Suffering - Relief and Prevention in Society

Relief and Prevention in Society

Since suffering is such a universal motivating experience, people, when asked, can relate their activities to its relief and prevention. Farmers, for instance, may claim that they prevent famine, artists may say that they take our minds off our worries, and teachers may hold that they hand down tools for coping with life hazards. In certain aspects of collective life, however, suffering is more readily an explicit concern by itself. Such aspects may include public health, human rights, humanitarian aid, disaster relief, philanthropy, economic aid, social services, insurance, and animal welfare. To these can be added the aspects of security and safety, which relate to precautionary measures taken by individuals or families, to interventions by the military, the police, the firefighters, and to notions or fields like social security, environmental security, and human security.

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Famous quotes containing the words relief and, relief, prevention and/or society:

    When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty.
    Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)

    Just across the Green from the post office is the county jail, seldom occupied except by some backwoodsman who has been intemperate; the courthouse is under the same roof. The dog warden usually basks in the sunlight near the harness store or the post office, his golden badge polished bright.
    —Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    ... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
    Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)

    The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
    —E.M. (Edward Morgan)