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98 Why hold wealth for somebody else
Education
I started at The
University of Chicago shortly after the tenure of Robert Maynard
Hutchins. His era was called “the old college.” It was marked by
dropping the football program that had been built up by Amos
Alonzo Stagg. In a tongue in cheek moment, President Hutchins had
written that the bachelor’s degree should be granted at birth so
that universities could get down to the serious business of
learning. He was criticizing the attitude that colleges merely
prepare people to earn money.
As a beginning, education
is important to an income stream. This country was greatly
admired for its groundbreaking emphasis on free public education
(article 26). The established generation puts
the rising generation on a good foundation, and the educated
workforce raises the standard of living for everybody.
Beyond job training,
liberally dispensed education supports the social development
that helps democracy flourish. Well prepared citizens are
precious assets. Hutchins was recognizing the importance of the
education that goes beyond job skills.
After my wife and I had
five children, I slowly realized that a piano tuner, a
pieceworker, of my strength cannot afford five children.
Fortunately, mine have done better than I did. They have helped
me extensively to pay for their education, both in earning and in
qualifying for the necessary scholarships.
Health
There is a companion
discussion in the health field. The joke about bachelor’s degree
at birth corresponds to asking whether a child should grow up and
pay for the obstetrician who delivered zer. Traditionally family
has been a foundation that spares the young from
indebtedness.
Now the plot thickens.
Education can be maintained and upgraded to keep pace with the
job market. Health problems do not cooperate so well. While
everybody is at risk for something at any time, calamities occur
unplanned and unscheduled. Healthy lifestyle is a less certain
guarantee than is qualification for employment. We cannot prepare
ourselves out of a medical risk.
Comparable to the “degree
at birth” joke is the thought that we must grant every infant
enough funds for a heart transplant. I have heard of an
acquaintance who needed a heart transplant as a teenager, but
most of us simply do not face that requirement.
The analogy
Dr. Hutchins did not
seriously mean that we grant infants the college degree. I do not
seriously mean that we establish the infant’s medical account. In
both cases, there is a better approach to survival.
First, we realize that
self-sufficiency is unattainable. I have not educated myself, and
I do not have preservation power over my own body. Everybody has
had some help with something along the way.
Second, we regard
humanity as our family. I received the university degree; some
people receive heart transplants. These events are part of a
social order, not spontaneous creations of my imagination.
Nevertheless, I see no end to the array of people who have
educated me—some more directly than others, but all having had
some influence. Likewise, everybody in my environment has impact
on my health. Keeping the social body whole requires various
inputs from everybody in the maximized family.
The special cases are
blips on a screen, not universal shared experiences. Commerce is
the sharing and exchange of needs and abilities that enables our
individual threads to constitute the social fabric. To be aware
only of personal selfish desires is to overlook the very essence
of life experience. Dozens of articles here have referred to
meaning that transcends specific events or circumstances.
Life itself is not an occasional happening like a major degree or
major surgery. It is a steady state of interrelating everything.
We share ups and downs, willing or not.
Examples
I have watched nature
movies about wolves and
lions that kill the offspring of a
rival pack or pride. This may relate to distribution and
consumption of scarce resources. My model of human society
renders this behavior unnecessary. Thinking humans have the
miraculous availability of contraception for keeping population
within sustainable limits. We do not have to kill off excess
people.
To me, family obviously
means a fair distribution system, not a disconnected unit for
protection from others of the same species. My family does not
exist for outperforming other families. My family assures mutual
survival and sharing of resources. As soon as the word “family”
distinguishes and separates me from others, it has morphed into
an antisocial construct.
Therefore, it is
obviously senseless to apportion every infant sufficient money to
cover a lifetime of medical possibilities. That is silly
artificial earmarking of resources. By all engaging in a healthy
level of production, we assure meeting all our needs. When the
supply is viewed as a global family asset, every person has
access to sufficiency. Biology always contains outliers. There
will always be people with extraordinary needs. In my model, that
is an assumed feature which we always accommodate. Being human
even allows us to think through our preparations.
Specifically
This blog repeatedly
separates macro (all of us) from micro (me) perspective.
Infantile happiness looks like micro level, “my needs are
satisfied.” However, attachment to mother and later to other
humans necessarily expands the level from birth on. Even personal
pleasure is closely tied to the macro level—for example, when my
team wins or my country sends someone to the moon. As an
individual, I can experience group happiness.
Today’s article is yet
another demonstration that the macro level is inescapable. My
individual survival is intimately connected to macro well-being.
Protection from medical calamity is beyond individual control,
yet it is naturally assumed in the macro viewpoint of nature. By
using the word family, I eliminate the need to separate and
discard the less fit humans. I urge us to find where every
one of us fits (word play intended).
For years I have been
contemplating an idea I heard long ago about sharing. For this
story, let’s take the starting salary of a rookie cop in Chicago,
perhaps $60,000 per year, as a baseline or average salary. A
philosopher suggested that any household income I might
receive more than that constitutes value I am holding for
somebody else. Feel free to reread the ending sections
of articles 90,
96, and 97 to see how I lead
into this concept. A much lower number would apply to me, but it
is a warming thought about what I can do if I get above zero net
worth in this lifetime.
Being For Others Blog copyright © 2020 Kent Busse
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