Doing the Right Thing

Gloria Steinem gave us a great quote:

“Whenever one person stands up and says, ‘Wait a minute”,

 it helps other people to do the same.”

It takes some nerve to speak up at any time in a group. Some people do this easily. Others do so rarely and then with great trepidation. With practice it gets easier. Even some of us shy types can get over the hurdle of speaking to other people, even groups. Large groups remain a problem most likely; still there is a beginning of doing the right thing.

If you and I don’t have the guts to speak up or the power of our own convictions, then bad things can and do happen. Think Germany in the 1930’s and Hitler scapegoating the Jews. And the Holocaust followed.

Too few said no to the Viet Nam war and one of the costliest, deadliest and longest wars ensued. Who was right? Who was wrong? The issue is very clouded emotionally because upwards of 55,000 Americans were killed in that debacle; and 200,000 more were maimed, crippled and emotional destroyed by the war on top of it. And that’s just the American side of the equation! A terrible price for speaking up late or not at all.

I suspect most people when asked would define America as a place of caring and nurture. Why then do we label women seeking an abortion as murderers? Why do we allow the minimum wage to remain so low as to hobble new generations of poor people? Why do we allow higher education costs to exclude tens of millions of Americans from seeking a greater contribution to our society? How many of them have workable solutions to energy problems, pollution of our air and soil, an answer to child autism, a cure for cancer? How many ills do we suffer through that could be properly addressed if we allowed every person to rise to their highest level of competence?

No. I see a stingy America. An America who decries spending any dollars to help others in poor nations, or poor people in our own back yard. Foreign aid from America is at the lowest percent of Gross National Product in generations. And it continues to shrink. Other nations go far beyond American standards in lending a hand to cultures in trouble. 

At current rates America will be the recipient of aid from other countries to help with our high birth death rate, our creeping poverty, and expanding illiteracy. Just imagine that!

The following anonymous quote came from the internet the other day:

“We’re blaming ‘society’, yet we are society. So to make it a better place, we must change ourselves first.”

I was at a family gathering over the Labor Day weekend and we were discussing the housing crisis and the plight of many elderly citizens in finding sustainable lifestyles in the America of 2013.

Some people, old and young alike, claimed this was a problem of society and not much was able to be done.  I said, ‘hold it; we are society; we helped create this situation and we can help solve it. Doing nothing and allowing the problems to arise is still our responsibility. What kind of society do we want?”

They all said I was too altruistic. Hmmmmrph! I do not agree!

If I’m not willing to get involved I cannot expect others to get involved. But I am involved! I do expect them to get involved. If they don’t I think they have no voice or vote in the solutions.

Remember this quote: “The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.”  ~Author Unknown

I think this quote, again anonymous, and again from the internet provides a strong message:

            “At the end of the day, the only questions I will ask myself are…

             Did I love enough?  Did I laugh enough? Did I make a difference?”

If we are all being honest with ourselves, I wonder how truthful we can answer those simple questions? And if we can make a change in our lives to provide better answers.

As George Orwell so succinctly stated it:

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that  speak it.”

So when do we start doing the right thing?  All of us?

September 12, 2013