There was a lot of excitement and promise when settlers first arrived in the New World. There was room to grow and opportunities for all. A lot of hard work has been done and good progress made. But after an encouraging start we’ve gotten bogged down by allowing our lives to drift from the main thing: people.

Society and happiness have always had people at their core. The value and strengths of people enrich our days and power our communities and industries. It’s a truth that fuels our optimism and builds our shared achievements.

As our technology and businesses advanced we came to know prosperity, health and meaningful employment. In the Near Golden Age, in the 1950s through the 1970s, people, business and government worked together to raise the standard of living and to move forward on important civil rights. Regular folks prospered and had good and achievable hopes for the future.

But along the way, the folks who valued money above people grew unsatisfied with merely owning luxurious yachts and homes. They learned how to use their wealth in aggressive and effective ways, to push our society and world ever further away from a focus on people.  Their wealth gave them power over laws, advertising and business strategies, and led us all into the current quagmire of poverty, joblessness and doubt about our future.

Left unchanged and unchallenged, our current path would bring us lower lows and harder struggles were it not for one amazing and unstoppable thing: people.

People, not money, are the way out, and the rightful beneficiaries of our combined efforts, time and creativity.

While there’s a vital role for money, business and the financial sector, they need to be the servants, not the masters, of people and society.

We need to reset the balance of our time and efforts, to swing it back to its natural focus on people.

Many people believe that the cause of poverty is a lack of money. Sort of. The real cause of poverty is a lack of caring and sharing, for people and between people. At the top end this lack of caring and sharing is called #extremegreed, but there is hope even for them – people can be re-awakened to the joy of community, contributing and shared responsibility. People who care make different decisions.

Had ruthless market traders cared more about people than money they would never have sold toxic stocks and hurt millions of people. If successful corporations cared more about people then they’d find new ways to share the wealth and employ people in good and meaningful ways. If governments weren’t so fearful they would show they care about people by standing up for them in the face of power and greed and attempts to expand control over people. And if we weren’t all being encouraged to buy stuff and watch TV we’d spend more time in community, sharing life, experiencing joy and building bonds of real value.

The change we need doesn’t take rocket scientists, MBAs or a corporate board — it is something that each of us can help with everyday, in every town, in every nation.

Person by person we’ll create bubbles of care and respect. Bubble by bubble we enrich our relationships, make new decisions and make our lives better.

This includes how businesses are run, cities manage their goals, and communities evolve their relationships.

As more people participate, the bubbles will grow and merge. More and more people will see the benefits of caring more about people. The positive changes will increase in scope, from personal effects to community choices to business changes to state-wide decisions to a world-changing focus on what matters most: people.

Let’s show those around us that people matter, and that quality of life for people needs to be part of decision-making.

Today we can make a difference. Today we are continuing on to the new world.

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