Lovescapes, Mapping the Geography of Love: An Invitation to the Love-Centered Life

By Duncan S. Ferguson

Lovescapes introduces the reader to the various meanings and manifestations of love and its many cognates such as compassion, caring, altruism, empathy, and forgiveness. It addresses how love and compassion have been understood in history and the religions of the world. It goes on to explore the ways that our environments and heredity influence our capacity to love and suggests ways to cultivate love and compassion in one's life. The book shows how the values of love and compassion are integral to finding humane solutions to the daunting problems we face as individuals, as a human family, and as an earth community--a world in crisis.
Lovescapes has the following features:
-Describing how love is the essence of the divine, and therefore the ground of reality
-Understanding the meaning of love and its place in our lives
-Learning how love and compassion have been understood across history, culture, and tradition
-Gaining insight about how to increase our capacity to love and show compassion
-Discerning how love and compassion can be applied in all aspects of our lives, in the regions where we live, and in our global setting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Dec 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781621895114

Duncan S. Ferguson

Duncan S. Ferguson has served in the church and higher education as a chaplain, professor, and senior administrator. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh and has had an interest in writing across his career. His recent books are Exploring the Spirituality of the World Religions (2010) and Lovescapes: Mapping the Geography of the World Religions (2012). He is currently engaged in several programs related to international peace and justice.

Book preview

Preface

Across the years, I have gradually come to believe that the greatest human need is to love and be loved. Several experiences and exposures in my life have led me to this conviction, and because the insights gained from this reflection are so poignant for me, I want to briefly trace out the curve of my learning. I look back on my childhood, growing up in a somewhat dysfunctional family filled with alcohol abuse and all of its side effects, and I realize that I was deprived of the joy of living spontaneously and engaging in carefree play that blossom in a setting of love. My internal life was filled with strategy and calculation, believing that life was a bit risky and that the adults around me were driven by their own needs and could be angry and rejecting at any moment. As a boy and young adult, I spent a lot of time wondering if I was acceptable and worked hard in my studies and sports programs to demonstrate that I was a person of value, one that was lovable. I focused on managing the conflicting and confusing array of emotions that swirled around me. My boyhood and young adult years were filled with a strong desire to be accepted, and I chose a way that was designed around pleasing others, feeling as I did that I was not truly loved although I may have been in a way that I was unable to recognize.

Gradually, as I became an adult, I began to understand the needs that were driving me, and I was able to become a more congruent person, true to myself and my values. But the need for love, which was not always conditional and driven by the needs of those around me, has not totally gone away. I find myself still wanting to be accepted, even respected by others. I do not sit in harsh judgment upon my parents for bequeathing me this psychic struggle. They did about as well as they could, given who they were. In fact, I have increasingly become a little sad that they did not have more rich and fulfilling lives and wish that I might have loved them better.

As the years have come and gone and I have developed committed primary relationships, established life-long friendships, and have associated with a wide variety of people in my work, I notice that I am not alone in needing and expressing love. Those around me struggle with the same issues, even if the pathways have been different. Gradually, pondering this reality, I have the growing conviction that love is the heart of life. Of course life is filled with a wide variety of activities and responsibilities that do not fit into the general category of love; they are important in their own right. But I have come to accept the logic of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthian church, If I . . . [engage in a wide variety of activities, even noble ones], but have not love, I am nothing. Love is the cohering motivation for all that I do. Having been nurtured in the Christian faith, I have reflected on the saying attributed to Jesus drawn from the Hebrew Bible, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all of the law and the prophets (Matt 22:37–40). There is also the foundational statement by the author of 1 John 4:16b: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them." These sayings serve to confirm my conviction that love is the ground of all of reality.

In addition, as I have had the privilege of traveling in many parts of the world to observe firsthand several of the religions of the human family, I have learned that these grand traditions teach their followers that love and compassion are central to their faith and ethical codes. I have also chosen a career that has invited me to study the world religions in some detail, and it has become clear to me that the ethic of love is integral to the beliefs and practices of the vast majority of the religions of humankind.

Given this exposure, I began several years ago to engage in a more systematic study of love. I have read many different kinds of literature, in religious studies, in the broad range of the humanities, in the social sciences, and in the physical sciences. I have read fiction, poetry, and gazed at the best expressions of the visual arts. Again, I was conscious that there was a wide variety of issues dealt with in these excellent products of the human mind and spirit, but I noticed that human relationships and the need for love were central themes. Growing out of this exposure, I was motivated to teach several courses in the context of the church and the academy that required a disciplined study of the literature of love.

I have become aware more recently of the emergence of a minor discipline on the study of love and in particular the study of altruism and compassion.¹ This movement has expanded and has encouraged some fine scholars to participate in this area of study.² A case might also be made that there is a new global consciousness emerging, given the current realities in the world (e.g., human hunger, natural disasters, violence, and global warming) and the ways that most of the people of the world can be immediately aware of them. Many of the people of the world can identify with human suffering, and so running concurrently with these global challenges is an increased empathy for human suffering and a genuine desire to reduce it.

³

These factors and others have created in me a desire to explore the terrain of love in all its manifestations. I want to investigate how love and its cognates are crucial to human happiness and well-being, and how love and compassion will help in finding solutions to the problems we face in our time. It is a writing project that has been bubbling up inside me for years. I chose the title Lovescapes, Mapping the Geography of Love: An Invitation to the Love-Centered Life because the topography of love is so vast and diverse and because beautiful landscapes and lovescapes are life-giving and peaceful.

I begin in Section I by addressing the harsh realities of our global context and place a special emphasis on the need for an infusion of love and compassion at all levels of human life. Attention is given to the ways that love and compassion can serve to give perspective and motivation to those who address the international and regional problems that cause human suffering. I maintain that love can improve the quality of our individual lives, address their anxiety-filled character, and help reduce the ubiquity of loneliness.

⁴

Section II, in three chapters, introduces the many ways that love is understood and offers a common universe of discourse. Love is described in all of its dimensions with care given to definitions of love and its many cognates. There is a description of the ways that love has been understood across history and in different traditions and cultures. Section II also traces the understanding of love within the teachings of the world religions.

Section III raises the question, where does love come from? How it is that we learn how to love and practice love more consistently in our lives? There are three chapters in this section as well, one speaking to the ways that our environment and the influences in our lives shape our capacity to love. It is the ecology of human development that enables us to love or diminishes our capacity to love.⁵ The next chapter examines the ways that we are wired for love, that is, the ways that our physical nature has the need for love integral to it. Our DNA enables us to love or may prevent us from being a loving person. A third chapter in this section addresses the ways our beliefs and practices can encourage the practice of love and how we can be empowered to love.

Section IV, in three chapters, goes directly to the practice of love, looking first at love in primary relationships with a spouse or a committed partner, with family, and with those in the immediate context of one’s life. The next chapter suggests ways of loving responsibly in the community where one lives and the surrounding region. The additional chapter in this section explores ways that the insights from the broad understanding of love might be applied in the national and global context.

Section V invites the reader to consider what it might mean to move toward a love-centered life. Perspectives, practices, and strategies are suggested for what might be called love development.

I am indebted to the many friends who have lovingly counseled and advised me about this writing project. I am especially grateful to Vickie Drebing Crupi for her guidance in the use of information technology and her formatting skills, and to my wife, Dorothy, who assisted with the proof-reading. I am also grateful to Princeton Theological Seminary, which honored me as a Visiting Scholar in the fall of 2010, enabling dedicated time for writing and access to excellent resources for research.

Reading, writing, and teaching about love have been a great gift, one for which I will always be grateful. But that for which I am even more grateful has been the experience of loving and being loved. It is my wish as I offer to the reader my reflections on the love-centered life that those who read will also be those who love and are loved.

1. See the book by Post, Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion, and Service. Stephen Post has served as the President of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, an initiative funded by the Templeton Foundation. See as well the mission of the Fetzer Foundation which has the mission of exploring and advancing the power of love, forgiveness and compassion. There are also some institutions of higher education that have introduced love and altruism into the curriculum.

2. See the essays in Post, et al., Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue. See as well the volume edited by Sternberg and Weis, The New Psychology of Love, one that is an update of an earlier book entitled The Psychology of Love, edited by Sternberg and Barnes.

3. See Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis.

4. This point is integral to Cacioppo and Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. See also Christakis and Fowler, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, and Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

5. Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design.

Section I

The Need for Love in Contemporary Life

Perhaps every age is an age of crisis, although the judgment that is made about a period of time being in crisis may depend upon the conditions of one’s life in a particular moment of history. It may be a crisis for some and not for others. The judgment about our age being a time of crisis is confirmed by most of us; the majority of us would say that we do live in a troubled time. Regardless of our circumstances, we who live in the early part of the twenty-first century find the problems we face daunting in character. Perhaps it is because our problems are staggering in complexity and stubbornly resist our efforts to solve them. Or it may be because they threaten our way of life and our earth habitat. In Section I we will briefly describe the range of these overwhelming problems, point out their size and difficulty, and propose that love and compassion, understood in their several meanings, have a critical role to play in solving them, or at least in gaining perspective about them and easing the pain and suffering which they cause.

The world is a theatre of love.

—Kashmiri Proverb

1

Love in an Age of Crisis

A Picture of Our Crisis

The popular song of a previous generation, which invited us to sing along, opened with the following words: What the world needs now is love sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. These lyrics were true at an earlier time and certainly true today. We live in a difficult moment of history, one filled with vexing problems that have an enormous impact on individual lives. While there are signs of hope and encouragement, it is nevertheless accurate to say that we live in a volatile world, filled with global warming and a threatened physical environment, natural disasters, insoluble wars, international conflict, insurgency and violence, religious intolerance, cities rampant with crime, widespread poverty, devastating hunger, a threatened economy, failing states, and the list goes on and on. It would be easy to give up hope, especially if one is caught in the middle of one of these conditions. Perhaps Richard Cory was such a person, as described in the poem by Edward Arlington Robinson:

Whenever Richard Cory went downtown

We people on the pavement looked at him;

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

Good morning, and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on he worked, and waited for the light,

And went home without meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

What Richard Cory needed was someone to give him love sweet love. The fundamental purpose of this book is to add love and compassion in what I hope is a wise and realistic way as one part of the strategy as we seek to find solutions to the overwhelming problems we must face in the decades ahead. I am well aware that this rhetoric may be viewed as almost naïve, uninformed by a grasp of the complexity of the issues, real-world politics and uses of power, and the subtleties of human nature. In light of this point of view, I am reluctant to claim that love and compassion are the answer, but these qualities of the human spirit have the potential to provide an outlook and motivation for developing strategies to approach these staggering challenges. I am given guidance and encouraged by the Dalai Lama’s determination to place love and compassion at the forefront of his life and leadership.

¹

The harsh realities which humankind must address in the first quarter of the twenty-first century are challenging, perplexing, and alarming. They are challenging in the sense that they demand solutions that require political will, international cooperation, and enormous costs. For example, to find solutions to the problem of global warming means challenging the vested interests of corporations whose profits depend upon the continuation of the use of fossil fuels. As we know, the extensive use of fossil fuels threatens the delicate ecological balance that sustains life. Questioning these vested interests requires political risk for elected officials. The same inconvenient truth about the environment requires international cooperation because global warming is indeed global, not exclusively regional, although some regions may feel its impact more profoundly than others.² Efforts to achieve international cooperation in solving the problems of the environment have been mixed at best. The costs of addressing the variety of problems caused by global warming are astronomical and require a fundamental shift of values and ways of life, not easy for any individual, society, or nation.

These harsh realities are also perplexing because the size and complexity of the problems are beyond the scope of what humankind has ever had to address before. New research and technologies are required for many of these disturbing problems. For example, new strategies and approaches are required in stabilizing the changing climate. It has been necessary to engineer a revolution in lighting technology and produce energy-efficient appliances that will reduce dependence on excessive uses of electricity. Cutting carbon emissions has meant a turn toward electrifying the transportation systems.³ In a wide variety of ways, we have had to find new ways of generating energy that will stabilize the climate of the earth.

The tremendous changes that are occurring have caused alarm on many fronts. Again, to illustrate, there is the life and death issue of feeding over seven billion people well. It is not easy to learn about and watch children of the world suffer and die because of malnutrition and starvation. In fact it is so painful that we often switch channels or lay the paper aside in order to put it out of our minds. There may be enough food on the earth to feed all of the people of the world, but it is not easy to distribute food equitably across country and continental boundaries, and underlying equitable food distribution is the competition for water.⁴ Equally alarming is the continuation of international conflict and the resort to violence to resolve conflict. At this point in time, we wonder if the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East (and larger Arab world) will ever cease as others have wondered in the midst of their wars whether the violence would ever cease. We all suffer from the consequences of war, but it is especially the innocent who suffer the most. Finding solutions for world hunger and international conflict will require new strategies and shifts of outlook on the ways that we live together on the planet.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief description of these critical concerns in order to see how love and compassion may be factors in addressing them. The description will be brief, providing only a glimpse of the current problems that must be faced by the human family. We divide these issues into two categories: (1) those that are global in character and deal with existing infrastructure and the macro systems that cause distress in nearly every corner of the planet; and (2) the ways that these conditions impact individuals, causing suffering, illness, and general dis-ease.

The Expression of the Crisis in the

World We Inhabit

I will group the global concerns in the following categories:

⁵

1. The issues dealing with ecology.

2. The issues dealing with over-population.

3. The issues dealing with poverty, hunger, and disease.

4. The issues dealing with the global economy.

5. The issues dealing with war and conflict.

A central concern of all who dwell on the earth is whether it will remain a habitat that allows humans and all sentient beings to continue to flourish and live in an environment that will sustain a high quality of life. There are those who would argue that the earth continues to be relatively safe for all of life and that the changes we see and experience are just the natural rhythms of the earth which have within them some natural threat. Some knowledgeable scholars do not fully believe in what we have come to call global warming and deny that the slight change is caused by human practices.⁶ But the scientific evidence would say otherwise; there is indeed a crisis that must be faced with a change in human behavior. It is a reality which if not dealt with in a timely and informed way will cause great suffering. The challenges are many.⁷ There is the pressure of the increasing population that will tax the land and water resources of the earth. Already, a large percentage of the population does not have access to clean water and sanitation, causing disease and malnutrition with a devastating impact on children. Farmers who provide the food for the people of our cities and whose water tables are falling are in conflict with the cities for limited water supplies. There are political conflicts locally, regionally, and internationally about the use of land and access to water. Increasingly, there are environmental refugees, vast numbers of people whose water supply has dwindled to little or nothing and whose land is no longer fertile. These problems coupled with others are causing a number of failed states whose populations migrate to find ways of surviving.

⁸

Equally alarming is the changing climate. Global warming is happening, temperatures are rising, ice is melting, floods are occurring, and populations are threatened, especially in the coastal areas of China, India, and Bangladesh with their large populations. We are reaching the time when we must act wisely and definitively or millions of people will suffer or die. As former Vice President Al Gore, in quoting Winston Churchill, writes, The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.⁹ We must make an energy transition, moving away from fossil fuels and carbon emission to other sources of energy including wind farms, solar thermal power plants, and geothermal power plants.

Interwoven with the threat to the environment, as already implied, is the dramatic increase in the world’s population. We are living on a crowded planet and with this condition has come the necessary economic activity to sustain this enormous growth.¹⁰ The world’s population has risen by more than 4 billion people since I finished my elementary education in the 1950s and is edging toward 8 billion, increasing each day. The world has changed dramatically in what feels like just a blink of time. The Sub-Saharan Africa population is 4 times larger than it was in 1950, going from 180 million to approximately 820 million. The same pace of growth has occurred in western Asia, a region that includes the Middle East, Turkey, and the Caucasus region, from 51 million in 1950 to approximately 220 million in 2007. Similar rates of growth have occurred in parts of Asia as well. Jeffrey Sachs lists six fundamental and challenging economic changes that have accompanied the steep increase in the population:

¹¹

1. F

irst, the process of sustaining economic growth has now reached most of the world, so that humanity on average is rapidly getting richer in terms of income per person. Moreover, the gap in average income per persons between the rich world, centered in the North Atlantic (Europe and the United States), and much of the developing world is narrowing faster.

2. S

econd, the world’s population will continue to rise, thereby amplifying the overall growth of the global economy. Not only are we each producing more output on average, but there will be many more of us by midcentury. The scale of the world’s economic production is therefore likely to be several times that of today.

3. Third, the rise in income will be greatest in Asia, home to more than half of the world’s population. As a result, the world will not only be much richer by 2050 but will have its economic center of gravity in Asia.

4. Fourth, the way people live is changing fundamentally as well, from rural roots that stretch back to the beginning of humanity to a global urban civilization. We crossed the midway point between urban and rural in

2008

, on a one-way path to an urban-based economy.

5. F

ifth, the overall impact of human activity on the physical environment is producing multiple environmental crises as never before in history. The environmental crises we face cannot be compared with the past because never before in history has the magnitude of human economic activity been large enough to change fundamental processes on a global scale, including the climate itself.

6. S

ixth, the gap between the richest and the poorest is widening to proportions simply unimaginable for most people. This is not contradictory to the idea that on average the poor are getting richer. Most are, but the bottom billion on the planet are stuck in a poverty trap, which has prevented them from experiencing sustained economic growth. The center is in sub-Saharan Africa. This is also the site of the fastest population growth, meaning that the population bulge is occurring in the part of the world that at this point is least able to generate jobs.

The challenge of responding to this growth of population and its impact on the economy and way of life of the people on the planet creates an extraordinary challenge for those who shape global policy. At the heart of the challenge is how to create sustainable development in those regions facing extreme poverty, hunger, and disease. There are at least 1.3 billion people living below the poverty line. Approximately 850 million are malnourished, and as many as 880 million are without access to medical care. One billion lack adequate shelters. 1.3 billion have no access to safe drinking water. 113 million go without schooling, and most of them are girls. Another 2.6 billion go without sanitation, and about 30,000 die each day from preventable diseases. Life expectancy is quite low in several countries, many of them African, but some in Asia and Latin America as well.

¹²

All of the global issues, the deteriorating environment, the inordinate growth of the population, and the increase in poverty, hunger, and diseases are interwoven with the ways that the human family must find to guide the global economy. This is necessary to insure that there is movement toward creating a world that is more just and peaceful and sustains a reasonable quality of life for all of the people of the earth. But in fact the current status of the global economy sustains the disproportionate differences between the wealthy and the poor. The assets of a few of the wealthiest people are more than the combined wealth of 600 million inhabitants of the least-developed countries. The extraordinary wealth of these few is shocking when placed alongside of the misery of the world’s poor, starving, and diseased. What is emerging is the keen awareness that these stark contrasts in wealth cannot continue. The global economy must change in ways that encourage sustainable development in all parts of the world, ways that will protect the environment, stabilize the world’s population, narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, and end extreme poverty. As noted economist Jeffrey Sachs says, "The defining challenge of the twenty-first century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet. The common fate will require new forms of global cooperation, a fundamental point of blinding simplicity that many world leaders have yet to understand or embrace."

¹³

Finally, in this glance at the global challenges we face, I would mention the challenge of finding ways of resolving conflicts that do not resort to violence and war. War has become increasingly obsolete, if in fact it was ever the best solution for the resolution of conflicts. It is difficult for many people to see much value in the war in Iraq or the earlier one in Vietnam. Now, many are questioning whether there is wisdom in the continuing conflict in Afghanistan, especially as this war drains important resources for a struggling economy in the United States and its allies in NATO. The conflicts across the Middle East (and larger Arab world) pose still another baffling challenge. This is not to say that the conflicts are not very real, and there are those who do and will use violence to try to advance their cause. It is rather to say that the resort to violence, as a general rule, does not really make life better for those living in the regions where the wars are taking place or after the wars have ceased. In fact, the violence has made life much more difficult for these populations that dwell in the war-torn regions. Nearly every country will have to assess its foreign policy in the twenty-first century and judge whether the resort to arms is a helpful strategy. It is certainly clear that violence does not assist in solving the global problems of the environment, the increasing population, and global poverty and hunger.

The United States is perhaps the best case in point as it continues to resort to violence in order to insure American security. There are changes in shades and tones as America moves from one President to another, but there is little evidence that the fundamental strategies of the United States are changing dramatically.¹⁴ The current administration, under President Barack Obama, may not be acknowledging the limits of military power as a means of preserving American security and finding solutions to global problems. Also, the current power blocs on the American scene may not be fully utilizing our international partners as a primary means of advancing global stability. Military leaders in the United States continue to believe their own rhetoric about dominance and the role of the United States to preserve peace in the world, failing to recognize the limits of American power and the reluctance of other countries to have the United States interfere in their affairs. On occasion, there are those who demonize or at least caricature adversaries and reject dialogue and negotiation with them. At times, we feel frustrated because the government does not seem to function well and is not able to respond quickly or appropriately to international conflict. Our foreign policy, government structure, and our resort to dated strategies must change.

The Expression of the Crisis

in Our Individual Lives

There are many other pressing global concerns, but perhaps the mention of these five—a threatened environment, the dramatic increase in the population, the collective problems of poverty, hunger and disease, a struggling economy, and war and violence—will be suggestive of what we face as a global community and as individuals who struggle to make life meaningful and fulfilling. I want to turn now to the profound challenges and problems which individuals in different parts of the world face daily and for which they struggle to find solutions in order to maintain or improve the conditions of their lives. Again, I will bunch them in five categories as a way of illustrating, although not describing in detail, these challenges and concerns. I will tend to focus on the state of living in the United States in that it is what I face and observe on a daily basis, knowing it may not be representative of the conditions and realities that exist in other parts of the world. I will not utilize a simple cause-effect argument that the global problems cause the challenges for individuals, although the global issues do have a profound impact on the conditions that individuals deal with day to day. The five on which I want to focus are:

1. The challenge of receiving adequate health care.

2. The challenge of gaining access to high quality education.

3. The challenge of having an adequate income.

4. The challenge of adapting to rapid change in all aspects of life, and in particular with information technology.

5. The challenge of maintaining good mental health.

We begin with the challenge of receiving adequate health care. There has always been anxiety about maintaining one’s health and being able to receive adequate health care when it is needed. We live with some fear that we will be injured or get ill, and when these conditions happen, we are put in touch with our mortality and realize that we will not live forever.¹⁵ It is a subliminal fear that comes to the surface when our health is threatened. In recent years, there has been tremendous emphasis on the preservation of one’s health. We have been made more aware of the risks to our health and been given guidance about how to live in a more healthy way. Everywhere we turn, we see suggestions about diet and exercise. Health clubs with personal trainers and nutritional experts are commonplace, and the internet, television, newspapers, health magazines, and other communications systems are filled with suggested programs to improve our health. Special attention is given to the health of children with a focus on diet and the risks of obesity. The first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, has made the health of children and especially children’s nutrition one of her primary concerns.

The growing numbers of seniors in our population who face the challenges of aging increase the attention on health. A recent study by the Stanford Center on Longevity suggests that America will continue to age up for decades. The over-65 sector will double, from 40 million today to 89 million by 2050 and move from 13 percent of the population to 20 percent of the population.

First world countries have generally given a high priority to the health care of their citizens. Different approaches have been used, with some countries providing access to health care with little or no cost, using the resources of government money. Others have asked that employers provide health care coverage with a modest contribution to be made by the employee. This option has been difficult for small businesses and does not always provide coverage for members of the family. Other countries have asked individuals, either through their employer or through individual coverage with insurance companies, to find ways of paying for health care. Combinations of these options are represented in the recent health care plan adopted by the United States Congress, an attempt by the Obama administration to increase health care coverage and make it available to the many who have no health insurance.

For the vast majority of the world’s population, and especially in developing countries, health care is limited or non-existent. It has been especially tragic in those areas that have had natural disasters, such as the earthquake in Haiti or the floods in Pakistan. But the need for medical attention is profound even without the additional challenge of providing care for the victims of national disaster. Special attention has been given to the AIDS pandemic, and help has come from many different sources. Yet millions continue to suffer, and in many cases, the best medical care is simply not available. It remains true that health care is problematic in first world countries and coverage in third world counties is sketchy at best. Where poverty exists, the people may know what to do, but do not have the resources to do it. For example, with the illness of malaria, the people know that they can protect themselves with spraying, nets, and medicines, but they cannot afford the interventions.

Adequate health care is interwoven with the need for access to adequate education. The schools of the world will need to continue and even increase the emphasis on teaching basic hygiene, nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, and disease prevention and care. In many parts of the world, there are initiatives