the bold need to be answer Along the lines of identity, Boylan (2014) stated, “O
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the bold need to be answer
Along the lines of identity, Boylan (2014) stated, “Our identity in communities is relational depending upon our role within that community” (p. 15). Why does Boylan differentiate between our identity when we are alone and when we are in a community? What are some communities you are involved in? What is your role? Boylan would go on to talk about the natural community. What is this? How do you see yourself in the natural community?
Boylan, M. (2014). Environmental Ethics. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
book: Book: Environmental Ethics
CAse
Part One: The Individual Alone and the Individual in Community We start with you. You are the reader of this essay. I can ask various questions of you. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Who is your favorite pop singer? Do you enjoy Reality TV? These questions are meant to individualize you, such that you become distinct from the many other individuals in your age group. These characteristics might be attitudes (such as evidenced by the prior questions). Another way to individuate you might be to describe your physiogamy. Are you tall or short? Are you fat or slim? Do you have big feet? What is the topography of your nose? These sort of questions tell something about your physical characteristics. The physical characteristics are not as important as your attitudes, because if you met your doppelganger who looked just like you but had different attitudes, then most would choose the attitudes as being primary in establishing who you are. Thus, they are more important. However, if your body were to be changed by illness or accident, but your attitudes remained the same, then most would say that you remained essentially unchanged. This is because we think attitudes to be more indicative of self-identity than physical characteristics. So, if you are most essentially a collection of attitudes, these attitudes of taste can be supplemented by those of personal understanding of the facts of the world: what is the boiling point of water at sea level? What is the tallest mountain in the world? What is the mass of the Antarctic ice caps? These sort of understandings are different than the first category of attitudes. In the first case, the source of verification is the agent’s own personal tastes. No one else can say that one’s personal tastes are incorrect, because they are subjectively based upon one’s own perceptions and judgments made about them. In the second case, there is reference to intersubjective data that are amenable to measurement according to commonly held standards. Enter the community. We all belong to many different communities. These range from the family, church, schools, vocational communities, volunteer groups, etc. Our identity in communities is relational depending upon our role within that community. For example, if one of my communities is being on a basketball team at the YMCA, then I might be the off-guard, first off the bench. This would be who I am within that community. It would involve certain social roles and responsibilities. Each of us is situated within communities to which we belong. We also have stations within the community that confer conventional rights and duties that arise from that community.2 For example, I may be the treasurer of my church. This gives me the right to collect funds from parishioners and the duty to enter the data into an accounting program, deposit the monies at the bank, and print and present checks to the rector for his signature. The roles and stations that we occupy within communities both designate us and create an institutional place whereby we do our part to execute our individual and corporate responsibility.3 Communities thus have bodies (institutions) that create and sanction various rules and their enforcement (formal and informal). We can think of this as the community being a collection of people, and the institution as being a sort of power-mapping machine that sorts us out and puts us into proper subsets according to properties that define our membership (relational role) and our functional place (relational station). Given this rather informal characterization of communities, let us return to the perspective of the individual within the community. How should he or she act? This question can be answered in two ways: (a) the way I understand my own ability to act; and (b) the way I see this as important in a social context. I address (a) via an argument that claims that an examination of human agency requires that I recognize certain conditions that I and others share.4 I address (b) via the shared community worldview imperative: “Each agent must contribute to a common body of knowledge that supports the creation of a shared community worldview (that is itself complete, coherent, and good), through which social institutions and their resulting policies might flourish within the constraints of the essential core commonly held values (ethics, aesthetics, and religion).”5 What this imperative means is that the individual in a community (whatever community it is) must take an active participatory stance (beyond his or her individual role and station responsibilities) to assess the mission of the community and to judge whether that mission and its goals are logically complete, coherent, and good, and how this mission is being carried out via its associated social institutions. If the community is logically complete, coherent, and good in how it identifies itself and how it seeks to act on that understanding (mission), then it is up to each and every individual in the community to take an active role in this process consonant with their critical personal worldview.6 This means that all community members must become active participants in the community. How can this be achieved? At a minimal level, it involves each person’s continual surveillance of the community in order to see how it is performing its mission (one critical ingredient for the common body of knowledge).7 At the next level one should engage others in the community in dialogue about how the community is fulfilling its mission. (This dialogue critically examines the common body of knowledge.) Such social dialogue should also include ways that might be employed to revise the policies of the community and how they are being executed.8 Finally, the third level is to actively lead proposals for change and renewal of the community according to the criteria of the Shared Community Worldview Imperative (SCWI). This can go as far as taking a leadership role in the community. Everyone must participate at least on the lowest level. But it should not stop there. According to the SCWI, people should then also strive to participate at levels two and three according to their abilities. The SCWI is a foundational principle that is necessary for democratic institutions and moderately representative non-democratic institutions.9 I have argued that there are various sorts of community.10 The most common sort is one in which a person can have personal contact with most of the community members. I call these communities micro communities. In micro communities (generally 500 people or less), one can envision a political process that works on the committee as a whole. There can be discourse and influence by all at this level. As the community grows larger we move to macro communities. Because of their size we cannot realistically make contact with all other members. Thus, we move toward indirect contact via representative government. In this case, all the duties of the SCWI still hold, but the participatory component is less direct because the unit is so large. Levels one and two are still possible, but level three is generally structured around elected leaders: sending letters, petitions, organizing protest events, etc. Each of the aforementioned communities, micro and macro, are set within the context of nations. But I assert that there is also an extended sense of community that goes beyond the areas in which we actually live or where we can travel unimpeded (within the boundaries of a nation).11 This sense of community is remote. Without the benefits of modern media, we might not be very aware of their plight. But because of the devices of communication that presently exist, information is available. This information can be input toward the creation of knowledge, which, in turn, will lead individuals to contemplate those without the basic goods of agency. This reflection should lead to the acceptance of duties to those far removed from our daily lives: cosmopolitanism: Each agent must educate himself as much as he is able about the peoples of the world—their access to the basic goods of agency, their essential commonly held cultural values, and their governmental and institutional structures—in order that he might individually and collectively accept the duties that ensue from those peoples’ legitimate rights claims, and to act accordingly within what is aspirationally possible.12 Conceptually, the extended community worldview imperative is important because it says that we can have strong moral duties that extend to people we have not met or are ever likely to meet. Their verified existence and situation is enough to generate a known moral duty (subject to “ought implies can”). This sort of intellectual assessment and its consequent moral effects lies behind the moral assessment process of nature. We will begin this segment of our journey by agreeing that there are more than human communities in which we exist. The ecosystem is a natural community that can be dealt with in an analogous fashion.
Explanation / Answer
There is a differentiation between an individual’s identity when he is alone and when he is a part of a community. This is so because, when the individual is alone, his identity and behavior are rule by his own perspective and etiquettes. He is an independent body and answerable to none but himself. When an individual becomes a part of a community, he has to abide by certain social norms. The individual becomes answerable to the whole community, for his actions and behavior. Thus, there can be a change witnessed in his behavior, when he is in a community.
I am a part of the Christian community of my society. This community works for the betterment of the overall society. We conduct social events and social work and try to make our society, a better place to live. This Christian community can be considered as a micro society as it comprises 400 members. I am an integral part of the society. There have been various events where my efforts were recognized and felicitated. There is great camaraderie and trust in our society.
Boylan considers the ecosystem as the natural community as it is created by God and there is no man made interventions. Every member of the society, in general, is an integral part of the natural community. The natural community is vast and hence there is macro relationship among the members. Every member of such a society must be determined about his contribution for the sustenance of balance in such a society.
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