Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 14, 2011
Care – enchantment 
From The Reenchantment of Everyday Life, by Thomas Moore
“If with an ecological sensibility we protect the oceanids, care of oceans will follow. We couldn’t maltreat an ocean unless we had begun to think of it as a mere body of water and not as a spiritual entity. The Greeks and others who imagined the ocean as divine were not beneath us in sophistication, but ahead of us. If anything, we have lost the one thing that would sustain our intimacy with nature-a religious sensitivity to the sacredness of all forms in nature. The oceans are not only a bountiful source of fish, transportation, and recreation; they are also one of the supreme sources on the planet for contemplation and other aspects of the spiritual life, but we could know this only if we were deeply schooled in the necessary virtue of reverence.”
One of the most heinous crimes of our times is a lack of caring. My English teacher in 8th grade surprised the class as she got extremely mad at one of the students when he said he didn’t care. She said, eloquently, that he had better care, because all his life depended upon it. He would find his work meaningless, he would stop enjoying himself, he would make of his own life a mockery when he decided that he didn’t care about anything. In short, he would cease living and merely skim the surface of life.
If there is one thing that divides humanity, it is this trait of not caring. It is a decision to put self above all others that separates a being from his brethren. It becomes Me and Other, as though we were not one organic whole. When a person decides not to care, he has given up on that thing. Then it is up to the people who care to carve out a path, and they are doing it with a heavy load of people who are asleep.