On not being an island

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

— John Donne, Meditation 17, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

This post started out as a furious rant about the people who run this country inhabiting a moral universe where everyone is an island, nobody has any obligation to help anyone else, and the poor, the sick, the down on their luck, and the elderly are expected to fend for themselves. I was going to rail against the myth of total self-made independence and the worldview that dictates that if you’re in trouble, you don’t
deserve help because you must have brought it on yourself. I was going to make a case for there being such a thing as the public good. And I was going to ask who else thinks we can’t do without each other, can’t abandon each other, no man is an island and all that (hence the John Donne).

But who am I to say that? The accounts of people who’ve been in New Orleans speak for themselves. Read this, and then tell me we couldn’t have done better.

(And if this story is true, something is terribly wrong with us. Can we please, please get past the "every man for himself" philosophy? For once I agree with David Brooks: this has been a Hobbesian decade, and something’s got to give.)

One Response to “On not being an island”

  1. Jane Dark says:

    Thank you for reminding me of this Donne passage — it’s entirely relevant.
    And nice blog!: Frogs and Ravens is a good meeting place.