"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof."
__Barbara Kingsolver
None of them were talking to me, but Mechaieh and M'ris and LA have all got me thinking (yeah, again) about hope and despair and what I need to do for my world, and I need to link some of it together. (And while I'm linking, I stole the quote above from Squirrelx.) For a while in college I wore a lot of message buttons on my backpack. I had one that sid, "Wearing buttons isn't enough". I didn't wear that one; my sense of irony wouldn't let me as almost all I did do for any cause I believed in was to wear buttons. (And vote.) These days I vote, and I contribute a little money, but what I mostly do is talk. So in a way I'm still just wearing buttons but really I think of it as more like witnessing.
I'm not saying that my writing here or talking to people in the office is in any way comparable to those who put in hours and sweat and sometimes blood for the things they believe in but it's what I have time and energy to do. I may be naive, but I really honestly truly believe that what I say might make a difference. I've worked in groups where I was the only Jew or the only woman or the only person who did this or believed in that, and I treasure a small hope that maybe somewhere out there are people who have thought, "Well, I always thought all Jews hated all Christians, but I've talked to Dichroic and she's not like that," or "I hear about people who run marathons but I never knew any everyday adults who still did competitive sports but Dichroic does; maybe instead of just dropping my kids off at Little League I could find something active we can do together". Or maybe even, "I always thought pro-choice types were horrible people who approved of killing babies and I still don't agree withthem, but Dichroic made me see that even those people think abortions should be avoided where possible. Maybe we could all get together and work on the things we agree on, like giving thirteen-year-olds enough support so they don't get pregnant just to have someone who loves them." That's what I can do right now and so that's what I do do.
It's not much, but I believe every drops helps. The times when I've had a real influence on people always turn out to be the times I wasn't expecting it, and I suspect the people who have influenced me weren't expecting that either. I am certainly a cockeyed optimist, but for me at least that's a far easier way to live.
The other thing that keeps me hopeful is a good knowledge of history. We take freedoms for granted now that were not part of our Founding Fathers' vision. (For one thing, they don't call them "Fathers", as opposed to Parents, for nothing.) They were working on from a background in which "liberty and freedom" meant things like the Magna Carta, in which powerful barons got some power into their own hands instead of the king having it all, or the Scots' fight for freedom which meant having their own king instead of an English one -- but still answering to a king. ("Wha, for Scotland's king and law / Freedom's sword will strongly draw...") They assumed the rich and educated would tell the rest of the people what to do, which is why only landowners had the vote at first. I read once that the story of the United States can be read as a story of liberty, in the object of the franchise, being extended to broader and broader groups: landowners, all white men, black men, women. And of course it hasn't been as linear as that implies; there were the grandfather laws in Jim Crow days and there are still cases where people are harassed at the polls. I heard an account of that just the other day. Poor mill workers were abused a hundred years ago as poor fruit pickers and maquilladora workers are today - there's still a long road to go. But if it's been two steps forward and one back, it has still been progress. That the story isn't over yet doesn't mean it's not a good story.
Robert Heinlein traveled around the world in the days of the McCarthy trials. He had people from other countries coming up to him to sympathize about the loss of the vaunted American freedoms during the Communist witch-hunts. But as he pointed out, those people just didn't get it. The McCarthy hearings affected a relatively (in contrast to the population size) small group of people. And they were reported in the news (at least in broad outline) for the whole world to see - very different from places where everyone lives in fear of being snatched away and "disappeared". The thing that scares me most by far about our current mess is that people are being held in secret and not allowed to make any phone calls. If we don't know what's going on we don't know how bad it is or what we need to do. But enough people have been held and released to tell us that there is a problem and I feel a bit better every time I head a story calling for accountability.
I am not trying to minimize the current situation; as I've written before, I am appalled at some of what's going on. But a knowledge of history gives me a view into what challenges we have already overcome and gives me a hope that's almost confidence for the future.