“A Progressive Politics of Meaning”

By spiritual awareness or sensitivity, I mean this: an awareness of the fundamental unity of all being and of our connectedness to one another and to the universe. When our unity and interconnectedness is fully appreciated, the arrogance and egotism that predominates in politics will dramatically decrease. Virtually every religious and spiritual system aims at this awareness. The politics of meaning does not seek to endorse any particular way of achieving it, but seeks to replace political and economic institutions that undermine this kind of spiritual awareness and that encourage human arrogance and ecological insensitivity.