By Roshan Jayasinghe
We are living through a crisis so vast, so deeply normalized, that we often mistake it for reality. It’s not just economic inequality or environmental collapse. It’s not just social unrest or political failure. It’s something deeper, more invisible and more dangerous.
We’ve built a world where human life is governed by a single force, which is unlimited profit.
Not purpose, not wisdom, not care. But profit maximized, privatized, and concentrated in unimaginable ways.
In the pursuit of this, we have forgotten what it means to be human.
The Great Distortion: Profit Without Limit, Humanity Without Protection
In today’s world, one man can become a trillionaire, five men may control more wealth than half the planet, while billions of people struggle to eat, rest, or live without fear of eviction or illness.
This isn’t success. It’s an imbalance disguised as brilliance.
It is a global system that caps dignity but not excess, that measures value by how much you can extract, not how much you uplift. That rewards exploitation, so long as it’s scaled.
We debate how to fund a school lunch, but never how anyone is allowed to own a super yacht with a missile defense system. We regulate the cost of bread, but not the profits of billion-dollar food corporations. We worry about “tax burdens” on the wealthy, while the public pays the cost of their pollution, layoffs, and automation.
This is not just greed. It is a spiritual sickness, embedded into policy, finance, culture, and even education.
What We Were Taught vs. What We Are Realizing
We were taught:
• That your worth is in what you produce or own
• That your job is to survive and succeed, not question the system
• That if you’re poor, you’re lazy
• That if you’re rich, you’re brilliant
• That profit is proof of progress, even when it costs lives, forests, and futures
But what we are realizing is this:
A society that worships profit cannot protect people, whilst a civilization that protects profit at all costs cannot call itself civilized.
How Unchecked Profit Harms the Human Soul
Because we have made profit sacred:
• Schools have become score factories
• Healthcare has become a luxury
• Rest is viewed as laziness
• Art is defunded
• Childhood is commercialized
• Attention is mined for advertising
• The elderly are warehoused
• Nature is devoured for quarterly gain
We are not evolving. We are monetizing our own extinction.
So, What Would It Mean to Become Fully Human Again?
It would mean:
• Capping profits where they violate the public good
• Redirecting wealth to protect health, housing, and healing
• Rewarding care over conquest, cooperation over domination
• Returning essentials like water, food, housing, and medicine to the commons
It would mean reimagining value so that:
• A nurse is honored more than a hedge fund
• A regenerative farmer is more rewarded than a factory polluter
• A teacher is seen as wealth-creator, not overhead
Because in truth, the only “profit” that matters is the kind that leaves people, ecosystems, and future generations better off.
Reflection: Have We Made Profit Our God?
Ask yourself:
• Who pays when companies profit?
• Who suffers when growth becomes endless?
• How did we come to believe more is always better, even when it means less for everyone else?
We must confront the lie:
That wealth at the top is deserved, no matter how many suffer to create it.
Because that lie sustains every other injustice.
A New Contract Between Ourselves and Life Itself
The future is not about redistributing money. It’s about redistributing meaning, value, and vision. We must rewrite the contract – social, moral, economic, and ecological.
The new contract says:
• Human life is not for sale
• Public health is not negotiable
• Education is not a market
• Profit must be earned ethically or not at all
• Systems must serve life, not exploit it
• Leaders must protect the whole, not enrich themselves
This is not socialism. This is sanity.
Your Role in the Quiet Revolution
The revolution won’t be televised, but rather it will be lived in every choice we make, every truth we speak, every time we refuse to normalize greed and call it growth. You do not need to be an economist or activist. You just need to remember what your soul already knows:. That is that no one is free if others are exploited. That no amount of personal wealth can protect a dying planet and that the worth of a society is not in its billionaires, but in how it treats its children, its soil, and its stories.
Final Reflection and Invitation
• Where in your life are you choosing comfort over conscience?
• What do you allow to continue simply because it’s “normal”?
• What truth do you know, but have not yet lived?
• What is enough for you, and what would change if we all believed that?
Call to Action
This is your invitation.
To speak. To build. To challenge. To reconnect. To stop waiting and start living by the values that honor life.
We cannot control the entire system. but we can refuse to be shaped by it.
The systems we’re told are “inevitable” were made by people. That means they can be unmade, remade, and made just again. And when enough of us remember this truth, we will no longer ask for permission to create the future.
We will simply begin.
