The welfare of any segment of humanity is inextricably bound
up with the welfare of the whole. Humanity’s collective life suffers when any
one group thinks of its own well-being in isolation from that of its neighbours
or pursues economic gain without regard for how the natural environment, which
provides sustenance for all, is affected. A stubborn obstruction, then, stands
in the way of meaningful social progress: time and again, avarice and
self-interest prevail at the expense of the common good. Unconscionable
quantities of wealth are being amassed, and the instability this creates is
made worse by how income and opportunity are spread so unevenly both between
nations and within nations. But it need not be so. However much such conditions
are the outcome of history, they do not have to define the future, and even if
current approaches to economic life satisfied humanity’s stage of adolescence,
they are certainly inadequate for its dawning age of maturity.
- The Universal
House of Justice (From a letter dated 1 Match 2017)
