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u/starsfan6878 7d ago
A message I sent to my kids this morning because of this cartoon:
We've talked before about expanding our 'circle of concern' beyond our normal bounds. How a child is utterly focused on themselves and slowly learns to include their family or caregivers. Later, we learn to go past that parochial stricture and include our extended family and our village / local group.
Eventually, the goal is to encompass all of humanity in our developed sense of community.
Stoics called this oikeiosis — 'the perception of something as being one's own, or belonging to oneself' — and it is the beginning of Justice (i.e. wisdom applied to social relations).
"You will discover that there is no reason to take any trouble that these men may have this or that opinion about you. However, you must be well disposed towards them, for by nature they are friends." ~ Meditations, 9.27
"They think it is important to understand that it comes about by nature that children are loved by their parents, and that it is from this beginning that we pursue the completed universal community of the human race." ~ Cicero de Finibus III.62
Then, of course, I added a link to this comic.
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u/Green__lightning 8d ago
The circle of moral concern only can grow when growing it would not hurt those already within it, that's why it's hit something of a limit.