried away by the pragmatics of the “bottom line” dominate our decision-making, turning money, which is essentially a means, into an end in itself, while turning people, ethically understood as “ends in themselves” (according to Immanuel Kant) into mere means. The idea that money is a resource that should be used to serve our ethical ends—ensuring that our society functions in a way that addresses the needs of everyone—is increasingly losing its allure; instead due to our collective preoccupation with money, we have discarded our responsibility to individual and societal development and lost touch with our values, morals, and relationships with our community and the environment. This shift to market that aims at transforming society as a whole into a ‘market society’, has not only influenced the behaviour of individuals, government institutions, NGOs, and private organizations active in the domains of development, but also dampened intellectual diversity of ideas about human progress.