apcampbell

For a healthy society, Carl Rogers (1980) offers us a vision of the qualities that the person of tomorrow will possess:

Openness
Desire for authenticity
Skepticism regarding science and technology
Desire for wholeness
The wish for intimacy
Process-oriented
Caring
Sympathetic attitude toward nature
Anti-institutional
Authority lies within
Recognition of the unimportance of material things
A yearning for the Spiritual

He
argues that a person needs the ‘awareness of self as process of
change’; where ‘nothing remains but a vibrating energy’. Such
developments in individuals will constitute a critical mass which will
produce drastic social change, resulting in a paradigm shift.

Almost
twenty-five years later, it is clear that such a reality has yet to
emerge. What resonates so strongly with me about Roger’s ideas, though,
is the emphasis on individual development as catalyst for social
change. Trying to ‘make the world a better place’ by struggling for
social change is like trying turn a field of weeds into a field of
wheat by continuously chopping at the stems and leaves of the weeds. If
we want a field of wheat, the weeds must uprooted entirely and seeds of
wheat must be planted. The roots of society - and all the injustice and
suffering that exist in it - lie in our individual minds. By becoming
more aware of our inner processes and EXPERIENCING how impulses lead to
action and subsequent consequneces, we learn to act in ways that are
more beneficial to ourselves and others. This is not to say that social
action should be forsaken, but that by not developing a greater
self-awareness and freedom from inner oppressors,
whatever social or political gains are made will swiftly be undermined
by the forces of greed, fear, and ignorance that engender the very
mental states from which society itself springs. Let’s fight this
battle at the source.