Why should we care about others?

Question from the Internet:

“Why do I think it’s my duty to solve other people’s problems?”

Because those other people are not actually “others”.

We have evolved into a globally integrated and fully interdependent world. In this global and integral world, in effect, we have all become individual cells of the same living organism.

Thus the people — and the still, vegetative and animate part of Nature — we used to look at as something external, alien to us have actually become our own integral parts.

So when we are told to develop mutual responsibility and feel a sense of duty towards “others”, we need to understand — and come to feel — that by that, we simply extend the instinctive responsibility and duty we feel towards ourselves since we have all become a single being where we can’t separate or distinguish one from the other any longer.

Of course, this does not come to us automatically and naturally. We need a unique, purposeful and practical educational method to develop this sense of mutuality and absolute responsibility towards each other by “viscerally” feeling how inevitably integrated and interdependent we have all become.

Nevertheless, the situation is set, and we cannot run away from it. We arrived at the state where the often used and always misunderstood and misused principle of “loving others as yourself” became as clear as daylight.

We have to love and serve “others” as ourselves since those “others” have become integral parts of our “self”.