From the Editor
Margaret Sadler | Editor-in-Chief , news & views , nveditor @ arta . net
Whatever Happened to the Common Good
When did the individual become more important than the community ? At what point in our history did individual rights and freedoms appear to trump our sense of community and the common good ? North American culture prioritizes the individual , where each of us is king or queen — we deserve so much ! I encountered the other extreme in communal Japan where “ the nail that sticks out gets pounded down .” Ouch . Neither self-centredness nor fear of drawing attention to oneself grasps what so many African cultures embrace in the concept of ubuntu . I learned this word in Namibia , which roughly translates as “ I am because we are ” — acknowledging a universal bond in “ a person is a person through other people .”
As we know , democracy extends beyond voting . Democracy exists when each citizen has equal rights and corresponding responsibilities , including responsibilities to the whole . In a recent series , Nahlah Ayed on CBC ’ s Ideas asks , “ Whatever happened to the common good ?” Series titles include “ The common good : What do we owe each other ?” “ The limits of us ,” “ What is common ? And what is good ?” Surely Canada has held a strong sense of the common good , but have we drifted away from recognizing that we are responsible for each other ?
I ’ m reminded of the entertaining TED talks by Swedish physician Hans Rosling , in particular one entitled “ How not to be ignorant about the world .” 1 Hans and his son Ola illustrate how we naturally interpret the world as being worse than it is . If only we can realize that most things in the world are improving ( e . g ., more education for girls , less death from disease and natural disasters ); that the majority of the world ’ s population is in the middle range of income ( rather
“ Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave , and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you , there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me .”
than there being a void between poor and rich ); that social development ( education , health , housing ) is more important than wealth development ; and that the media cover rare dangers ( shark attacks , suicide bombers ) rather than common place issues ( poverty , climate change ).
An email list called “ Reasons to be Cheerful ” sends me weekly reminders of good things happening around the world in the fields of
— Frederick Buechner
climate , culture , science and technology , and civic engagement , among others . Examples of achievements and progress bring attention to how we do work together for the common good .
So what does this have to do with connecting ? By remembering that there are more people to trust than to fear , we become more aware of our interconnectedness .
Life is good . If we act out of that realization , our attitudes change . We improve our lives and the lives of everyone else . We draw nearer to the universal bond of ubuntu .