Common Good

Inspired by a Franciscan article:

In the beginning, man and woman were created into this world to cultivate it. Work is a life-giving human activity that consists of developing the world to support ourselves. Work is creative a process. It includes all human activity - paid and unpaid - that we do for ourselves and each other to provide for human needs and attain the common good (defined as the sum total of social conditions which allow people , either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily). Work shapes and forms the world into something more useful for human persons.

Yet, there are many instances today where work has become dehumanising - where working conditions are made even less conducive for the good of the worker and where workers are no longer regarded or treated as human persons but as tools and instruments for someone else's gain.

Work exists to ultimately benefit the worker. We work to provide for ourselves and each other. It is our vocation to develop the world responsibly and sustainably - in ways that promote the all-rounded good of the whole human person as well as shared good of all human persons.

Development is not a mechanical process that automatically brings about what is best for the individual. Instead, it is and must be directed by human persons for the good of human persons, as befitting our common human dignity. Through the generations, we have built up a complex economy to facilitate transactions; we have constructed vast systems and structures in society to distribute resources; we have made rapid advancements in technology to reduce the toil of work.

Nevertheless, not all of these developments have been responsibly or sustainably directed; many have been pursued not to improve the lives of people but for the sole purpose of generating profit, surplus wealth that is creamed off and savoured by only the few. Ironically, although humanity has achieved its greatest capacity to produce resources necessary to sustain a minimal standard of living, there are even more people than ever before who are deprived of basic resources and rights to live.

So does your work build up the world and contribute to the common good?