The Individual in his Community

The United States is a vast and culturally diverse community comprised of many smaller, more homogeneous communities, and so when an individual makes a contribution it is usually toward their more immediate community. Also, most individuals do not have such a heart of gold that they perform service through voluntary unprofitable acts of kindness such as feeding the homeless. (Although everyone should, I guess). Instead, the United States is an individualistic nation grounded firmly in the belief that everybody has the freedom to pursue his or her own goals. I think that the individual mostly contributes to his or her community inadvertently or through absolute necessity. For example, an individual’s biggest financial contribution to his or her community is through the payment of taxes, a generous yet non-optional act of charity. The other most important way an individual contributes to his or her community is through his or her career. Every job, no matter how seemingly insignificant, functions to uphold the larger social and economic scheme upon which the nation is built. And a career is the best way by which the individual can balance the needs of their community and their own personal desires, since ideally, a person’s career is based on what they like to do.

Apart from economic contributions, though, an individual of course also has moral obligations to his or her community, and in this light, the nation is more united that it is in economic terms. Because the United States is an individualistic nation, it is difficult to conceive a community within the nation that would be united in achieving a common goal. However, the events which occur on the Republic reveal that common threads weaves throughout every community, not matter how diverse. This relates to The Middle Passage, and Calhoun’s eventually taking responsibility for Baleka’s upbringing. Calhoun, who is once selfish and resistant to marriage and family, realizes through the hardships he experiences with the Almusseri that he is inexplicably but inevitably tied to the individuals who surround him, and no matter how different the tribe’s culture, there are values which consistently pervade every community, such as caring for and nurturing its children. In effect, each individual is free to pursue his own personal and economic endeavors, but by taking the effort to raise his kids properly, he is also working toward a goal in which the entire nation is invested.