Let’s get on with it
After watching Barack Obama’s farewell speech, I can’t help but feel compelled to do something, or say something, that responds to his challenge not only to improve but embolden globalised democracy.
Egalitarian opportunity for education, healthcare and social support should be fundamental to our progress. Accepting personal and corporate responsibility and embracing some sense of community are essential to our advancement:
Democracy does not require uniformity…it does require a basic sense of solidarity.
We are part of something bigger than ourselves, and while part of it, we must take the rough with the smooth, enjoying — or even revelling — in the good, while also acknowledging the bad. I don’t know whether I really believe we will ever have more good moments than bad ones, but we can at least work to make the good better, and to make the bad less worse.
The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.
So too virtue, prosperity and compassion.
We can’t let nervousness about how others might judge getting involved impede us. Challenging those others is the bedrock of getting involved. If you care, if you feel, you must believe in your ability to work with others to invent our collective futures.
Trust in institutions, confidence in arbiters of fact and a general belief in the idea that truth isn’t always relative must be restored. We have to stop talking past one another if we are truly to effect change, and with every decisive step outside the common ground we risk that. We must still be firm in our convictions and true to our values — injustice and inequality must be resisted just as diversity and creativity must be celebrated — but to err on the side of compromise is not to be weak, it is to recognise that reform is the result of incrementalism.
Reality will never fall in line with the advancing curve of social progress; it will always oscillate either side of it. But it will nevertheless move forward, and we must be active in effecting the change we want, rather than accepting the change that is imposed on us.
To be honest, much of this is really just repeating what Obama said. So, hiding nothing, here’s another quote:
[We must] accept the responsibility of citizenship regardless of which way the pendulum of power happens to be swinging.
When this responsibility is visibly embraced, others are inspired to embrace it too. (I wouldn’t be writing this now if I hadn’t just watched Obama’s speech.) We have to act on those late-night moments of motivation and inspiration, in order to show that if others do the same, they’ll be accepted and encouraged for having done so.
We can overcome anxiety about getting involved by getting involved, ensuring that we are not shaken by the duty of society but encouraged by it. We have to read; we have to engage. There is good, and anyone can be part of it, but we must start.
(The only realistic follow up to this is probably something with the title ‘How do we get on with it?’ Comparatively, words are easy. Even if they serve one end here — of encouraging participation — we still have to do the participating bit.)
