<p>Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.</p>
<p>It is not that people dislike being part of a community; it is just that they care about their individual freedoms more. People value neighborliness and social interactionuntil being part of a group requires them to limit their freedom for the larger good of the group. But a community or group cannot function effectively unless people are willing to set aside their personal interests.</p>
<p>Adapted from Warren Johnson, The Future Is Not What It Used To Be</p>
<p>Assignment:
Does the success of a communitywhether it is a class, a team, a family, a nation, or any other groupdepend upon peoples willingness to limit their personal interests? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
<p>----------------------------------------------------------------------ESSAY:</p>
<p>For the Greater Good, a slogan present in society for such a long time, used for chivalrous and beneficial, but also for selfish and nefarious purposes, supports a highly debatable concept when aimed at the role of people in contemporary society. People should invest in, and help their environment, but not for the cost of barring themselves from activities and other parts of life they enjoy. The success of an organisation should never be based on its members' sacrificing their scarce moments of self-indulgence. Throughout history one can see the countless situations that exemplify this notion, such as the Era of Communism, the war in Vietnam, and even in the case of the French leader, Napoleon Bonaparte. </p>
<p>During the Communist period, the idea of a whole nation sacrificing its personal interests for the Greater Good of the country eventually lead to people realizing they have not limited, but completely lost the normal lives they led, consequently finding themselves in poverty and hardship. Due to the superciliousness and insolence of leaders, whole nations realized that by self-abstinencing to achieve something, they have done exactly the opposite. In order for a group to succeed, apart from hard work, a normal amount of personal liberty is absolutely compulsory. </p>
<p>In the case of the war in Vietnam, one can again see the atrocious effects of the impertinent thought that people need to go to war and lose their lives fighting battles ought to enhance their own quality of lives. An utterly contradictory idea, seeing as it promotes personal sacrifice in order to establish a community free of the need for the same sacrifice. </p>
<p>Napoleon Bonaparte pushed his army to its limits, making millions of people ruin their and their families' lives, just in order to ensure his nation's prosperity. This example is important in that it explains how it is not the people who need to limit their personal interests, but the leader who needs to make more prudent requests and decisions for his country, in order to establish the upper-mentioned. </p>
<p>These examples clearly demonstrate that people cutting themselves from the things they enjoy isn't the right way to ensure success and well-being of a community.</p>