At this time, the whole world is confronted with an unprecedented pandemic that demands our human capacity to care for one another and our consciousness of the moral imperative to do our individual part for our community’s well-being.
We are called to be members of a community in which the interest of our community takes precedence over our own individual interest – sacrificing our daily routines and our inclination to move freely. Whilst this remains vital to the interest and well-being of the community, it also serves the interests of our own personal health.
Perhaps now more than ever, we are guided by the knowledge and understanding that the well-being of one of us is best assured or guaranteed by the well-being and survival of the other. Also, the survival and well-being of the other is integrated into the well-being, survival and preservation of the whole. When this perspective constitutes the nexus of the mindset of each person, it establishes the Group Mind. This is how we must operate.
The resulting force generated from the combining of like minds in this way is geometrically greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, when our minds are focused together upon a common objective, we create a mutual force, which is not merely additive, but vastly more powerful than that of any individual or group of individuals.
As the sum total of everyone’s positions and concerns, the Group Mind has now become a necessary synthesis in which the defining elements of the fundamental interest of the respective participants is preserved in the resultant Commonweal, whose legitimacy and mutuality is subscribed to by all.
Our present reality has shown us that if it affects one of us, it affects all of us. Be your brothers and your sisters’ keeper by taking care of yourself and following the guidelines. Intuit into this Group Mind Consciousness.
Your health is intertwined with that of each and everyone around you. Your sense of what to do at this time is not just about conduct and behaviour; it bears a metaphysical existence in the consciousness of we, as a people. Love was taught even at the family level as a community construct. It is the thrust of its moral content that demands that the whole community organise itself to care for all its members.
At this time, there are strict laws being put in place. For most of us, the hope is that our moral compass is premised on a conscious inclination to conform to that which is right. For Anyiam-Osigwe, the law is an extension of the moral precepts. It assumes that some of us will deliberately veer off the moral imperative in the way we respond to the present reality.
This is true. Our community was founded and should function on the higher moral imperative, but necessarily, the law has a subtle existential import in the consciousness and psyche of the people. It is here to give strength and authority to moral ethos. We should do our best to accept and obey it, not just for our well-being, but also for every member of our society.
Our present reality is not an impossible one. It is difficult. It is a global challenge unlike we have ever experienced. Yet, it is also one that rests on us, as human beings, to strive to operate on this Group Mind. Our humanity is not simply embedded in our individual person.
It is something we owe to each other as members of a community whose interests are equally and fully served in the commonweal. This mindset should constitute an essential integral to social action.
We have seen that the effort and disposition of each individual will undoubtedly benefit the collective interest of society, which in turn will enhance the personal interest and welfare of individual members of the society. This consciousness should guide our entire social system.