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“The common good should be the supreme law”, in the Swiss Parliament.
(Image attributed to Burkhard Mücke, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
By Lyle Troseth
There has always been unevenness in either the definition of the common good or in its achievement. In the West, there has been a steady erosion of such achievement for at least a generation. In the past 10-plus years, this erosion has evolved into an outright assault on previous assumptions of justice, the commons, and our sense of a shared common good.
The ideals of a shared generosity of spirit that Jack’s 1988 Aspen Institute taught are as valid today as they were then. For that matter, as they have always been.
E. O. Wilson wrote (roughly) that ‘ in a group, selfish individuals out-compete altruistic individuals. But groups of altruists outcompete groups of selfish individuals”.
So, why do we as a society struggle with this?
The benefits of the society of Walt Whitman seem so obvious; why do we regularly regress to the libertarian values of Machiavelli? Perhaps because we are easily manipulated. Goethe speaks of “shared sentiment”. For many years now, I have noticed that my perspective of reality sharply differs from that of many of my countrymen. While I am obviously convinced that my understanding of reality and facts is basically true, millions of fellow citizens not only have different “facts” but also frequently experience an “inversion of truth,” as I understand it.
Which comes back around to my question of why we regularly seem unable to achieve and sustain shared wealth and well-being. I believe that achieving some degree of this ideal requires a shared sense of polity. Of being part of a greater whole. Which is probably required for E. O. Wilson’s group of altruists to exist. That is, to feel part of the group, and accept everyone else as part of it. That used to be tribes. Today, it is the nation-state.
A country of millions based on civic nationalism that is based on ideals and concepts is vulnerable to Machiavelli’s cleaving us from a shared sense of who we are. Making us into selfish individuals afraid of some “other” stealing from us or eating our pets.
Selfish citizens are easily manipulated into believing generosity is something an undeserving “other” uses to steal from the virtuous and deserving “us”. (The “us” being the “real” members of the group).
I don’t know how to turn this trend back into a more civil society. Perhaps it needs to run its course and harm many lives before it starts to trend back to where most work for the “common good”. But until we as a people awaken to this return, we can only be pebbles beneath a monstrous moving glacier. And continue to have hope.
