The Campbell Academy Blog (120)

Me or Us?

Usually, the answer to that question (at least since the middle to late 1980s) has been me.

I wonder whether it started with Thatcher and Reagan and the push towards individuality and the striving for better and more and everything all at once.

And so now, whenever a problem arises or a challenging situation occurs, the people look at it, and they choose me and not us.

The problem with this approach is that there is no me without us (there could easily be an us without me).

In the end, wherever the end might end up being, we will be judged on how much we came together, how much of an us we created, how much we were able to return back to the values of society and integration and collaboration, instead of a situation where we always choose ourselves.

In the 1930s, when there was perceived to be a huge existential threat to the way of life in the United Kingdom, we asked young people to stand up and be counted and go to war and risk and lose their lives for the defence of the values and the society that had been built before them.

The overwhelming majority of young people who were asked stood up and went.

I don't know in a society that values me much more than anything else, whether that would be the same now.

If we needed us, would we be there, or would we shrink down into a little hole and protect ourselves?

Is it for me, or is it for us?

Doing it for us over the long term is always for me.