Sometimes I think it is necessary to remember what we are and how we got here. It is so easy to get caught up in the details of living that we need to occasionally take a moment to step back and look at the larger picture, and put it into the greater context of humanity as a whole.
We are, by nature or design, social animals. What does that mean, exactly? Ants and wolves are also social animals; that is, their principle means of survival is to cooperate as a group. Our skill with language gives us a capacity to cooperate that is unprecedented in the animal kingdom, and when combined with the tool-using abilities of our hands and the unlimited imaginative capacities of our brains, our dominance of this planet was inevitable.
We lack the strength and natural weapons of a tiger or bear, but any individual human can easily defeat either of these predators using brains and hands, combined with the tools that these advantages can provide – such as a stone-tipped spear or a high-powered rifle. As individuals we are mighty, and it is easy to seek the path of the lone hunter. Indeed, the romance of wilderness survival alone is a strong motivator for many of us to think that we don’t really need other humans at all.
As individuals, we can survive. Not always well, and certainly not as well as we can when cooperating with others as a group. Alone, with only the tools and supplies we can make with our own hands, we cannot make a jet airliner, or a modern hospital, or even an Egyptian pyramid. These things require a group effort.
It is still possible to find people living a stone-age lifestyle in the more isolated places on our world. Deep in the jungles of the Amazon, the Congo or Borneo, there are villages that still practice the old ways. Naked children run free and laugh and play. Elders sit by the fire to discuss issues of the day or tell stories of days past. The crippled and infirm are cared for, because they too contribute to the survival of the group in their own way. The wisdom of this is obvious to everyone in the village.
Caring for the sick and injured is part of our survival strategy. It is one of the things that make us human.
I live in the United States of America, which is one of the richest and most technologically advanced nations on Earth. Ironically, it is not a good place to be poor. Of all the Western nations, it has the least accessibility to medical care for those unable to pay for it. As a result, one of the leading causes of death in the USA is, directly or indirectly, poverty.
Why? I think it has something to do with that romanticizing of the lone hunter that I mentioned earlier. Or, the updated and uniquely American version of it, the lone cowboy. In our national pride of our freedoms, and our emphasis on individual achievement over group effort, we sometimes forget that we can only do such great things as a society through cooperation with others. And part of the social cooperation strategy involves a group effort to care for the sick and injured.
We need to get past the idea that a universal health plan is leading us down the slippery slope to communism. It is not. We can retain our hard-won freedoms and still ensure that every child has a chance to grow up, every elder can pass on their knowledge to future generations, and the sick and injured can recover to rejoin society. Even the permanently maimed and crippled can contribute to our group survival, and are worthy of care.
We must remember that caring about others is not a weakness, but our greatest strength.
Labels: ethics, technology
