Ethical Dilemmas - Individual versus Community

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, 
the more I will respect myself.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration - Pearl S. Buck

McQuilkin and Copan in their work Biblical Ethics, state that individual decisions are based on self-love. The term self-love can be used to mean, "self-interest" or "self-centeredness". They note John Stott's affirmirmation that "self-love is a fact to be acknowledged, not a goal to be pursued." That we have a natural, God-given, self-interest, to feed, clothe, care for, and to protect ourselves from danger. Gene Ahner points out the dynamics of self-centeredness reflects a pattern of tension involved in the "self versus others"; the "us versus them" mentality. 

You visit your Aunt Sally in the hospital hoping your visit will make her happy, lifting her spirits, helping to speed up her recovery, which, in turn, makes you happy (self-interest); 
versus hoping she will appreciate your visit enough to include you in her will which, in turn, will make you very happy (self-centeredness).

According to Ahner, the community has two moral voices: the moral voice of the community has a whole and the moral voice of the individual.Therefore it involves what you want to do for yourself versus what you should do for others. How then do we form a human community that can embrace both the interests of the individual and community?

In Business Ethics in Biblical Perspective, Michael E. Cafferky poses these two questions:

Can an act be right if it does not simultaneously promote both the interests of the individual and the interest of the larger community?

Can an act be wrong if it promotes the interests of either the individual or the larger community but not both?

How does one deal with a 60-year old employee, who has worked faithfully for the last 42 years, who is unable to grasp the new computer technology required for their job?

You are the managing partner for a contract security firm serving a large corporation. You just lost the contract to a competing firm. In 60 days you and your team must leave, allowing the new security firm to take over. What is the right thing to do as you and your team prepares to exit?

An employee is required to sign a confidentiality agreement stating that if she leaves the company for any reason, voluntarily or termination, she will not join a competitor. What about her rights to make a living versus the company's rights to protect its business for the sake of its current employees?

What's important to keep in mind is the dilemma here is not a choice between understanding the individual in terms of egotism, greed, or selfishness, and understanding the community in terms of altruism or unselfishness. The rights of the individual and the common good of the community can both be legitimate. A dilemma that has no right or wrong answer.