KVE301/KVE401 Universal Human Values and Professional Ethics
Chapter 4: The Program to fulfill Basic Human Aspirations
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Unit 5
Appendix
What is our state today?
In Relationship
We are unable to have fulfilling relationships all the time: in family, outside family, and as a society – in the world at large.
In Physical Facilities
We want to feel prosperous, but end up working only for the accumulation of wealth. We want to enrich nature but are exploiting it, destroying it.
Why we are in This State? – Living with Wrong Assumptions
We seem to be interacting with lots of people, we keep getting ourselves into trouble in our relationships. This issue is basically because we assume something about relationships, and then we go on to live them on the basis of this assumption. But if our assumption is false, then we end up in problems.
Similarly, we have assumed that the accumulation of wealth is the only thing we need and the rest shall be taken care of. We have also made numerous assumptions about our interaction with nature, that we can exploit nature, that nature is present solely for our consumption, and so on and so forth. These are incorrect assumptions.
What is the Outcome of the Misconception?
⇒ At the level of individual– Rising problems of depression, anxiety, suicides, stress, insecurity, increasing health problems, lack of confidence and conviction, etc.
⇒ At the level of family– Breaking up of joint families, mistrust and disharmony in relationships, divorce, generation gap, dowry deaths, neglect of older people, etc.
⇒ At the level of society– Growing incidences of terrorism, violence, communalism, racial and ethnic struggle, corruption, adulteration, sex-crimes exploitation, wars between nations, proliferation of lethal weapons, etc.
⇒ At the level of nature– Global warming, weather imbalances, depletion of mineral and energy resources, deforestation, soil degradation, etc.
All the problems are a direct outcome of an incorrect understanding, our wrong notion about happiness and prosperity and their continuity – this is an issue for serious exploration.What is the Solution? – The Need for Right Understanding
In order to resolve the issues in human relationships, we need to understand them first, and this would come from the ‘right understanding of relationship’.
Similarly, in order to be prosperous and to enrich nature, we need to have the ‘right understanding’. The ‘right understanding’ will enable us to work out our requirements for physical facilities and hence correctly distinguish the difference between wealth and prosperity. With nature as well, we need to understand the harmony in nature, and how we can complement this harmony.
We can represent this as below:
