Individual and Collective

I lost a 13-year-old nephew this past weekend. He was riding a little ATV on private land without a helmet, was thrown from it, and died instantly of a head injury. There is no sense pointing any fingers. It happened, and we all have to make sense of it on every level.

My mind running on as usual, it put me in mind of things like helmet laws (none applied in this case), and any regulation of private behaviors with outcomes that can be statistically tracked as collective phenomena, and are therefore signficant to the public common good. There are people who do not have well developed senses of collective reality and resent certain types of regulation as the 'gummint' trying to take away their freedom. It seems like a difficult question—the line between individual freedom and collective well-being.

All abstract thorizing about individual and collective aside, we lost a sweet, young nephew, cousin, grandson, brother, son, and friend, and it hurts.