This quote from Martin Luther King Jr. came up in reading for one of my Education courses today:
we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Too bad we’ve only gone in the wrong direction here. If anything we’ve become more thing-oriented since King’s assassination in 1968. The financial crisis perhaps gave us the best opportunity for such a shift in society but it now seems that the largest concern to arise from that was “When can I go back to buying as much stuff as I used to?” If only everyone gave some serious consideration to what they were buying and expending their time on.