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m_d_hLong ago I read a book called How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, and one of the author's points was that we waste a lot of time trying to influence collective action when we can often achieve results by acting unilaterally. Oh, it is still in print! From the first chapter of the Kindle sample:
"Hoping to be free, many people engage in continual social combat — joining movements, urging political action, writing letters to editors and Congressmen, trying to educate people. They hope that someday it will all prove to have been worthwhile.
But as the years go by they see little overall change. Small victories are won; defeats set them back. The world seems to continue on its path to wherever its going ... The plans, the movements, the crusades — none of these things has worked ... There must be a better way."
His punch line is that "Freedom is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it." Basically, don't wait for everybody else, just be who you want to be, right now.
In my own life, for example, I didn't wait for gay sex to become legal, I didn't wait for polyamorous relationships to receive state recognition — I went ahead and lived my life. On the other hand, I work as a lawyer for the government, enforcing laws and drafting regulations. The anarchist lawyer, heh.
Many people took up this book as a sort of Libertarian Bible. But it could also be viewed as a Buddhist work, because one teaching of Buddhism is that you can only act within each moment, that all those thoughts bounding around your head about how to improve the universe are merely the product of your Ego ceaselessly babbling to itself about how important it is.
There's also this pop philosopy saying, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
But there's still the basic truth that many of our problems can only be solved via collective action. I cannot solve climate change on my own, absolutely cannot. But as an individual I cannot force collective action, I can only add one to it. Just as with a democratic election — I cannot chose the winner myself, I can only add one vote to a candidate's total, which rarely makes a difference in the outcome, especially with an Electoral College and gerrymandered legislative seats.
Another Buddhist teaching is that we cannot solve all of our problems, eventually we die and everything we love dies and everything we hate dies, and that's that. The next generation will have to figure things out for themselves, and they will fail also. But my Ego refuses to give up, heh.
"Hoping to be free, many people engage in continual social combat — joining movements, urging political action, writing letters to editors and Congressmen, trying to educate people. They hope that someday it will all prove to have been worthwhile.
But as the years go by they see little overall change. Small victories are won; defeats set them back. The world seems to continue on its path to wherever its going ... The plans, the movements, the crusades — none of these things has worked ... There must be a better way."
His punch line is that "Freedom is the opportunity to live your life as you want to live it." Basically, don't wait for everybody else, just be who you want to be, right now.
In my own life, for example, I didn't wait for gay sex to become legal, I didn't wait for polyamorous relationships to receive state recognition — I went ahead and lived my life. On the other hand, I work as a lawyer for the government, enforcing laws and drafting regulations. The anarchist lawyer, heh.
Many people took up this book as a sort of Libertarian Bible. But it could also be viewed as a Buddhist work, because one teaching of Buddhism is that you can only act within each moment, that all those thoughts bounding around your head about how to improve the universe are merely the product of your Ego ceaselessly babbling to itself about how important it is.
There's also this pop philosopy saying, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
But there's still the basic truth that many of our problems can only be solved via collective action. I cannot solve climate change on my own, absolutely cannot. But as an individual I cannot force collective action, I can only add one to it. Just as with a democratic election — I cannot chose the winner myself, I can only add one vote to a candidate's total, which rarely makes a difference in the outcome, especially with an Electoral College and gerrymandered legislative seats.
Another Buddhist teaching is that we cannot solve all of our problems, eventually we die and everything we love dies and everything we hate dies, and that's that. The next generation will have to figure things out for themselves, and they will fail also. But my Ego refuses to give up, heh.