“Compassion is probably the only antitoxin of the soul. Where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses become relatively harmless. One would rather see the world run by men who set their hearts on toys but are accessible to pity, than by men animated by lofty ideals whose dedication makes them ruthless. In the chemistry of man’s soul, almost all noble attributes—courage, honor, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc.—can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.”
—Eric Hoffer

Generations after generations, humanity has suffered from and been traumatized by physical and psychical violence and warfare. The first half of the 20th century was especially severe in this regard with the two world wars, the great depression, and the influenza epidemic because of which hundreds of millions of people had perished or been damaged.

The chain reactions of violence and war continue all through the 20th century into the 21st century. The tragedies and calamities include the cold war, communist revolutions, communist and fascist genocides and massacres, the nuclear explosions and threats, the uprising of terrorism, countless regional wars, plus the high social pressure and the radiation, chemical, and noise pollutions of the environment.
Humanity has not a chance to recover from those humongous (huge and monstrous) traumas. It is not too far from truth to state that a significant percentage of the human population suffers from a collective post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The individuals that suffer from PTSD tend to exhibit a host of psychologically and behaviorally dysfunctional symptoms that used to be associated with neurosis. Also, they seek safety and security above all else, willing to give up their liberty, freedom, and independence. Their character—ability to meet the demand of reality—becomes weakened.
Humanity needs healing in both the individual and the societal dimensions or the internal self and the external world dimensions before it can confidently move forward into an uncertain future in its evolutionary path for the creation of a new world, a new civilization.
The BFF approaches the self and the world, the individual and the societal, or the inner and the outer, comprehensively and integrally by seeing the healing of the self and the world as a single and whole movement.
There are two kinds of people who are dedicated to change and transformation. One is “spiritual” people who are dedicated to individual self-transformation and engaged in solitary self-reflection or meditation, claiming that the only way to transform the world is through the individual transformation of each human being.
The other is “social activists” who are dedicated to changing various aspects of society and the world such as what they call “injustice” or “inequality,” claiming that their activism is based on compassion, sense of justice, and altruism and that the exclusive focus on self-transformation is “selfish” and unproductive.
They both share the same simplistic belief in one-way mono-causation: it is either the change of the self that is what causes the change of the societal or the change of the societal that is what causes the change of the self. A half-truth mistaken to be a whole truth subverts our intellectual integrity, obstructs our view, and enervates our thought.

Furthermore, the fact remains that a great portion of spiritual people are still unhealed and untransformed and that despite the great noise social activists make, the world has not changed or transformed much, while their action shows that they are unhealed and untransformed and that their activism is often the outer projection of their unresolved inner trauma, rage, frustration, or dissatisfaction.
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In this age of complexity and complex thought, we require more comprehensive ways of thinking and conceiving wherein individual transformation and societal transformation, and healing of the self and healing of the world, constitute one integrated movement of transformation and healing.
Although it sounds platitudinous and cliché-like, indeed “We are the world.” As we are woven into the fabric of the world, so is the world woven into the fabric of our being. To understand that we are the world is to be suffused with real compassion, and to act from this understanding and compassion is to be moral in the deepest sense of the word.
To be moral or ethical in this sense is to think authentically and to act in spontaneous alignment with others inside the existential context of morality embracing reason and rationality and the conceptual framework of (volitional) moral science encompassing (non-volitional) physical science.
In BFF 2017 we will examine and explore the possibility of “Healing the Self, Healing the World” in this comprehensive moral scientific context and framework.