The morning after the Iron Curtain fell, all of the religions and the ethnic and regional separations were back with a vengeance. We want to live healthy lives and have resources to cope when things go wrong. Focus on the patient Differences between groups can be exaggerated, and dealing with them can be paralyzing. Students of pluralism in clinical settings are increasingly coming to agree that the fundamental and most satisfying way to deal with these differences is by concentrating on the patient as the fixed point in a turbulent world. Another camp observes and affirms the dissensus, the disagreements that come with pluralism.
Citizens cherish extreme individualism.
But, late in the century, the returns are in. Society cannot live without these three marks, nor can it easily live with them alone. Hence, finding them spiritually insufficient or unsatisfying, more and more people demand to be treated as whole persons, in contexts. Similarly, when making ethical decisions, merely and purely secular and pragmatic concerns are insufficient. Too much gets overlooked.