A little over twenty years ago, former monk, author and therapist Thomas Moore opened a new book with these lines: "The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is 'loss of soul.' When soul is neglected, it doesn't just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning.
Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, Moore's book from which that passage is taken, became a huge bestseller. Rereading it in 2014, the book seems wiser than ever. With our materialism, imagination-crushing technology, political superficiality, dumb movies, Oprah confessionals, and glib Jon Stewart-snark, the Western world has lost even more soul since Care of the Soul was published in 1992. The budding illness that Moore diagnosed two decades ago has now metastasized and is threatening the life of the patient.
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