My friend Billy Lee asked me to write an article on Friendship, or on “Friendship-ology.” (Billy’s own word choice).
While I appreciate the request, and the intellectual pursuit of the benefits of friendship, (which I do acknowledge) I am less impressed by “friendship”…….than by a different concept which I like to explore below:
.Whether friendship means a one-on-one relationship with another human being, or whether it means
relationships with multiple people that you happen to know, Friendship is myopic. Friendship does not multiply. It
simply is point-to-point, .. it is add-ative. Although it is indeed foundational; it often misses a higher and more
important concept. and that concept is “Community.”
Assuming that friendships are foundational, and necessary, and worthy in and of themselves, community mandates
that the greater good for the entire community must be addressed. And if friendships are founded on the assumption
that people are meeting either their own personal needs or the needs of the other person, the Community must look at
their overall priority of needs and address the needs of the less fortunate, first, and with greater priority, than of
individuals……..Those in mourning, those disabled and the aged, those who are sick, those who are young and cannot
achieve their needs because of incapacities. Those without resources. Those without friends.
Community uses the limited resources of the group to insure that those without friends, without support,
without richness and assets, can be satisfied. And this happens sometimes at the expense of people
who have needs without such an urgency. If everyone prioritized the needs of their own friends first, or their own
first, then those less fortunate in our society would be left alone, poor, sick, disabled, without hope,
without the joys and optimism that everyone is entitled to enjoy. This is not about distributing
Assets equally among the masses, this is not an economics class about guns and butter, it is about
treating people with respect and giving everyone the same degree of humanity and hope and
maybe even health care, access to clean water and clean waste systems, food and human treatment.
Friendship often misses those with the greatest human needs. But community insures that no one is overlooked.
That is why I prefer to address building Community, rather than focusing on building my own friendshipology.
I want to build and prioritize community-ology. And yes, you probably start with friendships first.
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