Greetings,
I noticed something interesting about our newsletter stories this month. Our three Feature articles involved a conference about Oregonians coming together to fight Climate Change, our program to offer shop discounts to encourage people to buy carbon offsets, and a blues concert supporting single payer healthcare. When I thought about these, they all seemed to be wastes of time. Look at it this way…
Climate change is a global problem, something to be solved by the global community. Isn’t it arrogant for a state to think it could make a difference? Those carbon offsets won’t cure global warming, and the contribution of anyone who joins the program will be insignificant. Why bother? Or on the Blues show, is one more voice shouting “Single Payer!” going to tip the balance in Congress? No. All these are wastes of time, and just like voting, our contributions will get lost. Why bother?
Because these and many other issues represent the “right thing to do”. Given a civilization-ending problem, the right thing to do is fight against it. If you’re polluting the environment (and we all are), the right thing to do is to clean up after yourself. If you believe people should be able to access healthcare, then the right thing to do is to stand up and be counted for it (at least!). If you believe in government by the people to build a functional society, then the right thing to do is cast an educated vote for the policies you think will get us there. No matter what anyone else does.
Those acts may not change the world; in fact, they almost certainly won’t. There’s no penalty for not acting, at least not personally or immediately. No one is going to arrest anyone for not standing up for a cause, the effects of climate change will be most strongly felt by our children and grandchildren, and single payer may not matter to you until you personally are faced with medical bankruptcy. Moreover, there are people out there who think ‘the right thing’ is something entirely different than you do. They won’t like what you do.
The common denominator on all these issues is diffusion of responsibility. No one sees their responsibility in the problem, they don’t see their ability to make a change, and the responsibility is passed to the ‘other guy’. And the downside, be it inconvenience or danger, is very personal.
If we are to make the world a better place, we can’t succumb to the diffusion of responsibility. We aren’t, and can’t be, responsible for the people next to us, or the people next to them, but we can only be responsible for ourselves, and our actions. We can see the issues we care about and see our own ‘right’ way to respond. We can’t always act without constraint, but we often can and that’s when taking personal responsibility matters. Don’t do the right thing because a politician, minister, family member, or god forbid, an auto mechanic says it’s the right thing. Decide for yourself and take whatever action you can, whenever you can. Not because you SHOULD… do it because you CAN, and because there’s an awful lot of people pushing the other way.
Make a great day,
