Co-operation

Picture taken 9 Nov 2005 5:22pm.


The notion that the world only functions through co-operation is not often discussed. In these days of increasing polarity of wealth and resources and the culture of individual and corporate greed and indeed the 'cult' of self, I think it is time to take stock and remember, we exist only through co-operation. I do not know where the idea of the 'self made man' came from, but it is a myth whose demise is long overdue. Anyone who declares themselves 'self made', is a selfish, blind and ungrateful creature at best.

We each build our lives on the ingenuity, the labour, the deft hands and hearts of those who have brought about the world in which we live. We daily, moment by moment, employ the products of the labour of others. We all too easily take for granted the plates, knives and forks, carpets, keyboards, the houses we live in, the tarmac we drive on, the clothes on our backs. The list is too vast to comprehend of things we rely on from the hands of others. We assume the technology of today will continue, we assume, and indeed presume on, tomorrow, on the trust of labours past and present.

As John Donne said, 'All mankind is of one author, and is one volume... No man is an island, entire of itself.'

It doesn't matter, in this argument, who the author may be, it matters profoundly only that no island exists but it is entirely surrounded by sea. We live in the context of our times, not separate from it but completely dependent upon it.

This world, my world, your world, exists through co-operation. Every one is my neighbour, whose life and labour joggles elbows with my own.