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MAKING A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE is a contribution to the important analysis of the current socio-economic thinking which legitimizes ruthless exploitation of the Earth and its people, increasingly threatening our living conditions, health and wellbeing. This work accentuates the importance of liberating ourselves from a debilitating and alienating market driven society, in order to cultivate our own rich human potential and become co-creators together to form a decent and sustainable life on Earth for all.
Organizational and management procedures aimed purely at maximizing efficiency and productivity in workplaces and educational institutions, has led to an unprecedented increase in physical and mental disorders. Being a cross-cultural scientist and clinical psychologist treating patients with work-related stress, anxiety and depression, I feel urged to step out of my office and bear witness to how the regime of standardization, control, evaluation and competition is a serious threat to the mental and physical health of citizens throughout society.
But of equal importance, is the breaking of new ground in our understanding and appreciation of what it means to be a human being. The realization that we as humans encompass unexplored and still not fully realized potential is of vital importance. We are confronted daily with the need for a profound transformation at all levels of society. The widely recommended creation of globally sustainable living conditions depends on the active participation of citizens who will stand up for the humanitarian values and attitudes necessary for this – values and attitudes that in our current market societies, are being neglected, intimidated, and suppressed.
The predicament that rests heavily upon the people of our time, is to suffer alienation and limitation of personal power under threat of either conforming to demands or being dismissed to gain a share of material growth. Thus, the dogma that competition – on all levels of society as well as between nations – is necessary in order to survive, is about to cut human beings off from their unique capacity and natural urge to cooperate in communities; it threatens to remove expressions of empathy as well as the rich variation of human qualities and values potential to all.
MAKING A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE is therefore a profound call to reflection and action. The analyses of our current condition offered in this book are based on contemporary studies within the political, social, and natural sciences, combined with psychological and neurobiological research and clinical observations.
Conditions in workplaces and in educational institutions as described in the case studies and accounts throughout the book, may be recognized by many readers. They may accordingly be encouraged to trust their own observations and to realize that psychological imbalances such as depression, anxiety, and traumatic stress, are natural human reactions to inhuman conditions.
Readers are furthermore invited to reflect upon the age-old wisdom found in various philosophical and spiritual parables, and accounts from a field study that I carried out in an isolated Polynesian Island. This book calls for an inquiry into the reality that we all share and which we more or less consciously, sometimes willingly, and sometimes against our will, are creating together. It is my hope that the book can also serve as a mirror in which we recognize the significance of being human and can become inspired to renewed reflection and consideration, and thereby take transforming action.
