July 17, 2025
The breakdown of a shared view about the values we will organize our country around has become a great crisis. There have always been significant differences in views and opinions in the United States, of course. The remarkable achievement of our founders was to put together a set of moral ideals that people with so many differences could embrace. Some of the most important:
1) an understanding that all of us were created equal, and therefore should have an equal opportunity to find fulfillment and even happiness in this new country;
2) respect for our fellow citizens, even those with vastly different backgrounds, beliefs, and ways of life;
3) a commitment by all to support this country, abide by its laws, and when it was needed, give their time and money for its future through taxes and military service;
4) a core belief that our institutions, however imperfect, would (at least most of the time) do the right thing for the good of both the whole and for the individuals who lived here;
5) a belief that our leaders would abide by certain moral standards, especially when acting in their institutional roles, and that they would be called to account when they did not;
6) that elected leaders would not use their official positions for personal profit;
7) that each of the three branches of government would serve as a check to the power of the other two, creating a balance so that no branch of government could become overly powerful or corrupt, thus preventing arbitrary rule by one person or a small faction;
8) that all the courts in the legal system, at every level of government, would be committed to justice for each person equally before the law.
These core ideas were the outcome of numerous compromises among the founders and the constituencies they represented, but the result created something new in the world, offering the promise of a new start for people from many different countries.
And they came. As the brilliant book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard demonstrates, this country began as a melting pot of people from different religions, ethnic groups, degrees of education, levels of wealth, and regions of the world. There have always been many challenges in bringing so many different peoples together, but they have always been overcome in the past, and this country has remained a melting pot throughout its history.
The moral principles upon which we were founded have allowed people from all over the world to come here and build new and better lives for themselves and their families. Millions upon millions who believed this country would provide new possibilities have been drawn to these shores since our beginning, and together built a great nation. The only condition that was placed on those who came to this country wishing to take advantage of the opportunities presented here, was that they follow the law and abide by our founding principles. This is the glue that has held this great nation together.
Certainly everyone did not abide by these founding values through the years. Many leaders and many citizens failed to live up to them numerous times. But they were always present, broadly accepted as standards toward which we were aiming — and that fact alone has had a powerful effect on how most people lived, acted, and voted. Leaders, especially, had to seem to hold these common values, even if they did not believe them in their hearts. Whatever they actually believed, in the past they felt compelled to make an effort to hide the fact that they were not abiding by these core values, if they were not.
The heart of our problem today, then, is the breakdown of a broad commitment to these values — both by leaders and far too many people.
Comparison to Earlier Times
Throughout history, of course, conflicting views have been present in every society the world has ever known. When the conflicts have reached a crisis point, sometimes a new and widely accepted way forward emerged and became established. Other times, a charismatic leader or a small faction would gain enough support to take control of the government and the military of a country, imposing its will on the other factions for a period of time. Not indefinitely, but sometimes for a number of years. But this solution has never lasted, for in such a situation, there is always a building discontent and opposition.
In the United States today we seem to be at such a crisis point, with no group or movement having enough support to gain and hold power for long. In the past few decades, various factions have convinced themselves they were the wave of the future, only to be defeated at the polls a few years later. When those supporting one point of view among the increasingly hostile factions have gained significant power or influence — either in politics, education, the media, entertainment, wealth accumulation, or various combinations of these — that group has tried to use its power to impose its preferred views on everyone else.
Needless to say, this has not worked. To this point, no leader or set of ideas has attracted sufficient support to establish and maintain a continuing influence over the governmental levers of power for long, so every faction’s attempt to gain and hold power has failed.
To emphasize again, competition over ideas and values is not new in this country. But when the factions begin to view those with different ideas as corrupt — or even evil; when there is no respect for the humanity of the other; when there is no underlying acceptance of basic facts; when there ceases to be a commitment to even attempting to be truthful; when there is no broad agreement on any values such as those our founders set forth, then the whole system starts to break down. This is the deepening crisis in which we find ourselves in the United States today.
Attempts have been made to find a workable compromise between the various competing factions, but to this point every attempt has fallen apart and no group or person is articulating a way forward that enough people can organize around that seems sustainable — let alone solve the increasingly complex problems we face in the modern world.
Again, the lens of history shows that many countries in the past have lost their way. Some collapsed rapidly, while others limped along for a long time as they declined. But without a widely accepted set of organizing beliefs, no country can flourish. The good news is that there are numerous examples of nations or cultures that have had a rebirth, followed by a new period of flourishing, such as happened in this country following the Civil War. Sometimes this rebirth came about through a recommitment to old beliefs and values, sometimes it resulted from a new way of thinking, a new system of understanding, a new set of beliefs. Or some combination of these.
For those of us living in the United States today, if there is to be a solution to the problems we face, it will only come from a broad acceptance of and commitment to a common set of values and virtues that will be widely accepted, that we will live by and organize our lives around, and will be taught to the young.
This could happen through either a recommitment to the eight values and virtues this country was first built upon, the ones our founders felt to be crucial, or it could come about through the emergence of a new set that enough people agree upon. Or perhaps a blending of ideas from the past with those of the different factions today, a combination of new ideas along with the old.
If neither of these alternatives for a healthy way forward can be achieved, then we seem destined to suffer increasing chaos and further breakdown in this country.
The rebirth of a healthy country is definitely possible, but for this to occur, we must find a set of beliefs about who we are and what we stand for that a majority of us will accept, and then will live and act and vote to support.
The Foundation of Any Successful Culture
For those who wish to move forward on such a path, the first step is to examine our history. Whether a renewal will come from a recommitment to past values or something new, there is much to be learned from our early years and the making of this country. After all, our founders created something unique, a republic in a country with a large land mass, a large and rapidly growing population, and made up of people from many different backgrounds and various ambitions. This combination of challenges was met by a group of leaders who were prepared for the task, and they brought forth something new and extraordinary.
It has become well-known all over the world since that time, but the founding statement was itself revolutionary when it was first penned:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Our founders certainly understood that this was a highly ambitious and aspirational undertaking — would certainly not be easy to achieve. What would be required, what would determine its success or failure? One word captures their unanimous response: Virtue.
The clearest messages to which they all gave voice was the importance of virtue. All the leading founders believed that the success of the new republic rested on a belief in values that would serve as a foundation for a commitment to living by a common set of virtues. And they insisted that both leaders and a majority of the citizens would have to embrace these virtues.
George Washington summed up their conclusion: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,” adding, “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.”
James Madison put it quite bluntly: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical [fantastical] idea.” And Benjamin Franklin put it even more succinctly: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
Of course, virtue does not happen by chance. For the people of any country or society to be live by common values and virtues, they must be encouraged within that culture. Most people must practice them, they must be taught to the young, and new members of the culture must be encouraged to live by them.
As Thomas Jefferson said, the people must “be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice … These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.”
When this is not the case, the result will be: “A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience,” which, “is incompatible with freedom” — as Patrick Henry put it. That is why Samuel Adams insisted, “the truest friend of the liberty of his country” is the person who tries the hardest “to promote its virtue.”
Once again, history is a valuable guide, for in societies throughout the world, either a virtuous cycle or a vicious cycle in the interaction between the people and its leaders with regard to virtue is always taking place.
John Adams put it this way, “Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private Virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.”
A virtuous cycle can begin from either side of the dynamic circle: if a group of leaders begin to live by and govern by a clear set of virtues and values, this will encourage the people to do likewise; on the other hand, if a majority of the people begin to embrace a common set of values and virtues, they will begin to demand that their leaders do the same and will elect leaders who will do so. Neither process can happen independently, of course. Movement from both sides is necessary, but the impetus can be primarily from the people or from a group of leaders.
The opposite is a vicious cycle. If leaders are corrupt, the people will be encouraged to act likewise and become increasingly corrupt. If most people come to believe that corruption is the best way to get ahead in the place they live, they will become ever more corrupt. As that becomes the predominate view of how life works among the majority, more and more corrupt leaders will be elected. Then both the people and the leaders will be in a cycle that leads ever downward into greater and greater corruption.
Universal Importance of Values, Virtue, and Meaning
Looking beyond the United States, most every community, nation, and culture in the past that has been successful in providing a good life for a large number of people has been based on a shared set of values, on specific virtues that would be encouraged and taught, and an understanding of the meanings around which lives could best be organized. (Not necessarily one meaning only, but an understanding that the meanings people lived by were important, and that specific meanings should either be taught, or people should be taught how best to find meaning for themselves.)
In finding our own way forward now, we will benefit greatly by studying past cultures, and especially by realizing how remarkably similar all successful cultures have been in terms of the values they deemed necessary to live by, the virtues that they felt were crucial for fulfillment, and the meanings they believed would lead to a flourishing human life.
The starting point for gaining this understanding is to ask: Where did all this commonality come from?
It came from the wisdom traditions of the world. Every successful society and culture the world has ever known traces their core beliefs about how to live to one or more of the major wisdom traditions, which in turn gave rise to the major spiritual belief systems and religions we recognize today.
There are certainly differences in emphasis between the various traditions, but there is an even stronger commonality running through them all. The reason is that, to succeed over time, a tradition must understand the actual nature of we human beings.
It must take into account the way we humans really are — all our urges and desires, drives and needs, our capacity to be both kind and selfish, considerate and cruel, both good and bad.
It must recognize all sides of our natures, acknowledging that we are both thinking and feeling creatures, that we have an incredible ability to reason, to think things through and come to conclusions. But it must also recognize that we are very likely to act on what we feel, to follow our emotions and then use our reason to justify whatever we want and feel.
It must provide a special place for our capacity to have profound insights and intuitions that arise spontaneously, then offer ways to help us determine which are misguided and which are deeply true — which are fueled by self-centered desires and which arise from our higher natures.
It must take into account that we can connect deeply with other people, as well as with the living world around us — through our emotions, intuition, and imagination.
Of great importance, it must speak to a deep need so many people have — to find a right relationship with the “Unseen Order” within which we exist.
To speak to all these needs, the great wisdom traditions were therefore wholistic systems that dealt with us as whole human beings. They presented ways for members of a tribe, community, or society (whether large or small) to mold themselves into a culture that could flourish and thrive. They presented ways to curb selfishness and greed while encouraging the parts of us that valued cooperation and felt care and concern for others.
From these teachings the world’s cultures grew, and this has been the only way any group of people has been able to live together in harmony as far back as we can trace human beings. And that is a very long time — people with basically the same brains and bodies as we go back at least 200,000 years, probably much longer.
Sometimes the leaders of successful cultures professed belief in one particular wisdom tradition or religion, sometimes not. This is not the crucial condition. The only necessity is that leaders of a successful community, country, or culture adhere to a common set of values. The founders of the United States did not have the same religious beliefs. Some held Christian convictions, but belonged to various denominations with widely differing views, while George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and James Monroe were not Christian but either Deists or theistic Deists during our founding years,
And yet, all came together around key moral principles that they made a part of our beginning. The result was shaped by the background of a Christian environment in which all were raised, the moral and philosophical ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers such as Plato and Cicero, and the moral and political ideas of early Enlightenment thinkers, especially John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu.
Because our founders understood that the nation they were creating would be populated by people with many different belief systems, they fashioned a set of principles they hoped all could accept. To do so, they integrated ideas from these three great wisdom traditions into one set of values and virtues, while allowing the people of the new nation a wide range of personal choice about the meanings they would choose for their lives.
In other countries in which the leaders do not profess to believe in the wisdom tradition that shaped their cultures, the core ideas can still be very present and active in molding everything that happens. As various scholars have pointed out, such as the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, the scientific revolution was based on fundamental Christian ideas.
The Modern Dilemma
There are many reasons for the problems we face in the modern world today, including in the United States. The first is to recognize that we humans are communal beings at our very core, thus for a great part of our history, we all lived in small groups in which everyone knew each other.
This was the only way of life for everyone for perhaps 190,000 years, and then only began to change with the advent of farming around 10,000 years ago. It began to change at that time, but the change happened very, very slowly, speeding up rapidly only a little more than 200 years ago, as the Industrial Revolution became well established.
Although people have lived in cities for several thousand years, until quite recently cities were made up of neighborhoods that functioned as communities within cities — which only began to change significantly with modern transportation, the train and automobile. Then the Industrial Revolution brought an influx of farmers into cities looking for work in the factories, and the culture of neighborhoods started slowly to break down. Finally, modern communication and transportation led to frequent moves by an increasing number of workers in search of better jobs and families seeking better lifestyles, so an increasing number of neighborhoods no longer functioned as they had in the past.
Even with these changes, however, the pattern of people living mostly in communities did not and has not affected everyone. A significant percentage of us still live in small communities all over the world — a few in tribal forests, many in small towns and farming communities, many more in neighborhoods in large cities. But having a settled life in a community is becoming ever more rare, especially in the United States in the last few decades, as more and more of us are moving with an increasing frequency, and people from different cultures have been coming here at ever-increasing rates.
Not only in the United States, but more and more people all over the world are living beside and working with others who hold very different beliefs and views. As a result, in many urban areas there are few shared values. Even in a growing number of smaller communities, those with differing views and values frequently live side-by-side.
One major consequence of these developments is the lack of any agreement within communities about what to teach the young. Schools become a place to park children while parents are at work, and teachers have no clear direction about which, if any, values and virtues should be taught. The fallback position is just to teach job skills to those who want to learn, and those without internal motivation are passed along through the system from grade to grade.
There are, of course, wonderful exceptions, with some teachers, principals, and schools still doing a great job motivating young people to learn and grow and become better human beings. But it is becoming harder and harder to do so, because there is so little agreement in many communities about what is important to teach. And because there is less and less agreement within communities on the common values that should be passed on to the young, the problem continues to escalate.
Churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious organizations can sometimes fill this role, but fewer and fewer people in the United States, especially young people, are members of any religious community. At the same time, a growing number of the religious communities that remain have become political, abandoning core tenets of care and concern for one’s neighbors while becoming hostile to those who don’t share their political views.
In circumstances such as these, we humans tend to feel vulnerable, alone, anxious, and afraid. This in turn brings out the tendency to think only about ourselves, to think others might be dangerous, and to band into groups — far too often coming together around fear or paranoia.
Such groups are often organized around being different from “others,” which breeds further fear, resentment, and anger toward anyone not in the in-group. This in turn leads to the dangerous situation in which it is all too easy for leaders to arise who stoke fear and anger toward one or more groups of “others” in order to gain power for themselves. All those “others” are labeled as the cause of all the society’s problems, thus becoming scapegoats to be banished or marginalized.
It is little wonder, then, that so many are suffering from increasingly aggressive behavior from others on the highways and in public places, and that we find ourselves acting in unfriendly, unkind, and aggressive ways toward those we do not know. In this environment, far too many of us feel like we must look out only for ourselves and take whatever we need or want when we can, with no concern for others.
Still another part of the modern dilemma is that large numbers of us are spending our time watching television screens, laptops, and smartphones, not making any effort to really get to know our neighbors. Instead, we make online friends and join virtual communities. There, we see only a small slice of the true nature of the people we are meeting, seeing only the images they wish to show us. More and more we are interacting with one-sided, self-created characters on a screen, self-created avatars, not real individuals. We do not really know them, who they really are, even those we think of as our friends.
Friends such as these often “ghost” us tomorrow, or spread harmful messages about us online. As this pattern repeats ever more frequently all around the world, the danger of the abuse of power rises dramatically.
When the breakdown of communities and cultures reaches a certain point, the stage is set for a leader to take control of the levers of power and try to rule with an iron hand. Then it is not long until a dangerous old maxim comes into play, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Seeking Solutions
The problems we face are enormous, but solutions are always possible. No one could have predicted the emergence of the country the United States became only a few decades from our beginnings: small settlements of many different peoples with diverse backgrounds and beliefs, spread over a large land mass, with very slow means of communication and travel, and facing the most powerful army in the world at the time.
The solution our founders devised brought us together as a nation through the formulation of a clear set of principles, universal truths that applied to everyone, no matter their particular faith or belief system, because these truths were part of the very fabric of the universe itself.
These values and virtues, put together by a group of founders who were deeply versed in the principles and beliefs of three great wisdom traditions — Christian, Greek and Roman, and the early Enlightenment philosophers — became the foundation for the new nation.
As we look for solutions today, one promising way forward is to examine the wisdom traditions that are available to us now, to discover if there are commonalities in them that could guide us into the future.
In studying the major traditions present in our world today, we certainly find significant differences between the primary values and virtues they emphasize. But each of the wisdom traditions that gave rise to the world’s successful cultures all believed that some set of values and virtues is necessary for communities and societies to thrive. And they all held that for an individual to have a life that is fulfilling, a sense of meaning is essential.
These core beliefs are true for Christianity and Confucianism, Judaism and Hinduism, Buddhism and Shamanism, Taoism and Islam, ancient Greek (and Roman) thought and Zoroastrianism, Platonism and all the tribal belief systems around the world, going back tens of thousands of years.
Again, there are many differences in the major world religions, and almost equally great differences within the major recognized branches of each one. For instance, within Christianity alone there are estimated to be about 45,000 different denominations worldwide, each with differing beliefs.
And beyond the major traditions, there are the less wide-spread belief systems such as Mormonism, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Spiritualism, the Bahai, Freemasonry, Theosophy, New Thought, and numerous others.
Instead of focusing on their differences, however, it is valuable to realize that the same two core beliefs are true for all: Each holds that an underlying set of values and virtues is necessary for a group of people to live together peacefully, and that individuals must have a sense of meaning to have fulfilling lives.
Needless to say, all of these systems for having a fulfilling life have been misinterpreted and abused through the ages. Countless self-centered and corrupt leaders have distorted the teachings for personal gain. Even whole societies have adopted distorted interpretations and gone astray. Since we humans have both good and bad tendencies within us, throughout history those seeking wealth and power have been able to exploit the dark side of our natures for their own purposes by feeding our fears, stoking anger and greed, and urging us to blame others for all problems.
But in every age, brave men and women have stepped forward to encourage anyone who would listen to live and act from the “better angels of their natures.” They have taught that the only way anyone will have a truly fulfilling life, and the only way communities will be peaceful and nurturing for their members, is when a majority make an effort to live by a shared set of values, virtues, and meanings like those the great saints and sages taught.
In many different times and places, when there has been a rebirth of healthy values, virtues, and meanings, corrupt leaders and sometimes even corrupt cultures have been swept away, replaced by others who return to the core principles of the founders of the great traditions, which were remarkably similar. All emphasized the importance of, and methods for, cooperation between people. All taught care and concern for others. And all had at the center of their message the importance of compassion, love, kindness, and respect for the lives and beliefs of others.
Care and Concern for Others
Having care and concern for other human beings — and sometimes for all living things, and for the living Earth itself — has always been a hallmark of the wisdom traditions. All taught that to have a good life ourselves, we must overcome our self-centered, self-aggrandizing, callous, and cruel tendencies. Since all of us have both caring and selfish sides to our natures, one of the primary roles of the wisdom traditions has been to make clear the value and importance of trying to live from the higher side of our natures — both to have healthy lives ourselves and to create healthy communities.
To create and sustain a healthy culture, everyone entering that culture must be taught its values, especially the young. Thus one of the primary roles of education in each culture is to bring the children into harmony with the values, virtues, and meanings prevalent in that culture. If adults enter from another place, there must be a few key principles by which they agree to abide.
If these principles are too rigid, they won’t work for long, because human beings are quite different from one another, and naturally wish to express their own natures. If they are too loose, then the culture begins to break down. It is a fine line, yet a balance toward which every culture must constantly strive.
The great challenge, then, is this: How can a large modern society that has lost cohesion recover, or create anew, a pattern in which people will respect each other, will show care and concern for one another, and be able to establish sincere, deep relationships with friends and neighbors?
It was precisely to address these questions that the best-known teachers — Jesus, the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, Jewish and Hindu sages, and so many more — came forward to teach a way to live. All taught that the only fulfilling life was one of respect for each other (even those with different views), and by cultivating compassion, love, kindness, and care and concern for others. All taught the importance of living by values, cultivating virtue in oneself, finding a deeper meaning for one’s life, and developing a connection with that which is larger than ourselves.
It is not enough for a society or a person to put on a veneer of righteousness, of being good. It is not sufficient if most are simply giving lip service to values and virtues without putting them into practice. The wise ones told us, instead, that it is essential for a majority of us to make a sincere effort to live from what we say we believe. It is crucial that we make an effort to live by moral values and commit to living by a set of virtues we hold deep within.
It is also crucial to “Know Thyself,” to know ourselves well enough that we do not fool ourselves about our true motives. In other words, gaining a certain amount of self-awareness is a prerequisite for living a whole and healthy life. Gaining wisdom about ourselves and then being honest with ourselves about what we are doing and why we are doing it is a crucial step toward having a truly fulfilling life. We do not have to be perfect in doing these things to have a rewarding and meaningful life. But we must make a sincere effort.
In a similar way, to be successful over time, the living center of a community and even a large society must be organized around a set of values and virtues. If a majority of the people in any group, large or small, does not have a commitment to try to live by a shared set of values, then as W. B. Yeats said, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” In such a society, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Today in the United States, as well as in many other countries, the message of compassion, kindness, love, and concern for others is not very popular. Ours is a time of turmoil, an age characterized by controversy, outrage, and fear. Many are living in the kind of broken world Yeats described. But as Yeats foretold at the end of his poem, in times such as these new energies toward rebirth will be awakened, and the tide will eventually turn.
How might you be a part of the new energies of rebirth?
David