Selfishness and community
The incomparable Mark Steyn has an excellent column on the German election, which includes the following:
He raises an important point - institutionalizing charity has an impact on the community as a whole, and the impact is a pernicious one. One usual argument against allowing private charity to handle tough issues is that it might miss some deserving potential recipient or not provide enough. But once we consider the dynamic impact, it seems to me, that there is a very strong argument for relying on individuals to act morally as a means of creating and sustaining community.
what does it take to persuade the citizens of "enlightened" social democracies that sometimes you've got to give up the benefits cheque? Guardian and Independent types have had great sport with America over the last couple of weeks, gleefully citing the wreckage of New Orleans as a savage indictment of the "selfishness" of capitalism.
The argument they make is usually a moral one - that there's something better and more compassionate about us all sharing the burden as a community. But the election results in Germany and elsewhere suggest that, in fact, nothing makes a citizen more selfish than lavish welfare and that once he's enjoying the fruits thereof he couldn't give a hoot about the broader societal interest. "Social democracy" turns out to be explicitly anti-social.
Old obdurate Leftists can argue about which system is "better", but at a certain point it becomes irrelevant: by 2050, there will be more and wealthier Americans, and fewer and poorer Europeans. In the 14th century, it took the Black Death to wipe out a third of Europe's population. In the course of the 21st century, Germany's population will fall by over 50 per cent to some 38 million or lower - killed not by disease or war but by the Eutopia to which Mr Schröder and his electorate are wedded.
He raises an important point - institutionalizing charity has an impact on the community as a whole, and the impact is a pernicious one. One usual argument against allowing private charity to handle tough issues is that it might miss some deserving potential recipient or not provide enough. But once we consider the dynamic impact, it seems to me, that there is a very strong argument for relying on individuals to act morally as a means of creating and sustaining community.
Posted by Andy Morriss on
Thursday September 22, 2005 at 4:39pm
The longing for "community" appears to be a positive developmental deficiency in some quarters, an idealized longing for Levi-Bruhl's participation mystique, in which the ready-made world around feels familiar, welcoming, full of meaning, sacred. It seems cognate with the infant's primeval paradise, before Me and The World were perceived to be different, and often at loggerheads and in competition for resources.
Tagged with the coloration of "community," this ideal state is often projected onto the primitive and the past, overlooking the absolute demand in medieval village France, for instance, of building one's house exactly like one's neighbors', and planting and harvesting by a certain date. Or having your fields set on fire, or otherwise becoming a pariah. And starving.
There is no dearth of community right now for one who would build it, who by showing himself friendly finds friends. Anything more is some fantasy of a blissful stage in the past, of the rare &precious supportive &amusing family, or the beyond-temporal "knowing as we are known."
Those who would trash the value of liberty to happiness and the market system in the name of "community" should be offered the hand of human companionship in the shared challenge of making life better by looking at facts, not projective myth.