Injustice is a sin. Nature has constituted rational beings for their own mutual benefit, each to help his fellows according to their worth, and in no wise to do them hurt; and to contravene her will is plainly to win against this eldest of all the deities. Untruthfulness, too, is a sin, and against the same goddess. For Nature is the nature of existence itself; and existence connotes the kinship of all created beings.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Nine
As we're dragging towards the end of Year Two of COVID, and considering the implications of Year Three and Year Four, I'm drawn back to this passage from the Meditations. As usual MA is correct when he pointed out that "existence connotes the kinship of all created beings." The great trick of capitalism is to make us forget this fact, and to instead celebrate the individualistic accumulation of as much as inhumanly possible, and to decry compassion for our fellow human beings as weakness. I'd hate to think how many COVID-related statistics I've posted on Twitter or Facebook which then cried out for the same tagline: "But my freedom . . ." In the end individual freedom doesn't mean much when it endangers the collective good. Aren't we told this on every visit to our houses of worship (well, not the Evangelical mega-churches), and yet we forget it as we pass out the door.
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