Spirituality: Could it Be a Cure-All?
This wonderful piece in the India Times describes how spirituality -- which the author defines somewhat broadly as "Basically ... a non-materialistic approach to life's issues as opposed to the other approach that is based on materialistic interest." -- is the key to stopping the corruption that is so rampant in India and throughout most of the world. I concur with the writer and wish to broaden the discussion.
It seems to me that spiritually, properly understood as I think the above definition comes close to doing, is indeed the answer not only to corruption but to much of what is going haywire in the world around us these days.
Specifically, it seems to me that a spiritual approach to economics, banking and finance, would, once in place, all but eradicate much of the unfairness, bias, and economic violence which is now rampant. If even a substantial minority of those who call the shots in these arenas was focused more on the non-material issues of fairness, justice, opportunity and equality, we could cut through a lot of the garbage out there passing for serious economic policy but serves the materialistic selfishness of a minuscule minority of our citizenry.
If we looked at our unilaterally launched and all-but-morally-indefensible wars against terror, and in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya (and lots of other places nobody's talking about), with non-materialistic aims in mind. We'd shut them down in a nanosecond and divert those resources to activities that promote love and peace and harmony.
Maybe if, instead of calling it spirituality, we called it "non-materialism", we'd get more traction for these ideas in the public arena?
