Love, caring at heart of the matter

Recently, I have been reading in the pages of The Chronicle

Herald about how Nova Scotia tries to ensure everyone has a roof overhead and enough to live on. We know that we do not do very well, and many people fare badly.

I have to ask myself why we treat each other like this. Why do we not look to a living wage or a universal basic income?

I think this is part of our culture. For years I have imbibed this culture of market values and self interest as the rule of nature; enlightened interest when one finds helping another also helps oneself.

Enlightened self interest is still, however, selfish. In the end it means that family affection and love itself are no more than servants serving personal survival.

In this context, I have learned I should regard others always as competitors, sometimes as threats. I have been taught to forestall the worst in others even as I hope for “enlightened” cooperation.

I think we are involved in a community of misanthropes. That explains why we treat others in the way laid out in Stella Lord’s Feb. 9 article.

We fear people, we assume the worst and we help people only to the least degree possible.

We think of people as islands: selfish by nature, whose love and caring is an occasional byproduct of self seeking.

I think we will have neither a living wage, nor adequate housing, nor a satisfactory health service until we understand love and caring not as a fiction but as the heart of what we are. Of course, we will not end child poverty as we promised to end it until we rediscover ourselves as interdependent, interconnected at the core.

Dermot Monaghan,

Kingston