Common Good over common goods for better world

There is this story about the horse and the rider. The rider was on a high. He felt powerful as though he owned the world. He whipped the horse to ride faster and faster, and then whipped him some more to ride at the speed of wind. After many miles, another rider caught up with him and said, “Brother, where are you going to in such a hurry?” The rider replied, “I have no idea. Wherever the horse takes me to, I suppose. But I am in control.”

All the ideas associated with this story – who is in control, in control of what, to what purpose, towards what goal or final destination – these were questions addressed at the Zermatt Summit about which I wrote last week.

The cast of characters at the summit is extraordinary and brilliant. As in the previous two summits, Father Nicholas Buttet, one of the original thinkers and founders of the summit, set the tone. He spoke of the pyramid of wants, the things to which we give precedence to in life. Today, our world is led by technical or technological innovations. Every new discovery of a gadget or social-networking space has us in a frenzy of acquisition. This is followed by the need of things, economic and political. Our cultural and spiritual needs take a backseat, one that is far behind. But this pyramid is the inverse of what it should be if our goal in life is better, happier and more serene life. Culture binds human beings; it is what separates us from other living things. Yet, like the rider on the horse, filled with the power of speed but in fact not in control of anything, we let the economic and technology lead us, drive us. And we feel we are the purveyors of all we see.

What is this fear and angst which underlies our lives? If we just stop to examine this without jaundiced eyes and without fear, what is the emptiness that we discover? And how can we live with these, a life of true fulfillment and ease? Today, when we mention the need of Common Good, we mistake it for common goods! The acquisition and possession of things rather than characteristics. Or we talk of public interest. But that is not what Common Good is. The Common Good is the correct balance between the individual and the community. It must start with an anthropological view of who we human beings are. And each of us, as members of this society are in-charge of going towards the Common Good. Not government alone, nor our leaders, but each one of us at all times.

Each individual, family, community and country has its own
Common Good. The point is to recognise this and search for one that seeks to balance all of these. In the words of economist Amartya Sen, this means ‘removing the un-freedoms’, for there are many shackles with which we bind ourselves and others. They need to be removed even before concept of freedom can be considered.

We need to realise that time has come to create a global governance body that will see beyond boundaries of country or continent, that will think of the future of humanity and not of its greed today, that can have an overarching ideal and strategies for the long-term Common Good. A visionary group that will govern with a thousand-year future in mind and not that of the electoral cycle or of the stock market cycle. One that will understand and respect that we have only one earth, one planet, and we need to coexist with it to survive. Only if we work towards such a body of governance can we ensure a healthy and equitable future for humanity. What we must remember, as we whiz through yet another day, is that financial debts can be rescheduled. Environmental ones can’t.

— The writer is a noted danseuse and social  activist