Orlando Delogu’s wonderful column, “Ryan’s Health Care Plan: Let them eat cake,” inspired the following (definitions from Wikipedia, Webster’s New World Dictionary, and Power Thesaurus):

Socius: a Latin noun meaning “companion, friend, ally” is used to describe a bond or interaction between parties that are friendly, or at least civil; it has given rise to the word “society.”

There are several English language words that are derived from socius:

Social: having to do with human beings living together as a group and affecting their common welfare;

Socialism: theories or systems of the ownership and operation of production and distribution by society or the community, with all members sharing in the work and products;

Socialize: to adapt to the common needs of a social group;

Socialized medicine: any system supplying complete medical care for all the people in a community or nation;

Social welfare: the welfare of society;

Society: all people, collectively regarded as constituting a community of related, interdependent people;

Socioeconomic: involving both social and economic factors;

Sociological: of or having to do with human society, its organization, needs, and development;

Sociopath: a psychopathic personality whose behavior is aggressively antisocial.

And here are some words that mean the opposite of “society”: Isolation, independence, loneliness, exclusion, expulsion, separation, dissociation, disintegration, division, antagonism, partition, rabble, mob, hate.

There is a continuum above, from one end to another, ending in the opposite of how we live as a society. I wonder which way we Americans are headed – and I wonder what awaits us.

Ted Markow
Brunswick 

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