How important is the ability to participate to you?
Let's suppose your `quality of life' deteriorates to where every waking moment was spent in excruciating pain or your mind becomes so far gone that you no longer recognize your own children...
Let's suppose some event left you in a vegetative state, an inert lump of flesh kept alive by a bevy of machines...
I can't speak for the rest of you but personally I'd want to have it in writing that there be no `heroic measures' taken to keep me going as well as having someone with my power of attorney to make them pull the plug if push came to shove.
Which is to say most of us would agree there is a point where life is no longer worth living.
So, how important is your ability to participate to you? Would it be safe to say it's a matter of life and death?
Imprisonment removes your ability to participate in life. Doesn't this say something about the importance of participation? It is so potent a stimulus that it is the most widely used form of punishment.
Sticking with the prison example, let's consider the worst punishment prison has to offer...solitary confinement.
Think about that one for a minute...quality of life = zero.
The only thing that keeps inmates placed in solitary going is the knowledge, the certainty, they will be released some day.
Otherwise they'd want to die.
So it seems participation is fairly important aspect of life itself.
Just as important as participation is the degree to which we can participate. To many of us this is the difference between living and merely existing.
While those of you here have the Internet and a multitude of other ways we can participate more fully in life, I pen this diary for those less fortunate than our humble selves. I'm referring to those 34 million fellow citizens who live below the poverty line, where even a dial up connection is an `extravagance' beyond their means.
Poverty and prison have much in common because both diminish the individual's ability to participate in life fully.
Let's extend this notion to our nation's youth that have come of age in a time when our society has nothing to offer them.
What do you suppose they make of a society that deprives them of their opportunity to participate...a society that insanely places profits before people?
In as much as our quality of life depends on our ability to participate in this, our society, we must once again question the true purpose of commerce.
Currently commerce exists to enrich its owners. From a social standpoint commerce exists to provide the individual with the means to participate in their society.
Our ability to participate directly impacts the quality of our lives.
Just a thought here but I think everyone is born with the `right', at least as much right as anybody else, to participate fully in society.
The right to compete for a job is not enough. Every individual's life depends on their ability to participate. Guaranteed participation in a perpetual competition is an exercise in futility, not the fulfillment of one's existence.
Which is to say that each and every one of us has a right to a full time job that pays a living wage.
A social system that fails to provide this opportunity for every one of its members is unjust.
It's time to redefine the term profit as the benefit reaped by society and the enhancement of the quality of all of our lives.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner