Three Great Responsibilities
You have three great responsibilities. Not everyone can do all three. You should at least do one. If you are fine, do two. And if you are great, do all three.This occurred to me three years ago, and I have told many people. They always respond positive.
R1: Provide For Yourself
Life is not free. You must work to sustain your existence. Before you worry about anything else, you should seek to support your own existence. Try not to be a drain on anyone else. This means, of course work. And work for your own sustenance is not hard to understand.
Some of us are not able to do this. There are people who literally can not support themselves. These people need our love, and you are in this position, then don’t worry. Do your best. But for everyone else, the first thing you need to do is to do the work to support yourself.
R2: Provide for Those You Love
Assuming that you are able to support yourself, and most of us can, you probably have extra potential. Use it to support those immediately around you whom you love. Your family. Your relatives. You friends. Your community. You have assured your own safety, so use your extra ability to help those around you. Some of them need it.
These are acts of love. There things we do that cost us nothing, and we can give away for nothing, and still be of great benefit to the receiver. Humans can not survive on our own in the wild, but instead survive only through cooperation. There is a famous account of an escaped prisoner in Tazmania in the early 1700’s who was not able to survive on his own, but was able to team up with aborigines to survive. Working as a team is humanity’s superpower, and it is all driven by these acts we do for each other.
R3: Provide for Future Generations
The world you were born into was ripe with possibilities, and it is only fair that you leave the world ripe with possibilities for those who will come after you. If you are already supporting yourself, and supporting those around you, then spend some time thinking about how future generations will view what you did. This is of course for your progeny, but also for everyone else in the community. Given we were born into a resourceful, beautiful world, the greatest evil would be to consume/exhaust the resources and destroy the beauty leaving nothing for future generations. We are stewards of this world, and let’s be sure that on our watch, we improved it a bit.
We know what we know. Two hundreds years ago many people were openly doing to the environment things that we have outlawed today. This is progress, but we also know that we still do things that are not sustainable. I have a strong belief that humanity will figure out the solutions to the grave problems that face us today, because there are people who worry about future generations. All progress depends on this, and to you people you have time and energy to worry about this.
Altogether
Of these three responsibilities, I would guess that about 99% of us achieve responsibility 1: support yourself. Most people are able to survive. There remains about 1% — and that is a lot of people — who really can not support themselves. I have seen them. Still, I think the 99% can carry that extra 1% without a lot of trouble.
The vast majority of people achieve responsibility for those they love. Probably 75% to 80% I don’t know, I am not a sociologist. Still, the practice of helping family and friends is widespread. It is what makes humans special.
Even the elite, who achieve all three responsibilities, is actually quite large. I would say around 20% of humanity is able to actually build something that is of value for many generations. Anyone who builds a bridge, or a building of any kind, is aware of the benefit that falls on those who use it. We build for the future.
The ordering of these responsibilities helps to emphasize that “locality is power” because the situation can always change. You might be fully achieving all three responsibilities, when something comes along to change that. It might be a storm, or an earthquake, or possibly a market crash. The insurance companies call these “acts of God.” But the most important thing is to think get yourself on your feet, then those around you next, before worrying about wider scopes. There will be times that you feel you can’t handle it, and when that comes, don’t worry — there are people there to prop you up. That is what a community is for.
Still, it is a little more than this, and yet can be summarize better, with the following:
Act locally because you have the most effect there.