Responsibility

So this will send anyone who is an objectivist into a seizure or at minimum a small fit.

Since I wrote Skipping along the glitches I have been thinking about the responsibility we have for one and other. Jon mentioned something about this at last Sunday’s church service.

I’m responsible for the well being of the other 6,673,409,088 people on the planet. This isn’t to say I’m responsible for making sure everyone is happy or is living what they consider is a meaningful life. No, it would be naive for me to think that I had that much influence and power. But, I am responsible for using what we share responsibly and rendering aid when there is an immediate, acute, and individual need.

On the other end of the spectrum there is family, which I am extremely responsible for and they are responsible for me.

One of the things I love(d) about Speakeasy, Chiquita, University Unitarian Church, South Hills Presbyterian, my biological family, Jenni’s family, Miami Valley, Lambda Union, and theatre is that they are communities where people understand and care about each other.

There has been a societal discussion about the isolation and division in our society. This may be true, but it is only true because people allow it to be true. Community does take effort and work, but it returns more than you put into it.

At this point I’ve probably lost the objectivists but who cares?

Some of you might say that it logically follows from capitalism that this is not a capitalistic idea, and instead of reeks of socialism or communism. The dirty little secret for those people is that capitalism already has codified that we all have responsibility for each other, via the insurance system. Somehow it becomes more palatable when a profit motive and a brand gets applied but all insurance is, is a set of contracts that state “We’ll take care of you if x happens.” On a fundamental level how is that any different taking care of your community?

Of course our responsibility to take care of those in our communities scales, the smaller the community the more specific responsibilities we each bear for each other, and the larger the community the less specific responsibilities we each bear for each other, but we each bear more general responsibilities for each other.

We our our brother’s and sister’s keeper.