Love, A Quest;

The book is divided into two parts. Part One speaks to the core value in being human. That core value is love and the ability to love. Love is found in the person who chooses to respond in life to the value that is most consistent with full human potentiality. Why this is so, why achieving the ability to love and loving coincide with fully developing one's human personality and potential are subjects of Part One. What love is and what it is not are also defined and described in this part. We will look for support for the thesis that love is at the top of the value chain by first looking at the place given to love in the five great religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. With each religion we will look at core beliefs and practices. We will also look at the lives of founders or famous adherents of each of the five religions whose lives illustrate this value of love. Also supporting our thesis will be an examination of the push of history and the pull of the future, and the spread of humanitarian organizations. We will examine the status of love in and between religions and the status of love in civil society in our times. Part One will conclude with a look at the effects of loving on the one who loves and its effects on others and on society. Part Two names and considers the obstacles to loving, how to bring those obstacles to awareness and overcome them. In this part we will consider the motivational consequences of the seven capital sins: anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride and sloth, plus fear and deceit (self-deception).