NEW CASTLE —
Editor, The News:
Recently, The News ran a column wondering what makes folks vote the way they do. I see two kinds of voters, the me and the we ones.
Many are concerned with only themselves and their needs and desires. They tend to be OK financially and expect everyone in society to be also, if not, it’s their own fault. They live in what philosophers call the having mode, the me mode. To have is a normal function of the human experience. In order to live we must have things.
Having as a way of existence developed after the creation of private property, from the Latin privare “to deprive of.” Your things are yours and no one else’s, for use as you see fit. Accumulating, owning things and making a profit are the basic rights in the human having society. Not just things but beliefs and ideas are perceived as property also. The desire for private property even extends into one’s human relationships.
Because society seems to be devoted to acquiring things, it becomes harder and harder to see another approach to one’s life.
In the being mode a person can find a meaningful existence in life by things other than mere possessions. Humans have an innate desire to escape at least some of their selfishness. When you do, when you are willing to let your actions be controlled by compassion not just possessions, by sacrificing and helping others without consideration you are moving into the being mode of life. The mode where we don’t measure people by their possessions but by their needs. Get there and I believe you will become a we voter, one who considers others, not just yourself, when voting.
Fred Minteer
141 Minteer Lane
Edinburg
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Letter to the Editor: 'Me' and 'We' voters
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