Human beings are inherently social. Millennia of evidence show that people improve their lives through various forms of social organization (societies). Therefore, individual, group, and community thriving is intrinsically connected to the advancement of society. Guided by the theory of the common good, this chapter defines the characteristics of a thriving society through the fundamental contribution of fairness, worthiness, and wellness. In terms of fairness, thriving societies require an equitable distribution of benefits and responsibilities (distributive fairness), transparent procedures and active participation (procedural fairness), and a system that both punishes wrongdoings and rewards honorary behaviors (reciprocal fairness). Regarding social worthiness, a thriving society embraces inclusion and diversity, promotes active citizenship, and recognizes the contribution of those who contribute towards societal betterment. Lastly, social wellness emphasizes that a society must prioritize the holistic well-being of all members. Finally, we argue that the synergistic contribution of fairness, worthiness, and wellness can transform societies into places where everyone can thrive.

This chapter traces the development of the essay in the context of a world of early eighteenth-century sociability constituted by coffee shops, periodicals, and a variety of informal clubs and societies. Never simply a reflection of a prior social reality, the periodical essay developed as part of a self-consciously created mythos of ‘polite literature’ designed to regulate manners in the inchoate and often contentious social world from which it represented itself as emerging. In the skilful hands of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, among others, the polite essay shaped values of agreeableness, conversability, and formal equality that helped define a remarkably durable idea of polite literary culture still in play – if increasingly represented as passing away – for essayists like William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt writing a century later.

What of the choice of books from past generations? How should one choose? How far was a classical education a help? What about those who had no such education? For the top of the bibliophilic range there was considerable guidance on the kinds of books that had become established as those most desirable in a major private library where sufficient money was available. From the 1860s onwards there appeared a new kind of guidance, for people with less money and with different interests, including modern literature.

Here we consider various examples of legal and regulatory responses to avoidable adverse medication events. There are a wide range of poorly interlinked regulatory processes, regardless of the country examined. Some approaches are proactive while others are reactive, serving mostly to provide compensation or to punish those felt responsible. Regulation can assist in promoting medication safety through influence and through compulsion, but what is really required is the whole-hearted engagement of everyone in the organization in the mission of achieving safe, high quality patient care. This goal will require both physician efforts, through professionalism and self regulation, and those of hospital boards of directors, through setting priorities and driving a just culture. While there is a role for the civil law (compensation for injured and in some degree of declarative retribution), litigation is likely to most effective when it is directed against institutions. The best approaches are based on “full disclosure and rapid compensation” practices. Criminal action in the regulation of safe medication practices in the perioperative period should be reserved for when recklessness is involved or where deliberate malfeasance is a factor.