Katrina and the collective good

A work in progress: 9/25 9:45AM update
Note: 9/25 edits below.

Note: Defining "the collective good" broadly, wikipedia—the free online encyclopedia—gives us the following: "the term 'collective good' describes all that is good for all people in a given community". (See collective good, community at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

Let's begin by thinking for a moment about our community. How do we define it? Who belongs to it?

OK, with some "idea" of "our" community, no matter how clearly defined or ill-defined, formed or forming in our minds, let us think for a moment about three things:

1. What do we expect to be able to receive from our community?

2. What do we expect to have to give to our community?

3. To what extent do we believe we have these expectations in common with the other members of our community?

OK, we're getting somewhere. Now, in focusing on "the collective good" let us limit our expectations in 1 and 2 to only those expectations that we believe everyone in our community has a rational reason to believe that they apply to everyone. In other words, using 3 as a filter, let's rethink 1 and 2.

For example, I believe that some basic level of police and fire protection, and emergency medical care, should be available to everyone in my community. I also believe that everyone in my community should help pay for it. Yes—as they say—the devil is in the details. But I think you get the idea of the approach I am using to consider—revisit in my mind, and yours—the concept of "the collective good" in light of Katrina.

Another expectation I have that I consider part of the collective good of whatever community in which I am a member is that my community will defend my safety and security from our enemies. In this I expect my community to maintain as strong a defense system as necessary to keep the community safe and secure in the world as we understand it to be. In this regard, I support having a military as well as other support systems strong enough to provide that safety and security for my community.

I think you can see where this—the consideration of the collective good in light of Katrina—is leading in part.

As the gestalt continues to take shape in our minds, let us return to considering the question of who belongs to "our" community. Here is where--I believe--the issues of race, class, ethnic and cultural heritage, religious persuasion, and other identity factors play a large part in our sense of committment to others who may be within the geographical and political boundaries of our legally defined community, but who are not those with whom we share a la 3 the expectations of 1 and 2.

What about community? On one hand we have Hobbes dictum found in the following depiction of his thought:

Self-defense against violent death is Hobbes' highest human necessity, and rights are borne of necessity. In the state of nature, then, each of us has a right to everything in the world. Due to the scarcity of things in the world, there is a constant, and rights-based, "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). Life in the state of nature is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short"

Source: wikipedia

On the other hand we have the infantry platoon where individual soldiers often give their lives to defend the platoon or even another comrade. Under this banner of camaraderie we also find parents, firefighters, police officers, and a host of others sacrificing self for the good of the others either as specific individuals in need of rescue or entire communities.

Less dramatic than the willingness to risk one's life, is the willingness to share one's "treasure" ... and in the aftermath of Katrina we see the outpouring of this willingness to share our resources even with people we have never met ... and in the case of the recent tsunami, those who aren't fellow citizens either.

How then does this sense of committment to community take hold in the individual? Or maybe the question should be, how is it lost?

Prior to Katrina, we weren't rallying to do something about the poverty in New Orleans.

Was the difference that we saw the hurricane as something that could happen to us? The disaster created a common bond where before there was none because we had an "us" versus "them" view of poor black people? That somehow "they" HAD to be different then us, or why would they be poor? For some of us the determining factor (the ONLY determining factor) is the indvidual's relationship with God THE FATHER, who blesses us according to HIS wisdom and grace.

From my experience, what seems to emerge as the determining factor in how we relate to one another is whether or not we have something in common that unites as members of a definable group, allowing one to think of the other as "friend" rather than "foe".

For the time being let us define "friend" as someone we would share something with, and "foe" as someone we would withhold something from.

Yes, a "friend" for sharing a ride to work, could be a "foe" when asked to loan him or her money. this can get complicated.

Again from my experience, there comes to mind the religious divide of believer and unbeliever as the fundamental and unbridgeable division that separates us, one from the other. To the True Believer our common humanity is not enough ... except in the instance of the parable of the Good Samaritan, where we are united in the need for caring by one from the other, which then becomes evidence of the caregiver's faith in God and not necessarily his or her faith in humanity of the needy other. This seems particularly true when we are not willing to act to mitigate the circumstances that lead to the dire straits of the needy other, but only act to ameliorate the consequences of our earlier failure.

The other divisions determining "us" versus "them" I sugested above—of race, class, ethnic and cultural heritage, and so forth—come into play as barriers to developing a common sense of community.

There is also the factor of not being strangers to one another in the concrete sense of actually knowing the other person as someone we recognize or do not recognize. Then we can take a defined "person type" such as a person in a police uniform, or a teacher at the head of a classroom, or a minister or priest wearing a clerical collar, and so forth, all having more or less "friendly" images. On the other hand we have the "enemy" images ... and just describing them gives us a sense of difficulties we will face in attempting to build common ground in our diverse world.

Paul Krugman writes in his column, " Tragedy in Black and White" on the New York Times, Monday, September 19, Op/Ed page:

And who can honestly deny that race is a major reason America treats its poor more harshly than any other advanced country? To put it crudely: a middle-class European, thinking about the poor, says to himself, "There but for the grace of God go I." A middle-class American is all too likely to think, perhaps without admitting it to himself, "Why should I be taxed to support those people?"

Above all, race-based hostility to the idea of helping the poor created an environment in which a political movement hostile to government aid in general could flourish.

Please read Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech titled, "Military-Industrial Complex Speech", given in 1961. I refer to it in my posting, Revisiting the military-industrial complex.

Please read Robert G. Kaiser's Op/Ed column titled, "In Finland's Footsteps", from the August 7, 2005, Sunday Outlook section of the Washinton Post.

More to come ...

Below are notes that I am referring to as I write this essay

Title: Defining the Collective Good

- What do we believe is "appropriate help" that we should expect from the larger community to which we belong, and under what circumstances are we entitled to this help?

- How do we participate in receiving this "appropriate help"?

- What do we believe is "appropriate help" to give others in the larger community to which we belong, and under what circumstances are they entitled to this help?

- How do we participate in giving this "appropriate help"?

- How do we define the "larger community" to which we belong?