How we measure "success"

The quote on the above image is a portion of a quote by David W. Orr in his book: Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect (published by Island Press; Second Edition, 2004):

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs more people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little do with success as our culture has defined it.

Sadly, the metrics of "economic gain" or "power" have come to signify "success" in many of the cultures around the globe, and such isn't merely a phenomenon of the so-called "Western World." Those who collect the most money from others, or conquer the most other nations, or publish the most books, or run the biggest churches are all counted as "successful" people. It does not seem to matter how they managed to attain those goals or whether they're helping others along the way, just that they accomplished those things.

There are relatively few Florence Nightingales who are honored for their sacrifices and work — instead, we glorify the Julius Caesars, the J.P. Morgans, the Kardashians, and the Mark Zuckerbergs. What sort of trouble is that causing us who are alive today, what sort of lessons are we teaching our children, and what sort of legacies are we leaving our grandchildren?

And, oddly...

We need more personal accountability in this world. 😠

So, I turned to the Internet and did a search for the source of the quote so I could give proper credit. Many clueless people had attributed the quote to the Dalai Lama or others. 🙄 So, I deepened my search, and within the hour I had found the true source of the quote, including the online-book to back up my findings. I changed the image to give proper credit to David W. Orr. In an ideal world, no one should ever have to go searching for the source of a quote, nor question whether the sourcing cited is correct. So, yes, we need more personal accountability in the world, too, rather than clueless people who spout erroneous/vague information and cloud the issues.

Since I could not find the person who generated the image shown at the top of this post, I have placed the quote on a photograph of a leaf which I took. Feel free to snag the following image and use it anywhere you like as I am hereby placing it in the Public Domain, meaning you are free to use it anywhere without even citing me as the source.