In “The Discourse is a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack” @joanwestenberg takes a close look at (yet another!) modern social crisis, ending with some suggestions on ways to respond. I’ll be thinking about those, but the first lines of the last paragraph stood out to me:
This won’t fix the collective problem. But it will fix something in you.
This resonates with me, because it points to a shift in perspective I had years ago, occasioned (maybe) by a Tolstoy quote I came across:
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Not sure why, but on that day it occurred to me: changing the world seems to be almost entirely out of my reach. Those who set out to do it mostly don’t manage it, and the small subset that do run smack into the Law of Unintended Consequences. But changing myself? That seems like a manageable project, a field of operation where I can actually do things, observe their effects, lean into the beneficial ones, backtrack on the damaging ones, deepen my understanding of cause and effect in the world, gradually and diligently align myself with the grain of the universe.
But why do that? It would certainly have personal benefits, my life would steadily improve. But would it have any larger import?
A slightly longer excerpt from Joan’s last paragraph goes like this:
This won’t fix the collective problem. But it will fix something in you. And if enough people do it, we’ll … [emphasis added]
And she goes on to sketch one particular optimistic outcome. Is that what would actually happen? I don’t know. But something will.
I have occasionally seen the power of individual example in action, and it is outsized, far greater that I would have predicted. Plant a person of integrity in the midst of people focused on Number One, and there is sometimes a shift — not uniform, not predictable, not inexorable, but still a shift towards a (somewhat) better situation.
People watch what other people do, and some of those will like what they see, and some of those may be inspired to experiment with doing likewise. Some may experience benefits that encourage them to adopt new habits. Some may experience different than I did, or nothing at all, and decide: not for me. Regardless, I was the occasion for someone else to live differently, at least for a moment, possibly to their benefit.
Not nearly as powerful as becoming Dictator Of The World and proceeding to tell people how things really should be done. But a path available to just about anyone.