COMMENTARY
Caring is hard-wired into nature ... into the animal kingdom

In the animal kingdom, a male animal cares for ... protects ... the female. The female in turn cares for ... protects ... the offspring.

Something similar is hard wired in the human society. A man cares for ... protects ... a woman. The woman in turn cares for ... protects children.

Society as it has modernized has weakened this hard wired caring so that:

• in the communist world the state gets to be responsible for caring
• in the capitalist world it is money that gets to be responsible for caring

I am reminded of asking an important question and getting the response 'Who cares?' or something like 'Nobody cares!'. But it turns out that with quiet probing one finds that the reality is that most people do care, and a good number care very deeply. The issue then becomes how to mobilize caring in such a way that society as a whole is better off, and individuals get benefit for their role in a caring society.

Much of the economic modeling is based on the idea that there are economic exchanges denominated in money ... there is little in the model about exchanges that produce value without any money involvement. These exchanges are ignored completely. Yet a civilized society gets a huge amount of its happiness and its quality of life from such transactions. These exchanges are very interesting in that they are all about valueadd that has almost no associated cost. Helping someone to be happier at little or no cost has huge valueadd ... and is good for society, the economy and the planet
Peter Burgess