Nursing, though not generally the ruling force of this type of planning, certainly is involved in control measures analogous to Plato's. Nurses do influence who gets the hospital bed and who does not, who gets the specialized treatment and equipment, who is discharged and when, and what goes into the education and planning for post-hospital health care. Also, how do our biases influence our teaching regarding family? Innuendoes are frequent in the areas of birth control, abortion, and family size. So nurses can make a difference regarding community thought, purpose, and action.
Nietzsche put forth a concept of community of a more indefinite nature than Plato's.[12] Two major themes dominated the nature of community in his conception: (1) the legitimate purpose of community was the total support of its elite men and (2) the criterion for determining the elite was to be based on those who selected their own values with a "will" to say, "yes" to life. He referred to his elite as supermen. He questioned the realization of such a community because of the preponderance of conforming nonquestioning mediocre men. This complacent majority fearful of the different or strange would subdue the possibility of his supermen. Nietzsche did not seem to trust man; he spoke of him as "human, all too human." Unlike Plato, Nietzsche viewed "good" and "evil" as arising from a common source. Man in his humanness, Nietzsche felt, denied his animal heritage and animal qualities. Recognition of these, of one's Dionysian nature, as a source of both "good" and "evil" was necessary for becoming superman.
To me it is wondrous to ponder my own conscious purposefulness and unconscious purposelessness, my quality of force as a member of the nursing and health communities, viewed through the deep extensive conceptualized thought Nietzsche bequeathed. I offhand consider our communities as egalitarian, part of a larger egalitarian society. Are they really? Does the citizen affect the quality of organizational structure in accordance with his existential needs while in our commonplace--the health-nursing world? Whose values set and direct on this stage of life? Do I, nurse, search out the values on which I want to base my nursing practice? Do I look for direction and values from others? Did I take on values during my initial nursing experience--values never to be reexamined?