If each man can be likened to a community of his internalized "Thous,"
logically think of the outcome of many men struggling together
supposedly for a common purpose. Since time began, man in community has
been experienced by man as chaotic. Thus Plato wrote _The Republic_.[10]
This presentation depicted an impossible scheme for developing an ideal
community. As a classic, _The Republic_ continues to be a thought
provoking thesis. Its antiquity makes one realize that this desire to
control, our continued concern with genetic planning, is a part of the
very nature of man. And yet, considering man's ever existing recognition
of the chaos of community how naive we often behave, for example,
enraged at experiencing _another_ communication break.
Plato envisioned regulating and controlling almost every dimension of
the individual's existence in accordance with his particular potential
for development to fulfill the needs of his ideally conceptualized
community. Today Heinlein, a science fiction novelist, still writes of
breeding for longevity in man, as we breed animal stock for the greatest
amount of meat and profit.[11] Giving Plato his due, he recognized at
the end of his book concern and doubt as to whether men so carefully
mated and reared would fulfill their designated responsibilities. He
wondered if things could, would, or would not go in accordance with his
plan. He then logically indicated the process and kinds of community
deteriorations which could ensue. Plato had a concept of an ideal
community, of ideal types of necessary men, and of ideal male-female
breeding relationships. He viewed our present-style family as one that
saps the {46} strength of community and does not support this concept.
He conceived of communal living more like the communal living of our
present-day communes. However, Plato's communes would have been
regulated by the plan as he conceived it. Existence in these communes
was to be predetermined and very determined.
Nursing, though not generally the ruling force of this type of planning,
certainly is involved in control measures analogous to Plato's. Nurses
do influence who gets the hospital bed and who does not, who gets the
specialized treatment and equipment, who is discharged and when, and
what goes into the education and planning for post-hospital health care.
Also, how do our biases influence our teaching regarding family?
Innuendoes are frequent in the areas of birth control, abortion, and
family size. So nurses can make a difference regarding community
thought, purpose, and action.
Nietzsche put forth a concept of community of a more indefinite nature
than Plato's.[12] Two major themes dominated the nature of community in
his conception: (1) the legitimate purpose of community was the total
support of its elite men and (2) the criterion for determining the elite
was to be based on those who selected their own values with a "will" to
say, "yes" to life. He referred to his elite as supermen. He questioned
the realization of such a community because of the preponderance of
conforming nonquestioning mediocre men. This complacent majority fearful
of the different or strange would subdue the possibility of his
supermen. Nietzsche did not seem to trust man; he spoke of him as
"human, all too human." Unlike Plato, Nietzsche viewed "good" and "evil"
as arising from a common source. Man in his humanness, Nietzsche felt,
denied his animal heritage and animal qualities. Recognition of these,
of one's Dionysian nature, as a source of both "good" and "evil" was
necessary for becoming superman.
To me it is wondrous to ponder my own conscious purposefulness and
unconscious purposelessness, my quality of force as a member of the
nursing and health communities, viewed through the deep extensive
conceptualized thought Nietzsche bequeathed. I offhand consider our
communities as egalitarian, part of a larger egalitarian society. Are
they really? Does the citizen affect the quality of organizational
structure in accordance with his existential needs while in our
commonplace--the health-nursing world? Whose values set and direct on
this stage of life? Do I, nurse, search out the values on which I want
to base my nursing practice? Do I look for direction and values from
others? Did I take on values during my initial nursing experience--values
never to be reexamined?
Within the nursing community are there nurses eagerly noncomplacent and
desirous of looking at, of sharing their explorations, and of
determining and choosing the values that they want to underlie their
nursing practice? {47} Would supernurses be allowed to be the mediocre
many? Who would determine the elite of the nursing community? Could
supernurses survive without approval of their being different? Would
they be strengthened by the fruits of suffering in their struggle within
the profession? Would these fruits of suffering contribute
constructively to the strengthening of the nursing community?
Buber, like Nietzsche, sees man-in-community with possibilities for
evolving, being, and becoming more. Buber trusts each man as a unique
potential involved in an ongoing struggle with his fellows directed
toward a center.[13] His nonstatic, nonselected community where men
become in and through ongoing struggle with each other expresses the
reality of my nursing world. Who would expect a community without
struggle if they accepted each man as his history inclusive of
antecedents that go back to beginnings of man's consciousness and of
anticipations that go forth into this man's notions of eternity?
Considering the complexity of each man's being and becoming, it is
surprising that we come to understand each other in community at all,
rather than the reverse.
How can we hope for a sustained thereness, presences of nurses with
other man (patients, patients' families, professional colleagues, and
other health service personnel) as "We" in an ongoing struggle of
community considering their multitudinous differences? Norman Cousins,
in _Who Speaks for Man_, comments on man's inability to respond
affirmatively to those he experiences as different from himself.[14] For
the human community to progress he suggests federation. A unity in which
differences would be valued as promoting thought, human evolvement, and
community advancement. Cousins gives examples of man's inhumanity to man
based on differences viewed as nonvalues. The prevalence of this latter
view of differences is very evident in our commonplace health-nursing
world. Can nurses and other health care maintainers look at the ways
they respond to differences consciously, and can they deliberately
choose to be open to responding to them as valuable? Can we conceive of
there being value in that which we see as "not right," "untrue,"
"wrong?"
The ability to be there, to stay involved in community with my fellows,
is a problem worthy of concern to me as a nurse. How do I stay in an
existential way with my contemporaries, patients, patients' families
when their values in reality are so different from my own? How do I go
beyond a negative judgmental to a prizing attitude that would open the
possibility of seeing strengths in others' views perhaps lost,
discarded, or never previously existent in my own? Nonsuperimposing of
my own value system through recognizing and bracketing it is a difficult
professional goal. And yet, a goal that if coupled with the courage for
personal existence, could sustain me in the health-nursing community.
{48}
So for a health-nursing community to truly be actualized each nurse
would prepare to be all it was possible for her to be as a nurse. Then,
through exploration there would be a recognition of the reality of the
existent community. Over time a merger of the values of the nurse and of
the existing community would be reflected as moreness in each. The nurse
would be more through her relation with the community; the community
would be more through its relation with the nurse. Each would make an
important difference in the other. The macrocosm, the community, would
reflect the nurse's quality of presence. The microcosm, the nurse, would
reflect the presence of the community with her. Each unique man becomes
in community through communication with other uniquely different men.