A job for you

Yesterday evening it occurred to me that basic needs, such as sleeping and eating, are commonly extended with protective measures. Internal and external factors can endanger us, be it gems, warfare, criminals or natural disasters. What use is building a nice house if it is blown away by a wolf? One could say that protection is the second layer. However, this realization also gave me a second insight.

Next to eating and sleeping, people need protection from dangers that could destroy or incapicitate them. Dangers can take many forms: violence, bacteria, accidents, fires, criminals and floods.

In general, many of these dangers are so rare or powerful that, in contrast to eating and sleeping, we do or can not take care of them ourselves, but have created occupations. Firemen protect against fire, soldiers and policemen against evil people, doctors, pharmacists and nurses against disease. Of course, occupations also exist for the “lower” level: people who take care of feeding and food provision, such as farmers, fishermen, butchers and bakers. This leads to the insight that in general each occupation provides for a human need.

In contrast to the food/sleep layer, the protection layer is only necessary on relatively rare occasions. People spend some resources on them, as a sort of insurance. That does not mean that all protection is necessary; for society it is always a balanced question how much resources should go to security. After all, it is impossible to control everything and everyone, a very safe society is also a very expensive society, see for example the enormous costs of modern healthcare. In general, the level of protection is determined by society. For private matters, such as insurances, people must judge themselves whether the precautions are worth the costs.

Probably there is some optimum: in a deprotected society, individuals may not live long enough to contribute, the uncertainty that your machines may be stolen tomorrow would discourage investment in larger things and increased efficiency. In despotisms and kleptocracies such as Maharadjah-ruled India this was the unfortunate case. However, in a hyperprotected society, nothing new can happen and no growth/development is possible since all effort is spent in maintaining the status quo, like in ancient Sparta. The optimum is probably somewhere in the middle, but its location should be judged by different criteria than safety.

Speaking of doctors and nurses, we should also consider the functioning of the individuals. A human life which is spent in paralysis and pain is not only practically useless for the human in question, it is also bad for society. Therefore we could probably state that optimal health (or workable health, since optimal health would be as expensive and impossible as optimal protection) – workable health therefore should be a reasonable goal of all living human beings, as long as they have a chance of obtaining it.

Health is commonly defined as something physical, but it has two additional and interwoven aspects: mental and emotional health. I hope to expand on this subject tomorrow.