"Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also."    -- Charles Horton Cooley

That quote gave me pause.

Traditionally, it is the basic strands of life that bind us in commonality. What we want defines the linkage. The full belly, a roof overhead, a lifelong love affair, the dreams for our children, and the need to leave a mark in the world.  So we begin with the sculpture of self.  First we mold it to our satisfaction. Then we hoist it over the shoulder and haul it around in life's garden trying to find the perfect niche or pedestal to display it. Once it is in the right place, we begin to overlay ourselves to stand out. We struggle daily to construct, refurnish or polish our self sculptures. Religion, patriotism, dogma and culture are draped over the basic common form and become our definition of diversity. Some have an easy time of it.  Some don't. Some never get to finish, destroyed by war, famine or disease.

But the times, they are a-changing. We stand on the brink of great change, Thankfully, we have all looked up from our individual endeavors and realized that we have to work on the garden. We now share the common purpose of weeding out, mulching, and sowing new seeds of green in our greatest link to one another, our home planet Earth. We have to interweave our diversity so that it strengthens and enhances the world we are trying to save. In so doing, our world civilization will flower and bear new fruit that will sustain generations to come. The new commonality must be a global one.

It is only then, that societies and the individual will remain as works of art. 

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