Wants and Needs

My province is getting ready to move into the next phase of our reopening. There have been so many phases of relaunch that we have passed through - both forward and backward that I don’t even keep track of what each phase means.  There has not been much logic behind our province’s decisions. Our relaunch phases always come too soon and our shutdown phases always come too late. While I am an advocate of putting the greater good of the public’s health first, I have to acknowledge that how our provincial government is handling things has made a lot of the public health measures in place ineffective. 

Like everyone else in a democracy,  I am subject to the will of the majority. Yes, our Premier publicly lied and cheated to win his party’s leadership but the majority of my fellow citizens wanted him to lead our province and so I accept that. That is how a democracy works. I may have not voted for him but he is my Premier and I am going to participate in my community by providing leadership and support where it is needed. 

The problem that I see us facing as a community is our inability to distinguish between wants and needs. We all want to make our mortgage payments while some of us need a ventilator. When our hospitals are full and we are running out of ventilators to help deal with the impact of the pandemic, the ability to logically differentiate between wants and needs is paramount. While it is not ideal to have a bank foreclose on my house, it is infinitely better than having my neighbour’s child die because he succumbed to COVID-19. 

The good of the whole has to be the priority of a community. Everyone understands that. Unfortunately we have all been conditioned to confuse wants and needs when it comes to the economy. Our economic policies have never been socially or environmentally sustainable yet we continue to support this self-destructive trajectory. As we fight with each other and continue to prolong this pandemic through our actions, this has never been as clearly highlighted as it is now.

“Democracy is not simply a license to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one’s beloved extended community.” - Aberjhani (b. 1957)