The Individual and the Community - Term Paper Example

Task The Individual and the Community Thesis Human beings are social creatures. As such, they need to live together with other people, surrounded by love, affection and appreciation. They need to get support and help form one another in order to grow and survive, explore their potentials, and become better persons. Individualism is not an aspect of humanity as this denies them the moral righteousness to be good people for themselves and their communities. Question to Answer Would the contemporary society benefit more from having a stronger sense of community, or from having a stronger sense of individualism? Introduction Human beings are social creatures. As such, they cannot exist in isolation. This means that human beings need each other in order to progress or to make important steps in life. Take for instance the birth of a newborn baby in this world. Unlike wild animals, which learn how to survive on their own without their mother’s nursing and attention, human babies, require full attention of their mothers in order to survive. Take for instance a waterbuck calf. Once born, the calf learns how to walk in the first few hours. At the end of the first 24 hours, it knows how to jump and run about. The mother suckles it only for a few days before it begins to eat grass and other green vegetation for survival. One week later, the calf can entirely survive on its own without the help of the mother. The newborn calf will have to fend for itself. Individualism versus the Community Contrary to this case, a human child cannot survive on its own without the mother’s milk, warmth and tender care a week after birth. This would be like a death sentence to the new child. In case of inevitable circumstances where the mother has to abandon the child, such as dying during childbirth, then the community has to take the sole responsibility of ensuring the well-being and development of the newborn baby until it is mature enough to survive on its own. Most human babies learn how to eat solid food in six months, learn how to move or walk in 8 to 12 months, and learn how to speak in 10 to 15 months. During this period, the child’s brain remains underdeveloped in such a way that he or she cannot make a cognitive decision on their own, and as such, require the assistance of their mothers, guardians, or the community around them to guess and provide the child what they might be needing. In his article “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Stephen Marche surveys the recent research assessing our connectedness. According to Stephen, when suffering from loneliness, “Still, loneliness is slippery, a difficult state to define or diagnose…how often do you feel you lack companionship?” (18). this data creates an undisputed display of our instinctual need for connectedness. it is evident that we evolved in groups, we managed to survive the millennia in groups, and we are hard wired to also survive in groups. Our need for connectedness and existence in groups makes isolation to distract our mood as well as our physical health. From the above chronology of events during the early years of a child entering the world, it is evident that the contemporary society benefits more from having a stronger sense of community, as opposed to having a stronger sense of individualism. If the community does not come together to protect and nurse this innocent new born baby, especially if the real mother is no longer in a position to provide it with motherly warmth and affection, the community will perish! Yes, this is a fact. A community that does not reproduce will eventually be extinct from the entire society as there will be no blood to carry on its lineage into the future. Therefore, it is imperative for the entire community to come together, work hand in hand, in order to protect and preserve their own for the benefit of the future. The benefits that arise from promoting a stronger sense of community as opposed to individualism are very many and far outweigh the other option of staying in isolation. Take a good look at the modern society today. Each individual has his or her own special gift and talent given to him or her by God. God entrusted them with this gift and talent so that they can use if to survive, as well as use it to serve humanity in the best way possible. As such, a community will have a wide variety of professionals, such as doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, comedians, pastors, politicians, and many more. Each one has his or her role to play in the society. As such, the world is just like a stage and each character has to play his or her part appropriately in order to make the film or play entertaining. A doctor has to treat other people. A teacher has to teach the community’s children, a politician has to lead the community. A nurse has to nurse sick patients back to normal health. A carpenter has to make furniture for the community to use in their houses, offices, schools, and churches, and a pastor has to preach good news of the bible in order to correct the sinners and convert them into righteous individuals. Consequently, every individual has an important role to play in the community. This means that the community cannot function normally in the event one of these persons is not available, or not willing to play their role in the society due to isolation, such as a doctor deciding to stay in isolation instead of serving the community. The entire community will perish, especially in the event of an epidemic of catastrophe that requires immediate medical attention, such as an Ebola outbreak. In such an event, a stronger sense of community rather than of individualism will be the only hope for the community. Doctors who have individualism stereotypes will blatantly refuse to treat his fellow relatives and watch them die, or will refuse to search for the cure of an epidemic ravaging the village and sentence his or her community to the mercies of the disease. However, a doctor who has a stronger sense of community will fight to keep his or her community intact by doing their best to treat the sick, and undertaking tests and experiments to come up with a solution or cure to the disease ravaging the society. At the end of the day, a communism society will survive as opposed to a society that beholds individualism. By coming together, people end up achieving great things that they would otherwise not have achieved as opposed to working alone. Even the wise men thought to put it in writing when the asserted that, “if you want go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go with others.” This means that one can only progress if he or she involves those around him or her in their plans, aspirations, goals and dreams. A child might want to become a doctor in future but his parents are not able to raise the fees necessary to take him through school. In his article, “The Hungry Got Food, and the Homeless Got Shelter,” Scot Miller surveys the recent perceptions concerning our individualism and community. According to Miller, we need each other in the community as this enables us to survive hardships, “The hungry got food, and the homeless got shelter. The street kids who smoked and drank at the plaza before occupy arrived continued to smoke and drink – and now they passed around books from the free library. People were helping each other, looking for one another, and turning their backs on the stresses of foreclosed homes and benefit cuts,” (32). This article establishes the fact that working together as a community is much more important than individualism through isolation and separation of community members. The more people work together, the more empowered they become to face various hardships and challenges that life throws their way. The best thing for these parents to do is to involve the community, call them together for a Harambee – a Kiswahili word commonly used in East African (Kenya) countries to mean pulling together our resources for the benefit and goodwill of the entire community – and raise the needed school fees to see this boy through medical school. once the boy qualifies as a physician, he comes back to the community, opens a small community health center and treats all the members of the society irrespective of those who contributed towards his education or not. This is one clear benefit of coming together as a community than staying in isolation under individualism. The African wise men also communicated the importance of community as opposed to individualism through proverbs or wise sayings. One African proverb states, “Knowledge is like a garden, if it is not cultivated, then it cannot be harvested.” This proverb means that if one does not make the effort to acquire knowledge, then such a person should not expect to have it, and if an individual does not put the knowledge, they have into use, then they should not expect to gain anything from their knowledge. Take for instance if these parents refused to engage the rest of the community in raising the needed school fees for their child. They would have to sell all their property, land and other household material in order to raise the money. If this would not be enough, the boy would drop out of medical school before graduating and return home to his impoverished parents. The acute sense of poverty at their home would send the boy to become a quack doctor in order to raise money for survival, and this would be risky for the entire community who will have to place their lives in the hands of an inexperienced and under qualified physician. The boy would eventually end up in jail once his sins caught up with him, and the community police decide to charge him for his atrocities as a quack doctor. Conclusion In conclusion, it is evident that when a community comes together to undertake a common goal, it has more success than when an individual sets out to undertake a given objective on their own. As such, harmony, cooperation and understanding are imperative within communities in order to bring people together and enable them share a common goal for the success and development of the society. Works Cited Scot, Miller. The Hungry Got Food, and the Homeless Got Shelter. Summer Magazine, 2012. Print. Stephen, Marche. Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? The Atlantic Magazine, March 2012. The Emily Fund. Quotes for a Better Future. Do One Thing.Org. Retrieved From http://www.doonething.org/quotes/family-quotes.htm Read More