Contributing to the Collective Good
We have our own work to do to sustain our own lives. However, we also have shared work to do that benefits everyone: protecting ourselves from threats to our lives, healing the sick and injured, and raising our children.
Protection from Threats
Protecting ourselves from what threatens the life of those dear and near to us is basic. Many threats are larger than we can address by ourselves. For example, climate change, storms, floods, earth quakes, draughts, and the greed and violence of aggressors. We do well to combine our efforts and work together to protect ourselves from threats. Divided we fall; united we stand.
Raising Our Children
We raise our children to become mature adults able to support themselves. Everyone benefits from children becoming self-supporting adults who contribute to the common good.
Education is part of raising children. Since we all benefit from well educated children, we all do well to share in the cost and work of educating our children. We do well to educate them to become self-supporting rather than cogs in the matrix of industrialized consumerism.
Healing the Sick and Injured
What affects one, affects all. We know this in our relationships with family, friends and co-workers. When one of them is sick or injured, it affects everyone connected with them. They all have to adapt.
The same is true in our communities, countries, and entire world.
For this post I tried to find a fairly solid answer to how many people in the world are sick. I was unable to find a well-researched answer and will keep searching.
Perhaps the fact that this information is not easily accessible indicates that, generally speaking, we do not care how many of us are sick. Not caring how many of us are sick implies a lack of caring about living healthy, life-affirming lives.
Furthermore, as our industrial, factory-based economy continues to wane, we're becoming more aware of how harmful it has been to the health and well-being of all the living on this planet.
We're also becoming aware of the fundamental flaw of industrialized medicine that treats humans and other living beings as machines with malfunctioning and replaceable parts that can be serviced with tests, chemicals, and surgeries for huge financial gain.
There is something fundamentally wrong with getting rich off of the sick and injured. There is something fundamentally right about helping to heal the sick and injured. We all benefit from everyone being as healthy as we possibly can be.
There is also something fundamentally right about supporting the dignity of and comforting the dying, regardless of their species.
A Reflection
How do you contribute to the collective good? How are you contributing to the health and well-being of all other living beings?
What role do you play in protecting yourself and others from threats to life and well-being? Are you actively engaged or dependent on others?
What are you doing to help raise healthy, well-educated, life-affirming children?
What are you doing to keep yourself and others healthy for the common good?
What small steps can you take to do more?
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