Common Good(s) Under Attack

We live in a noisy world, don’t we? Our days are filled with personal dreams, endless to-do lists, and the constant buzz of screens promising connection but often leaving us feeling alone. Amid this rush, the idea of the "Common Good" might sound old-fashioned, like a faded postcard from a simpler time. We hear it in speeches or read it in hopeful articles, and part of us wonders: Is this just a nice phrase, empty of meaning? Yet, when we pause and look at our shared struggles—inequality, division, a warming planet, trust that frays like old fabric—we feel a quiet longing. We yearn for a way to live together, not just as strangers sharing space, but as neighbors building a good life side by side.
The Common Good is not a new idea, nor is it a vague dream. It’s a practical, living hope—a way to balance our individual desires with the truth that we need each other. (We also discussed this here.)

For centuries, people have asked: How do we live well together? In ancient Greece, thinkers like Aristotle didn’t focus on individual rights as we do now. Instead, they imagined cities thriving through what Aristotle called "Political Friendship"—not warm fuzzies, but a practical trust among citizens. It was the idea that even people who disagree can cooperate for the sake of their shared home. Later, Roman and Christian thinkers like Cicero and Aquinas wove this into visions of peace and justice, tying the Common Good to fairness and the dignity of all.

The Enlightenment brought a shift. Philosophers like Locke and Bentham saw society as a collection of individuals chasing their own goals. The Common Good, they thought, would emerge naturally from everyone’s self-interest. This idea sparked progress but also planted seeds of disconnection, leaving us with a world where personal gain often overshadows shared purpose.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Catholic Church revived the Common Good as a counterpoint to unchecked individualism. Popes like Leo XIII spoke of workers’ rights and social justice, while later thinkers like John Rawls offered modern tools—ideas like fairness and cooperation across differences—to build just societies. The Common Good, they all agreed, is not a fixed answer but a living project. It asks us to negotiate, to balance our freedom with our responsibility to each other.
These ideas are not relics. They are a map for navigating our messy, interconnected world—a reminder that our happiness depends on the happiness of others.

Now, imagine a place where this map has been torn apart, where the Common Good is not just neglected but actively crushed. This is Myanmar today, a failed Nation-State project whose story reveals what happens when trust, fairness, and cooperation are replaced by control and division.

For decades, Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, has held a tight grip on power, starting with a coup in 1962. Instead of building a place for all its peoples, internal nations and ethnic groups, the military chased a narrow vision of control. However, here is nuance. Even before the military came to have full blown power, the Burmese politicians tried to centralize power and created problems among its people. Myanmar has never been an accountable normative state since then. The military favored its own survival and a Bamar-centric idea of unity, sidelining minorities and their dreams of equality. This wasn’t Political Friendship; it was domination. The result was not a Common Good but a fractured society, marked by poverty, distrust, and endless civil wars.

The military’s rule created a system where resources flowed to the elite and their allies, leaving millions behind. Ethnic groups, promised a federal union at independence, faced marginalization or violence instead. The economy served the state, not the people, deepening inequality. Trust eroded, not just between citizens and the state, but among communities pitted against each other by a system that thrived on division.

A brief hope flickered in 2011, when Myanmar began a fragile liberalization. For a moment, it seemed the country might pursue a broader Common Good—fairer elections, open dialogue, a chance to heal old wounds. But the military never fully let go, and deep grievances, like the persecution of the Kachin, Karen, Shan, Rohingya, and others, remained unresolved. The dream of inclusivity and cooperation stayed out of reach. The civilian leaders (mainly statists) tried to reached negotiation with the military but in the process the ethnic institutions were largely marginalized.

Then came the 2021 coup, a brutal turning point. The military seized power again, shattering any pretense of working for the common good. Since then, Myanmar has plunged into a crisis that feels like a betrayal of everything the Common Good stands for.

• No Benefit for All: The military’s focus is control, not care. It has killed over thousands and thousands civilians, bombed villages, and destroyed schools and hospitals. Nearly half the population now lives in intense poverty, a stark reversal of earlier progress.
• No Fairness: Power and wealth are hoarded by the military and its cronies. Since the last coup, estimated over 20,000 political prisoners languish in jails, punished for speaking out. Resources are weaponized, not shared.
• No Inclusivity: The military silences dissent with bullets and arrests. Ethnic minorities, from the Karen to the Chin, face renewed violence, while the Rohingya remain stateless, their suffering is largely ignored and even weaponized. Even Bamar civilians protesting the coup are now targets. No one is invited to the table.
• No Sustainability: The economy is collapsing, with millions food insecure. Conflict scars the land, from deforested hills to polluted rivers. The future is being stolen from generations not even yet born.
• No Cooperation: Trust is impossible when fear rules. The military’s terror—torture, airstrikes, mass arrests—destroys any chance of Political Friendship. Even in the recent devastating earthquake, military was continuing bombing civilians. Communities, under pressure, struggle to unite, though many resist bravely, but still far away from success. The international community is not helping effectively.

The numbers tell a grim story. 2.5 to 3 million people displaced, millions hungry, countless lives lost or caged. But beyond the statistics is a deeper loss. It is the loss of hope that Myanmar could be a place where all its people matter. The military is even frankly bombing schools, hospitals, markets and places of worship. The military’s actions are not just a failure to pursue the Common Good; they are an attack on its very possibility. Every bomb dropped, every voice silenced, is a choice to prioritize power over people, division over trust.

Remember Myanmar is not a normative state that is accountable. The military has never listened to anyone and never empathized minorities in good faith. The central problem lies in its narrative of guardian ruler of the Nation State - the institutional narcissism and grandiosity.

What makes Myanmar’s tragedy so severe is not just this active destruction but the long, stubborn refusal to commit to the Common Good in the first place. For decades, the military could have chosen dialogue, federalism, or justice. It could have built schools instead of barracks, listened to ethnic voices instead of suppressing them. Even after 2011, it (and statist politicians) could have embraced democracy’s fragile promise. Instead, it chose control, sowing seeds of distrust that now bear bitter fruit. This lack of commitment—rooted in a refusal to see all Myanmar’s people as equally worthy—has left a nation not just divided, but broken.

Yet, even in this darkness, there are communities of resistance. Across Myanmar, ordinary people, like students, farmers, monks, ethnic fighters, defy the military, forming local councils, sharing food, protecting each other. These acts, small as they seem, echo the Common Good’s spirit: a belief that no one should be left behind. They remind us that the Common Good is not dead in Myanmar, only buried alive, waiting for a time when trust can grow again.

The Common Good is not a grand solution or a perfect utopia. It’s a humble invitation—to remember that our lives are woven together, that our joys and sorrows are shared. In a world that celebrates individual triumphs, it asks us to pause and consider what we owe each other. Myanmar’s pain shows us the cost of forgetting this: a society torn apart, a future dimmed. But the Common Good also offers hope. It reminds us that we can choose differently—to build trust, to share fairly, to listen to every voice. It’s a project we undertake together, not with certainty, but with care. Perhaps, we can build a future with a commitment to live not just for ourselves, but for each other.