In Common
Under these bitter circumstances, it may seem frivolous to think about what the pandemic means for political theory. Despite that risk, I want to consider an intellectual casualty of COVID-19: the idea of "the common good," a shared framework for determining what members of a political community owe each other. The experiences of the last 18 months show how little help the concept offers in resolving our disputes.The last eighteen months? Has Mr. Goldman spent the past decade or so living on Mars?
Samuel Goldman "The pandemic killed the common good"
While there seems to be some journalistic currency in lamenting the recent death of "the common good," I suspect that the concept, like anything that requires high levels of social trust, passed away some time ago.
Invocations of the common good are often a pretext for personal or group demands that they're supposed to transcend.
This concession on the part of Mr. Goldman could have been a lead-in to a more detailed discussion of social trust, and I'm somewhat disappointed that it wasn't, because I think that the perception that pretext is at work is what drives a lot of the selfishness that people perceive. And, if anything has killed off the idea of the common good in the United States, it's the idea that it's simply being used as a pretext.
If people are going to think about what they owe each other, then the obligations work both ways. If people feel that invocations of the common good are simply ways for people to justify making demands of them, while offering nothing in return, they're going to opt out. I think that the focus on privilege that's become trendy over the past several years feeds into this, as "the privileged" are presumed to have enough already, thank you very much, and it's about time that they started "giving back." Which I understand, but it breaks the idea of the common good as a mutual aid society writ large.
The common good is, to be cliché about it, one for all and all for one. And that second part is just as important as the first. The United States is better at leaving people out to dry then is often admitted, and an understanding that one can be abandoned tends to trigger as increased focus on looking out for oneself. If we want people to look out for others, they have to trust that others are just as invested in looking out for them.
2 comments:
Sometimes I can't follow your thoughts. Yes, the common good is a cliche.
But demanding that privileged, i.e. rich protected people that pay almost no taxes actually pay their share back to society is very reasonable in my book and nothing to be frowned upon.How this breaks the idea of the common good as you write in the second to last paragraph I fail to understand.
I see your point, but here in the United States, "the Privileged" aren't simply the very wealthy. Most White people are considered "privileged" by virtue of being White, regardless of their social class. Likewise for many activists, the moderately well-off are considered "privileged," and thus in possession of undeserved wealth that should be "given back." This results in a fairly large segment of the American public feeling that they're being asked to give things up for other people, while their own needs go unmet.
By the way... good to hear from you again.
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