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The End of Personal Growth
It’s Not About You Any More
“There exists in man the capacity to avert catastrophe.” -Jonas Salk.
Salk’s colleague, Gregory Bateson, though, saw no human situation that we ourselves could not make toxic.
So here we are.
We have conditioned ourselves by now to pursue self-improvement, to move toward greater gain. “Manifest Destiny” is the way of America. But although Salk believed that while during his day we were on an ever-increasing path toward scientific breakthroughs and industrial successes, even he saw that one day, we would need to turn our attention away from individual successes and look instead to the success of the group.
Think even of his grandest achievement — the polio vaccine.
Arguably, the singular best benefit of vaccinating against polio is that the recipient will not suffer. The individual inoculated against a virus which ravages the body gains great benefit, indeed. With the threat of living in an iron lung removed, a person can go on about life with a lot more freedom and a lot less stress. But in reality, the overarching ‘best benefit’ of the polio vaccine is not to the individual, but to the greater whole of society. It matters little if one person, or even a few, are vaccinated, if the larger core of the population remain without its vital…
