Scott Sanders comments on the American consumer ethos this way: "Our economy rewards competition rather than cooperation; aggression rather than compassion, greed rather than generosity, haste rather than care. ... When a corporate CEO is paid a hundred times as much as a schoolteacher or a factory worker, and when the richest one percent of Americans earn as much as the poorest forty percent, how does one teach a child to believe in equity and justice? When success is measured only by quarterly reports, how does one teach patience?"Another struggle fathers wage for their children is a struggle to find hope even in times of despair - especially in times of despair. What inspired Sanders's book Hunting for Hope: A Father's Journeys was a challenge his teenage son put to him on a camping trip when he said to him, "You're so worried about the fate of the earth you can't enjoy anything. We come to these mountains and you bring the shadows with you. You've got me seeing nothing but darkness." Sanders recalls: "Stunned by the force of his words, I could not speak. If my gloom case a shadow over Creation for my son, then I had failed him. What remedy could there be for such a betrayal?" Sanders, who is a professor, recognizes that his son is like many other young people today. Indeed, "an epidemic of depression is sweeping through their generation. It is the earth they brood about, the outlook for life. ... The young people who put their disturbing questions to me have had an ecological education, and a political one as well. They know we are in trouble. Everywhere they look they see ruined landscapes and ravaged communities and broken people. So they are asking me if I believe we have the resource for healing the wounds, for mending the breaks. They are asking me if I live in hope."
The Hidden Spirituality of Men. 194.
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