My mornings these days are spent reading email and news reports sitting in a swing on our master bedroom balcony, from which I can view Reagan National Airport and further south the skyline of Alexandria Va. Ito serves my coffee and a cut orange to me there. Life is wonderful (age adjusted). Thankfully I am no longer faced with life defining choices—forks in the road. Luckily most of my choices worked out well. But I am happy to no longer face them.
While reading the Post, WSJ, etc. on my iPad, I listen alternatively to Opera areas and my favorite folk singers of my youth. This morning while listening to Peter, Paul and Mary sign “Where have all the Flowers Gone,” I broking into tears and thought I would share with you why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgXNVA9ngx8
I believe that the hearts of most young people seek to “do good”– to prosper by or while making the world a better place, which is the essence of capitalism. There are, of course, a few bad apples, but most of us are born with good hearts and a desire to prove themselves worthy. Over too much of history young men too often proved their worthiness by going to war to defend their country, or, at the instigation of those bad apples, to expand their empire. So, the impulse to reach out and help others has often been subverted in our youth to standing up to kill them instead, dying themselves in large numbers. World War II, alone killed 70-85 million people and injured multiples of that. Where have all the flowers gone.
My tears flowed from the sadness that we have failed and still fail to nurture those good hearts into an even better world to the extent we could. The enterprise of our fellow man once liberated to pursue their dreams has lifted the wellbeing of the average person to unbelievable heights. But every young person knows that a good life consists of more than material wealth. We are again (or still?) in a period when far too many people can only think of dealing with our fellow man by beating them down in war. What a sad misuse of our potential. Where will all the flowers go?
Warren's space 
Sadly communities swing and move between happiness and discontent like tides ebbing and flowing. When people can love what they are doing and have accomplished we see happiness and when the world seems overly transactional we become hardened and even cruel. On the continuum between putting oneself out for others and the putting oneself out for transactional benefits there is a wide continuum. Maybe there is something to the idea that when love and transactions come to close we experience periods of instability. It would be better to have a world where doing stuff for others without an expectation of return becomes widened with opportunity? Giving our youth the opportunity to do stuff without reward seems to have become a forgotten value sometimes and I hope not to often.
I think that most peoples’ actions are motivated by multiple rewards (money, public respect, helping others because you may need help in the future, etc.). Trust in our institutions and neighbors, is important for a win, win world. It’s at a low ebb at the moment. Love and money together are win, win.