Keeping The Burdens of Life Reasonable
At face value, it would seem like people in New York City live relatively OK, burdens and all. Many of those burdens are surely unreasonable, but they are also not fully unbearable. Can we rethink government not bottom-up but top-down? Maybe it's not always about providing global 'top-down' relief but about systematically identifying unreasonable burdens and providing a targeted yet-equitable relief from the bottom-up.
From a developmental perspective, burden is good, burden gives you a response surface, something to play with and experience trade-off. Fetishizing burden is clearly dangerous but learning to play with it is valuable. Burden and clarity on how acceptably burdensome we agree to let life be could be a very promising approach as meta-policy tool.
What are unreasonable burdens? That’s an important question. We can only benefit from sharing impressions and finding agreement on what burdens are non-tolerable. We’re talking about the fates that “we society” will protect anyone from experiencing — miserable fates like not having home, not having time to see family or space to play, socialize, and self-actualize.
It’s as if the modern government were tasked with establishing the level of burden necessary to reach a satisfying quality-of-life in ways that preserve dignity. "What is an honorable lifestyle?" A lifestyle that undermines the dignity of others is not honorable.
✎ Connection to
Key / The Prevention of Misery and Tragedy
Key / The Human Sense of Value