ABSTRACT
If there is a proclivity in human nature to seek the true, the just, and the good in personal and social affairs as Chapter One avers, why, then, do we witness so many manifestations of violence and corruption in our world? We considered this question briefly in the concluding pages of that chapter, but a deeper probe demands our attention. Why, for example did our species bring about the violent deaths of more than 170 million persons in the wars of the century just passed? Why the horror of abductions, enslavement, and torture in so many countries and the “globalization of hate” reported by Amnesty International?1 Why the inequities of extreme wealth and grinding poverty in some developing countries, such as India and much of Asia and South America? And why the exploitation and/or neglect by wealthier nations whose leaders are fully aware of the suffering, in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, where as many as 60 percent of the population experience severe malnutrition and disease? If we truly have a moral proclivity, why the apparent necessity for a “war on terror” at staggering costs of human life and resources? Why the bombing raids that reduced to rubble not just a few houses but whole villages, historic cultural treasures, and the environment itself? Nor can we omit the issues of private and corporate corruption amounting to billions of dollars annually, crime at all age and social levels, environmental pollution and destruction, the abuses of family members and self-destruction via drugs, and the AIDS crisis. The latter threatens millions of deaths annually. The list of evils mounts with mind-numbing intensity, and it is worse than naiveté if we shrug it aside.
