The Individual's Role in Society

Although individuals within a given society should be guaranteed certain personal liberties and rights, individuals (in my opinion) also have a moral or ethical duty to contribute positively to the society in which they live. Each individual in a given community should play his/her individual role, but should bear in mind that their individual role and actions have significant effects on the lives of everyone else living within the same community. This is why an individual should strive to ensure that their actions will have positive effects on their community (as opposed to negative ones), so that the collective good of the community may benefit.

In the ever increasing globalized world we live in today, people need to realize that their actions (whether good or bad) will eventually come back to haunt them. A person may think that their choice to drive a large gas-guzzling SUV is a personal one that only impacts their own personal finances. In reality, driving a large gas guzzling SUV can contribute to pollution in a third world nation half a world away and can thus have major repercussions for individuals living in these nations. Driving a large SUV can make the lives of the people living in these third-world nations worse than they were before by increasing pollution, which contributes to the debt and poverty in these countries by heightening costs associated with pollution such as lower crop intake brought about by drought, death and sickness associated with extreme weather events (such as tsunamis and cyclones), and the increase of diseases that become more resilient in warmer climates.

People need to learn that their personal actions, no matter how minute and insignificant they may seem, can have a major impact on others within the community. It’s kind of like the butterfly effect theory that claims that a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan can cause a tornado in some other area of the world. Local actions can have major implications on the global stage, so it is extremely important for individuals within society to police themselves and try to do the right thing more often than the selfish thing so that society as a whole will benefit and function more efficiently.