health care (IV)

I was talking to someone about health care the other day, and I told her that it is hard for me, as a Scandinavian, to get my head around the fact that Americans are so reluctant to act politically on behalf of others. She agreed, and said something like, "and yet doing for others is what makes us human".

I think that is true.

There is a quote by Dr. King: "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."

That means, to me, that my freedom isn't worth much until it's shared by everybody.

The Lutheran Church of Sweden, where about 75% of Swedes are members, elected Eva Brunne to be the new bishop in Stockholm earlier this year. Eva Brunne is the first Swedish bishop to live in a registered same-sex domestic partnership. According to a National Catholic Reporter story Eva Brunne "is believed to be the first openly lesbian bishop in the world."

I am not a member of the Church of Sweden, but it makes me proud that my people not only acknowledges rights, but expands privilege.

Another quote by Dr. King states that, "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

Maybe it's true that a society has not started living until it can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.