Intertwined
Whether you like it or not, you are part of a society. You walk on roads you did not build, protected by laws you did not write, and safeguarded by people you may never meet. The air you breathe is cleaner because others agreed to rules you did not set. The food you eat reaches you through systems of inspection, transport, and labor that would collapse without collective effort. The myth of absolute self-reliance is a comforting story told by those who have forgotten how deeply dependent we all are.
Every life is entangled with others. The paycheck that sustains you exists because someone buys what you make, fixes what you break, or tends to those you love. The nurse, the farmer, the mechanic, the teacher: these are not distant figures. They are the invisible scaffolding of your freedom.
So when you insist that no one should be “forced” to help others, you are not defending liberty. You are declaring that your comfort matters more than another person’s survival. You are demanding the benefits of civilization without paying its dues. You brand the poor as parasites while feeding off the very systems you refuse to support. That is not moral independence. That is moral inversion.
Compassion isn’t charity. It’s infrastructure. A society that feeds its hungry, heals its sick, and educates its children doesn’t just lift the weak; it stabilizes the strong. The economy grows when people are healthy enough to work and educated enough to create. Crime drops when people have hope. Communities thrive when despair isn’t the default condition.
Every dollar that keeps a child from hunger saves hundreds later in lost productivity, crime prevention, and medical costs. Every public health program protects not only the poor, but you, the taxpayer who doesn’t want to catch the next outbreak. Every school that stays funded creates fewer prisons that need building.
To deny this is not realism. It is blindness. The refusal to help others doesn’t make society stronger; it makes it brittle. Because the cracks you ignore today will one day reach the ground beneath your own feet.
The moral question is simple: do you want to live in a system built on solidarity or one built on indifference? One will sustain you when you falter. The other will step over you when you fall.