Subjective, Well, basically, the benefit, the advantage…
In this sense, the interest may be the same for many, but also different for everyone. It is what unites, but also that which divides, it is the litmus test by which social progress and cohesion are tested!
Why, as there is an interest for the individual, there is also an interest for the team, the community, society, the nation!
So, we are faced with two parallel networks of interests, the size of the difference or identification of which determines the level of cultural development and moral development of a society.
The individual interest reveals human selfishness and is determined by purely utilitarian aims and purposes., which is why it is associated with periods, in which primitivism and individualism dominate, fear and mistrust, instincts and greed.
The social interest, on the contrary, requires eponymous and often anonymous personal sacrifices and is therefore associated with periods of moral and spiritual cultivation and true democracy.
It is no coincidence that a basic motif of ancient Greek political and philosophical thought is the simile of the State-Motherland with a ship: "She is, that saves us", Sophocles proclaims to Antigone, “and only if her boat is well suited, we make friends and we are happy".
But also in many other texts of the ancient Greek Secretariat there is a clear distinction and proposition of the collective from the individual interest.. Aristotle emphasizes that "if the whole is destroyed, the body of society, its members cannot exist ", individuals.
The above, Nevertheless, they also presuppose the existence of a moral conscience, which gives the individual the knowledge and power to evaluate and place what serves the whole before and above what serves the individual.
It is required, Consequently, the existence of moral motivations in the correct hierarchy of interests, which just testifies to the perfect functioning of all those institutions that serve and promote education, religiosity and moral improvement of citizens.
The most characteristic, Nevertheless, and to an absolute degree at the same time, distinction of individual and social interest was made by Christianity, introducing a new ethic.
With the daily request "the good and the interests of our souls" all discrimination of individual and social interest is removed, which no longer corresponds to the anonymous crowd or to the vague meaning of society, but to the near, to the surname of the suffering and wronged fellow human being, εφ’ as far as what really benefits our soul and not our selfish microcosm coincides with "giving" to the other, the image of God!
But this attitude presupposes a transformation of the individual into a person, it presupposes the emptying of the "I" and the exit of man to meet "you" for the creation of the society of "we"!
This is a society, which was historically experienced in the years of the "Acts of the Apostles" and is constantly experienced in the monastic commons and has as a prerequisite and testimony a spirit of moral perfection, sanctification and self-sacrifice…
This is a society, whose members are not selfishly and complacently entrenched in their individual microcosm, indifferent to social and political events, abstaining from procedures, who believe they are not directly concerned, living in the illusion that if the ship sinks, in which they ride, they will not be dragged to the bottom either…
It can, sure, the ships of modern democracies to be so large, that passengers do not know or do not care about who or who governs them and deludes themselves that it is enough for them to have a good time in their luxurious "cabin"; the "Titanic", Nevertheless, it will drag them all down, while the orchestra will still be playing….
† Dorotheos II of Syros and Mykonos
(Magazine "POLITICAL ISSUES", τ. 74, December 2014)