What is the common good? The common good essentially refers to the overall well-being and benefit of our entire community, our society, if you will. Now that said, we live in a world that is highly competitive, don’t we? I want to win. I want to succeed.
And many times, we want to succeed against our fellow man, don’t we? So in capitalism, all of our rankings are predicated or based on success and leading to economic success. So the model, I go to school and there is a ranking in school. Of course, there’s the smartest student and the most foolish student, and they graduate top of their class. We always read this.
I was reading the other day about a young woman who’s on her way to Harvard. She’s born in Vietnam. And in Vietnam, she was just the top of everything. Everything. Absolutely everything between music and art and basically some form of philosophy and a community involvement and her clubs at school.
She was a superlative human being. And I was immediately struck, not so fortunate. What really happens to the loser? Well, we know what usually happens to the loser. They remain losers.
So they can’t possibly benefit from the common good, can they? Because you would think in the ideal common good, there would be a standard, an average that we could all be a part of, right? Now as an aside, in Finland, supposedly, they rank amongst the top achievers when it comes to education on a global scale. They’re in the top six of the highest ranked countries within the last twenty years. They’ve remained within that top six, and their approach to education is actually quite unique because their teachers focus on the bottom third, not the top third.
Now to become a teacher in Finland supposedly is harder than becoming a doctor because they remove and remove and remove and remove, and you end up with essentially one tenth of 1%. So the parents totally trust these people, just totally. So they focus on the bottom third. Why? Well, in Finland, they believe that if you can raise the bottom third, you’re going to get a common good, essentially, a middle level.
And certainly, all studies suggest that Finland is a wonderful country to live in. Now to be fair, its population is very small. It’s under 6,000,000 people living in Finland. But it’s an interesting thought, isn’t it, when it comes to what we should do for each other. So what are some basic things that should exist in the common good?
Well, many people say the first one of course is housing. In the common good, we have a right. Every human being has a right to housing. They have a right to health. They have a right to an education, and they have a right to safety in the society.
Right? So those are necessary components of a society that’s going to experience the common good. And if you look around the globe, though the countries that actually experience that, like Taiwan, for example, are lovely peaceful societies. And, yes, there’s still capitalism, and, yes, people still strive, and, yes, some people get too much and want too much, and it just goes on, doesn’t it, as human beings. But there are a lot of people that will look after each other.
The other day, I was out with a friend of mine, and someone had parked illegally in the handicap parking. And what did this young woman do? She flagged down the next policeman and told the policeman what had gone on so the policeman could go back and give a fine. Now I come to find that the fines are only 20 to $40, not enough. If the fines were to be a thousand dollars US for instance, you would only do this once, wouldn’t you?
And you would think twice when you ever did something again. But it’s very important to note that the common good also protects the environment for current and for future generations. It protects the importance of of the legal system to ensure that we get justice. It protects, of course, human rights, social justice, and, ultimately, the common good wants a society that is diverse and fair. You know, you think back to yourself.
You think to yourself back when you were young and you went to school. And, you know, I think of myself when I was young and I went to school. Now I’m 68 years old. And the people that I went to school with, very few of them have been associated with the common good in their lifetimes, Really. I think some of them have done quite well financially, but are they happy?
So that’s gotta be the biggest result of the common good is that we feel successful as human beings. And, I mean, that’s our birthright, isn’t it, in to a certain extent that we should be contented beings. We do not deserve to suffer, and yet we seemingly mostly suffer as a species. Why? Well, once again, as we know, it is very, very easy to be unhappy and hard to be happy because you have to work on you.
You have to appreciate the world around you, and you have to be different to your fellow human beings. But it requires work. It really does. So the next time you’re out and about, ask yourself, what is the common good? Let me be polite to people.
Let me hold a door for people. Let me be different to people. I went for a walk the other day with one of my classes, and we’re out for a field trip, sketching as such. And an old man walked by and the young people, and he stopped to admire their sketches, and nobody addressed him and said, hello, sir. How are you today?
In the common good, we must also learn to be polite to other members, older members of the common good as well as younger members. I think it’s very necessary concept. So think of the common good. It’s something that’s important to us all. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary if we’re going to develop the common good and, of course, critical thinking is great. Truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.