My dreams these days come fast and thick, I know not why now or this. I see symbols in them at every turn. There are many keys and doors and windows and climbing and being trapped and fears of falling and narrow bridges and vertigo. Much of the characters and events which appear have direct correlations to events and personages in my real life, but so much of it is obviously symbolic that I have to conclude my mind is working on some issue about which it does not wish me to be fully informed.
Perhaps in time it will let me in on its little secrets.
These days I swing between knowing that my life is the finest of all possible outcomes, and I am most fortunate among men, and knowing that I am slowly failing myself, slowly losing a race with time, and slowly chronicling my own decline. I in no way exaggerate to say much of my day is occupied with contemplating what brings meaning to life, what despair actually indicates, and to what degree happiness or fulfilment are simply the off-spring of comforting, necessary delusion.
I come back to what I said before: Pain and all its precursors on the spectrum are the only true indicators of evil. Happiness or pleasure or fulfilment and all their cousins are the only measure for good. Pain or discomfort accepted as one’s allotted portion in service of reducing the pain or discomfort of larger society is duty. Pain undertaken in service of later greater happiness is virtue.
I would never disagree with Tolstoy – but while every happy family may be the same, what makes every individual happy certainly varies, and while every unhappy family may be unique in its pain, on the individual level, I think pain is very much the same. As such, our society could never hope to offer happiness to its members – but pain, it seems to me, being universal in nature, can be minimized. Thus, the society that seeks to limit the pain of its members is a society that actively attempts to minimize and neutralize the evil that afflicts its members, and this is a good society.
Especially considering that society is a conglomeration of individuals who act to some degree in concert in order to meet one another’s needs, the foundational purpose of society is the accomplishment of shared ends. So I believe that society exists to accomplish goals held in common, and the good society has, as one of those goals, the reduction of pain and discomfort to its members. As such, the society that does not serve the purpose of assisting the widest possible range of its constituting members in accomplishing their goals is a society which has begun to lose its raison d’etre, and thus, its legitimacy. In other words, society owes assistance to its constituent members.
But if society owes a degree of benefaction to individuals, do individuals owe anything to either society, or each other? Assuming the value of reciprocity, individuals owe society in the degree that they have benefitted from it. The contributions of individuals toward shared ends being what creates society, the contributions of individuals is what makes society indebted to individuals in turn for its creation. As such, since it is because of the contributions of individuals that society owes assistance to individuals, and it is because of the benefaction bestowed on them by society that individuals in turn owe society their allegiance, their attention, their time and their wealth, (in short, their resources,) we can see that we have a relationship of a clear reciprocal nature: to the degree that society provides to minimize your pain, discomfort and inconvenience, you have incurred a debt to it. The less benefit society provides to you, the lesser you need support it with your care and goods.
But if society owes individuals, and individuals owe society in related degree, does any individual owe any degree of consideration to another individual? Again, assuming the inherent validity of reciprocity, on the same reasoning, individual A owes individual B personal consideration only to the degree that B’s actions as an individual benefit A.
Thus, it seems to me, that the bond between individual members of society fast approaches nil, except insofar as they make a conscious effort to counteract this process by actively currying favor with each other by means of gifts, or acts of kindness. Simultaneously, in a developed country, the bond between a given individual and society grows stronger, as it is largely via the means of the societally maintained network of relationships that our needs are met.
Let us take an example from the office water cooler, which appeared here mysteriously 3 weeks ago, and from which I draw water. What do I owe the man who labors to bring the water up the office steps, to make it easily available to me? The short answer is nothing, except that I do not unduly hinder him in his task, or make his life unnecessarily difficult. I owe him nothing precisely because he does not undertake this work in order to benefit me. He undertakes this task to the benefit of the bottled water company, who benefit from his labor, as he benefits from being paid by them. Therefore, since the benefit accrued to me did not result from labor undertaken with the aim of benefitting me I owe him nothing. More to the point, since the benefit accrued to me is incidental to my actual presence in this room, it incurs no debt on my part.
On the other hand, the water (the benefit accrued to me,) is present in this room due to the good offices of society, which is to say the arrangement via which roads are built, (along which water bottles may be transported,) hand-carts are manufactured, (the better for carrying multiple bottles,) contracts are upheld by the law, and people are duly paid or fired, depending on whether or not water is punctually delivered. Thus while my personal debt to the individual whose action benefits me is minimal, my debt to society grows ever larger, for it is via the good offices of society, not individuals, that my needs are met, and my discomfort is minimized.
This situation reverses itself in the undeveloped countries.
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