THE GREATER GOOD
The common benchmark
for civilized societies is the notion of "the greater good". This is how we
measure things. It is the backdrop against which we consider behaviors,
expenditures of all kinds, and generally keep ourselves from driving off the
cliff. I have always kind of figured that your basic family is a social
microcosm. A little bunch of people trying to cohabitate, support and
protect each other, and essentially get from Point A to Point B in life in a
whole and healthy way. Watch the budget, don't spend more than you make. Do
not forsake your neighbor. Do unto others and all that stuff. The next step
is a neighborhood, and if the same tenets apply, things should go all right.
Step up to a town or city, up to a state or county, and right on up to the
big cheese, the federal government.
If each of these were held to the same core as the little family at the
beginning, this eloquently simple paradigm, wouldn't life be different. Of
course, the simplicity is the problem. Nothing is simple anymore. Many of us
miss the days of "common sense". A sensibility that was common, or
prevalent, among a family, town, state or nation. It was much easier then, I
suspect, to measure things against that benchmark of "the greater good". A
small, rural town would not want, or probably allow, a strip joint or adult
book store, because it would not serve the greater good of the community.
The father in the rhetorical family would not spend his whole paycheck on
scratch tickets or a new tattoo, because it did not meet the G.G. standard.
And you know, the history books do not mention throngs of people marching in
the streets with torches, lamenting their squashed rights and freedoms.
Instead, simply, people adjusted.
So many of our problems today...forget the rest of the world, right here at
home, seem to stem from our inability to measure "the greater good". Our
decades of heralding ourselves to the world as a "wonderfully diverse
nation", have left us so diverse we can't identify our proverbial ass from a
hole in the ground. The violence in Boston, the neighborhoods left behind,
victims of political power-broking that has become some blatantly
self-serving that politicians don't even show up at peace vigils for the
time-worn shameless photo-op. Social wounds left festering for so long, that
no amount of surgery or iodine will ever give any relief or hope. Amputation
may be the only answer. We have been unable to decide along the way, the
what and why of the greater good. Expensive though they may be, work
programs, community outreach centers, family counseling, big brother
programs, all may have served the greater good. But it's not the
government's job, it's our job. Is it o.k. to sit back and watch our country
flail like a mackerel on a wharf? To watch entire neighborhoods and cultures
dying a slow, miserable death?
We continue to allow the rampant dispersion of child pornography on the
internet. The internet, a historical development and not without it's great
contributions to the world, also has a very, very dark side. The little
family at the beginning of this column would want to weigh the G.G. factor.
Are the benefits worth the risk? The family can decide, computer or no
computer, but the rest of the world cannot. Recently, in New Ipswich, New
Hampshire, Police Chief Garrett Chamberlain, a friend of mine, was less than
surprised when resident Gene Morrill, 56 along with John Ready of Norton,
Mass, were caught in a child pornography sting being conducted out of
Virginia. John Ready was a Boy Scout leader until about a week ago. The two
thought they were arranging sex with a boy under 13. Morrill is a convicted
sex offender, convicted in 1992 of rape of a child under 13. The
investigation of these two men led authorities to believe that a 10 year old
boy from Massachusetts was being victimized, so they hastened the arrests.
Chief Chamberlain wants registered child sex offenders not to have access to
the internet. The simple, easy decision for rational people is that that
makes perfect sense. It would serve the greater good. But it will never
happen, and we all know it, because it is too simple.
The last of the rational need to consider our options. We need to be heard
somehow above the din of the ACLU and the talking heads. The agonizing,
over- analysis of everything. The common knee-jerk reaction to everything is
to form a study group and convene in six months. Even as parts of Boston are
getting a little less safe than Baghdad, the powers to be can't figure out
what to do. Lately it seems that doing nothing passes as "The Greater Good".