Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in defense of justice is no virtue.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero

Clearly, extremism is not the enemy, in spite of what many are inclined to say right now.

The real enemy is the lukewarm determination to address the dilemmas that fall disproportionately on the poor, on the lower middle class who see their situation deteriorating, on the disempowered, on the displaced, and on the dark skinned people of the world. The benumbed response of the privileged to the urgency of a number of shared problems redounds to the disfavor of us all in a world where so little can be masked or hidden.

For too long the West’s quest for the ideal life has been framed around notions of personal gain and independence.   Now we can see that passion for a fairer, juster, and more loving world, accepting of those who are different from us, is an essential part of the truly liberated self. In the new world that is emerging, we will not grow into fully realized human beings without connectedness, compassion and justice. Recognition of these truths is growing. How can we encourage more people to embrace them?

For starters, let’s take a few minutes to recognize the values that have gotten us this far, and use the particular time we live in to understand them afresh.

Equality before the law. Religious toleration. Liberty of conscience. The consent of the governed as a requirement for legitimate government. Freedom of speech. Freedom from fear. Freedom from want.

Thinking about them can be embarrassing, because we recognize immediately how much more needs to be done to achieve them. If we have allowed ourselves to sink into a mindset where these great truths have become pat phrases echoing something we used to hear about in high school, we have some things to attend to.

Perhaps the angst that is in the air right now arises in part because, in the years leading up to the turn of the new century, some of us deluded ourselves into believing we had arrived in the task of creating a better world. Maybe the collapse of communism in 1989 took away the West’s sense of urgency, or released a kind of hubris, best exemplified by Francis Fukuyama’s announcement of “The end of history,” which dubbed liberal democracy the “winner.”

Embracing values is not the same thing as snapping your fingers and seeing the world become different. Embracing values is the first step in a way of life devoted to the realization of these values in the lives of individuals. We stand on the shoulders of a host of people who moved that struggle forward.

In this time when moderation is held up as the antidote to polarized politics, let’s be sure we are immoderate in protecting the values that undergird respect and compassion for those who are not our immediate kin. This is the minimum life asks of us.

We are living in a world where “transition” is a failed descriptor. We can’t imagine a point of stasis down the road.

At the same time, we are bombarded with paradoxes and contradictions.

Genetics explain phenomena that only two decades ago were a mystery, while other repercussions of technology have created imminent climate catastrophe. Our knowledge of the brain develops exponentially, while dramatic increases in autism diagnoses remind us of how much we have yet to understand. Brutal beheadings are depicted to the world in a split-second. Electrification makes much more possible in the villages of India, while pollution hangs like a permanent pall over cities. Cheap oil prices suggest potential for economic expansion, yet instead they undermine confidence in the market. Social media have proven valuable in fomenting revolution, but at the end of the day are more successful at criticizing than at offering constructive paths forward. Religion takes on a fundamentalist character in some places, while churches in Europe close and one of the foremost writers on spirituality in the US brings out a book on creating your own religion. Democratization of authority brings many more people into the conversation, but threatens to paralyze leaders when we really need them.

In Europe, the failure to find a united response to the refugee surge, Russia’s incursions into Ukraine, Greece’s bankruptcy, Italy and Spain’s faltering economies, and the UK’s referendum on EU membership raise questions about the European project, which stood out as one of the outstanding achievements of the late twentieth century.

In the US, events of the past 18 months have produced greater awareness about the shocking plight of blacks in prisons and about “frontier” police tactics, but Syrian refugees are characterized as a potential threat rather than a group that needs help and support.   “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is a forgotten aspiration.

Facebook, registering one’s “friends” in the hundreds and possibly thousands, has proven not to improve the sense of disconnectedness of the lonely. Burgeoning numbers who work alone are instead finding community in shared office spaces and intentional common living arrangements. Indeed, the sharing economy raises hopes that the cold-hearted aspects of capitalism are being undermined. At the same time a self-help ethos is replacing service as a core philosophy.

This is a time when fear finds many entry points. We see it in the rise of extreme politics. But fear is often an unnoticed emotion that lies behind subtle behaviors – blocking out aspects of life we don’t understand, turning us towards people more like ourselves, shutting down creativity, urging us to pull in and become self-obsessed. Even those with the highest of apparent motives can adopt too narrow a focus, falling back on old patterns of thought, putting more time, money and effort into outdated endeavors.

I am proposing that the principle of “now” or “awareness” or “capturing the present moment,” clearly relevant to our personal inner lives, and widely expressed in popular literature on mindfulness and meditation, surely has something to teach us about our stance towards the world right now.

What does living in the present mean for those of us trying to do constructive things in the world?

Feeling this emerging world with my whole being seems to be part of the task. Awareness free of judgment, we are told, is the greatest agent for change. Instead of giving fear the upper hand, this is a time to love all the crooked, ugly, dysfunctional and glorious pieces of the planet right now. Of course we must act, but let’s act from a place of humility and listening. And let’s challenge the temptation to place limits on others in order to feel better about ourselves. It is good to be remembering that in uncertain times, encouraging those working alongside us might be our number one priority.