In the last 20 years, by coming to measure everything and everyone in terms of dollars, we've lost a sense of other, deeper kinds of exchange. Asking this question aloud, and listening to diverse answers, may help rejuvenate our hearts and wills. Simpler laws and moralities would flow from such a vision. Resource depletion would be heavily taxed, child neglect would be severely stigmatized. What we've learned in the past 20 years can be dispiriting, no doubt.
Humans continue to overburden the planet.
Tribalism flares up. More and more children grow up in brutalizing poverty. Meanwhile, the wealthy are building bigger and better enclaves in an attempt to secede from the rest of the human race. Mother Jones was born at one of the last moments of the Western Enlightenment when it was possible to believe that resources were endless, growth assured, reason natural, and progress inevitable. In such a world, material achievement became the exclusive way to measure worth.