{"id":2131,"date":"2022-02-23T00:55:28","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T00:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geostrategy.club\/2022\/02\/23\/dr-menno-aden-post-covid-19-what-is-holding-our-society-together\/"},"modified":"2024-06-27T10:22:36","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T08:22:36","slug":"dr-menno-aden-post-covid-19-what-is-holding-our-society-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geostrategy.club\/pt\/dr-menno-aden-post-covid-19-what-is-holding-our-society-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Menno Aden: Post COVID-19: What is holding our society together"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dr. Menno Aden, Essen \/Ruhr<\/span><\/p>\n

Point of Departure<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Besides the medical effects of the Covid 19 pandemic, which are not to be discussed here, the pandemic has the social and political effect of isolating people from each other and, the longer the epidemic lasts, making them strangers to each other. In the economy, supply chains are interrupted because the people involved are not interacting personally, which, despite digital communication channels, is still the basis of economic transactions based on trust. In social life, there is no longer an exchange of economic goods and thoughts, and at the extreme end, the human being dies separated from his closest confidant in an isolated room and he is buried, again outside any community.<\/span><\/p>\n

My reflections want to bring out that strong community is the prerequisite of a meaningful human life, and that the dissolution of social bonds is actually the greatest evil that can affect man.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Common good <\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    I Common good and individual good<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

    Individuals have certain interests which serve their own good or which they believe do. In addition, there are interests that serve the community in which he lives. The basic example is based on an individual who is not depending on anyone. He can afford everything, he can consume the whole of nature for himself. He has everything only the fact that there are fellow human beings interferes with his complete happiness.<\/span><\/p>\n

    This individual man is only willing to share his unrestricted freedom with his fellow men out of a certain compulsion, only because the dangers of nature, wild animals in the jungle, distant enemies force him to do so. The theoretical opposition between self-interest and the common good is thus based, as it were, on two or more individuals who only join forces under the compulsion of circumstances, thereby helping each other, but who would \u00a0otherwise have liked to \u00a0remained alone to indulge their self-interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But that is not how it is!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

    People have always lived in society. The Robinson example, the novel character who was cast away alone on an island and settled there, is one of the most horrible imaginings a novelist could have come up with. Robinson never existed and if \u2013 he was definitely one of the most unhappy persons on earth. <\/strong>Human society, a system in which people aligned their interests, has existed as long as there have been people. It is therefore absurd to regard self-interest and the common good as opposites.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

    Since the pursuit of one’s own interests only ever takes place in human society, self-interest only presents itself as a part \u00a0of common interest of the\u00a0 society.<\/strong>The individual desires health, so does society. The individual may want to gain prestige among his fellow human beings, society (in the form of the state, for example) has the same interest. We are proud to belong to a respected state and we suffer if it does not stand in the world’s esteem as we would like it to. The state and the society in which we live is an extension of individual selves.<\/span><\/p>\n

    What an individual desires is basically also the object of the collective desires of the community. <\/strong>The enjoyment of what is personally aspired to and acquired can only succeed to some extent in society. Nothing is more unbearable than an environment in which no one disturbs us or takes notice of us in the long run. Luxury only becomes beautiful when others see that we have it. \u00a0In Goethe’s Faust, Margarethe finds a treasure box that the devil Mephisto had put in the cupboard. Both she and her neighbour Frau Marthe have as first thought how to let the jewellery „be seen by people once in a while \u00a0time<\/strong>„. Even the most ruthless egoist needs the community so that his egoism has a „meaning“.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The relationship of the individual to society is a fundamental problem of all the humanitiy. The tension between the individual and the community, the tension between the goal of the individual and the community as a whole, exists in all other disciplines as well, for example in theology: Who is nearer to GOD?\u00a0 The pious hermit in the woods? Or the believing man in a believing community?<\/strong> Ultimately, the importance and dignity of the hermit derives only from the fact that he sets an example of faith for the community.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

    The problem that lawyers, politicians and sociologists are discussing is not the contradiction between individuality and public spirit, but the question of the correct demarcation between privacy and community.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    The first conference of the European Platform for Dialogue and Cooperation:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

    Covid-19 in the EU: the degradation of social cohesion and stability<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n