As citizens of the world we have a duty to live in accordance with nature. However our obligations must be prioritized. We must focus first on ourselves but not for selfish reasons, we will be unable to be of assistance to those to whom we are obligated if we can’t be friends to ourselves. We must then take care of our parents and to our country because we will have the greatest debt to them. Next we must focus on our children and anybody else who relies on us directly because without us their needs are on able to be met. Next we must focus on those to whom we have a personal relationship Only after these three obligations are met are we able to direct our attention elsewhere. Ideally we will be able to help everybody we come across however we are limited by the resources we have, both literal and in terms of our mental capacity. Careful management of our resources is a requirement in terms of focusing on ourselves and thus the entire process is cyclical.
New England Stoics 