#tikkun olam
An Orthodox Jew Who Increases Kindness in the World
When Rabbi Daniel Cohen was twenty-one years old, his mother (who was forty-four at the time) died suddenly of an aneurysm. Losing a parent unexpectedly at such a young age profoundly affected him. “We were speaking on the phone one day, then she was gone the next,” Rabbi Cohen recalls. His mother had taught him the art of gratitude; his father implored him from a young age to search for his personal mission in life, but despite already being a deep thinker, this tragedy added a sense of urgency to his existence. He didn’t want to waste a moment when it came to improving himself and making the world a better place.
Read more: http://jewinthecity.com/2015/01/an-orthodox-jew-who-increases-kindness-in-the-world/#ixzz3OHc4xjC7
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“‘What will it matter in 100 years time?’
‘It matters now.’”
~Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
“Here and now, we are alive”
-Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
“We are here, and this is now… Vimes understood it to mean, in less exalted copper speak, that you have to do the job that is in front of you.”
~ Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
I know people will make fun of me for saying things like planting a tree will do anything to help with climate change but don’t y'all understand that the more habitable and helpful to life your corner of the world is, the more people will be able to do to help the rest of humankind?
literally 70% of it is just breaking out of your learned helplessness
Learned helplessness is half of it, but I think the other half is a black-and-white perfectionism which insists that absolute flawless 100% success is the only thing worth trying for, and anything less is utter failure. So if you can’t personally fix it completely, there’s no point in doing anything. And any political measure that might make things less bad is worthless.
I think it has to do with the stories our culture tells. The world is in danger and will be destroyed! The peril is huge and awesome! There is One Chosen Hero, Captain America or Luke Skywalker or Tony Stark or Harry Potter, and it is up to them to Save The Day! There is one decisive Battle Between Good And Evil, and Evil is Defeated and just like that, everything is puppies and rainbows and unicorns and ice cream.
Except it doesn’t work like that. Large positive change happens gradually, with people getting together and doing what they can to move things in the direction they want. We talk about the big heroes and pivotal moments, but we don’t talk about the bulk of the work that actually got done. We talk about Roe v. Wade, but we don’t talk about the groups of women across the country who worked for safe abortion access and birth control access for decades leading up to that, setting the stage that made it possible. We talk about Martin Luther King Jr., but sort of gloss over the myriad of Black people of all genders who had been fighting for their rights and dignity in large and small ways for centuries and had been making gargantuan efforts in the decades leading up to and during the Civil Rights movement. Without them, Dr. King would not have been able to do anything.
I was talking with someone awhile back, about a politician local to them who had been elected partly because they promised to reduce the number of people sent to jail. And they did! They changed some things about the way the system worked, and dropped the number of people detained in jail before trial by something like half. Thousands of people who would have ended up in jail did not. And the person I was talking to said it was pointless because jails should be completely abolished. And they couldn’t see that there was any value to reducing the number of people in jail if you couldn’t or wouldn’t abolish jail completely. But for the thousands of people who would have been imprisoned and had their lives destroyed, that change was the difference between life and death. And yes, we should work toward abolishing the carceral justice system … but the ultimate goal shouldn’t prevent you from doing what good you can do now.
The idea that One Great Battle–or One Great Election, or One Great Politician, or One Great Activist–will save the world is nonsense. Which could be depressing, because wouldn’t it be nice if we could just do that one thing and then never have to worry again?
But it’s also freeing and a relief, because it means that you and I don’t have to be Harry Potter or Captain America or Katniss Everdeen. We don’t have to be the Chosen Hero Who Will Save The World. We just have to do our part to make our corner of it a little bit better.
Can you single-handedly save all the bees? No, but you can plant local plants in your garden or in pots outside your front door, and that will help the bees in your area. There’s a lot you can do that won’t Save The Planet, but will make your little corner of it a little healthier. And that’s worth doing.
Listen, most of the big issues are from corporations, so technically does me recycling that container save the world? No!
But does it take drops to make an ocean? Yes!
