Individual and the Collective

by | Apr 15, 2020 | ICT4D |

Balancing individual needs and wants with collective needs and wants is one of the hardest tasks for us to do. We can achieve complete individual privacy, but then we lose any collective benefit. We can have great collective benefit, but we lose individual privacy.

But it’s not just a privacy question. It’s also a human rights question.

And it is not an either/or question. We need both individual benefit AND collective benefit. Figuring out where the line is requires a lot of wisdom and different perspectives.

Trying to find the line in the midst of a crisis tends to skew the outcome one way or the other. Advocating on the basis of potential short term benefit to justify a change is unhelpful. Fear will drive us to give up just about everything in order to survive. Getting those freedoms back is a lot harder than giving them up.

Photo by Rupert Britton

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *