Values to Live by: The Fate of all peoples and nations is determined by the values which govern their decisions

The human and world crisis of today is basically spiritual, testing the character, and intention of all humans. This provides opportunity to reappraise the values we accept as a personal standard of behaviour.

This is a crisis period of significance for the peoples of the world. It should be a time of re-evaluation. Today, in a rapidly changing world we see a basic confrontation between the old and the new; crystallized, outworn forms and progressive ideas, self-interest and human welfare, nationalism and a planetary consciousness, material values and spiritual values.

Material values confine an individual, a group or a nation within limits determined by the forms of life created to serve its own interests. Forms may change; but if motives of narrow self-interest remain, nothing of value to human culture and civilisation results. Spiritual values relate to the enlightenment, the freedom and the creative growth of the human race. They promote the innate human tendency toward synthesis and wholeness. They expand rather than limit the horizons of human vision and capacity. They can be symbolised as an upward spiral of infinite potentiality. The spiritual values of greatest importance are those that lift us out of our self-centered pre-occupations. Self-interest benefits no one, including oneself, so interdependent and interrelated has human society become.

The sacrifice of selfishness would release new values into national and international life. It provides for the sharing and contribution of all parts of society in the growth and prosperity of the whole. It provides for responsibility, concern and commitment, for wholeness in attitudes and actions, for a new perspective on life and its true values. The true values of the peoples of the world lie in a few principles or qualities: unity, tranquility, social harmony, security, freedom, and a general well-being — "for all the people". In such a framework, a sense of responsibility develops side by side with the rights and freedoms to which all are entitled; mutual trust and respect provide the safeguard.

The hindrances to a new and better world order for all mankind can be summed up in one word, selfishness — national, racial, political, religious, economic and individual selfishness.

New values to live by are desperately needed if our planet as we know it is to survive. Selfishness can be transcended and the vision of a better world can become factual. The time has come in this interdependent world for individuals to submerge their personal interests in the good of the group; for the group or groups to merge their interests in the national good; for nations to relinquish their selfish purposes and goals in the interests of right international relationships and the good of humanity as a whole.

There is a growing tide of aspiration towards new vision for better ways of life for all people everywhere in the world. Human consciousness is opening to spiritual impression and to the realisation that there are desirable spiritual values to be built into every aspect of life, superseding the materialism which has controlled mankind for centuries. These values concern essential attitudes of mind and heart which determine actions and create the circumstances of daily life.

The sacrifice of selfishness would increase the bonds of understanding between peoples of the world, through the practical substitution of international cooperation, mutual tolerance and sharing between peoples and nations. It can liberate humanity of all nations from limitation- into freedom from fear and from want, freedom of speech and of worship, and freedom to expand mentally and spiritually. Each nation, great or small, can play its part.

(Adapted from "Values to Live" pamphlet by World Goodwill )