![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillI've been staying at my Dad's house over the holidays. This exposes me to reading material I wouldn't ordinarily see, like the Wall Street Journal. Reading the Wall Street Journal is a valuable reminder of why I generally don't. For example there is this piece by David Horowitz.
The part that caught my eye was this:
"My life experience had led me to conclude that not only was changing the world an impossible dream,..."
Changing the world is an impossible dream. This is apparently so well accepted by his conservative audience he doesn't even need to mention why he thinks so, he just tosses it off on the way to something else.
Changing the world is an impossible dream.
Thomas Jefferson, Fredrick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King will be devastated to hear that. John Snow, Louis Pasteur, Edwin Chadwick and Margaret Sanger will grieve over their wasted lives. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase; John Dalton and Antoine Lavoisier; Wilhelm Rontgen and Marie Curie, have not advanced human understanding one iota. Henry Ford, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and Bill Gates have not changed one single thing about the world we live in.
Except, there was a time, not that long ago, actually, when slavery was an accepted fact, women were effectively owned by their male relatives, more than half of all people died before they turned ten, and nobody had the faintest idea why the sun came back in the morning.
Changing the world is not just possible; changing the world is inevitable.
The part that caught my eye was this:
"My life experience had led me to conclude that not only was changing the world an impossible dream,..."
Changing the world is an impossible dream. This is apparently so well accepted by his conservative audience he doesn't even need to mention why he thinks so, he just tosses it off on the way to something else.
Changing the world is an impossible dream.
Thomas Jefferson, Fredrick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King will be devastated to hear that. John Snow, Louis Pasteur, Edwin Chadwick and Margaret Sanger will grieve over their wasted lives. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase; John Dalton and Antoine Lavoisier; Wilhelm Rontgen and Marie Curie, have not advanced human understanding one iota. Henry Ford, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and Bill Gates have not changed one single thing about the world we live in.
Except, there was a time, not that long ago, actually, when slavery was an accepted fact, women were effectively owned by their male relatives, more than half of all people died before they turned ten, and nobody had the faintest idea why the sun came back in the morning.
Changing the world is not just possible; changing the world is inevitable.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-30 02:34 pm (UTC)We are all changing the future every day - we might as well describe our dream and try to change the world towards that dream instead of aimlessly or hopelessly.
The main work I do is helping communities and community benefit organizations realize that, articulate their desired world, and plan to change the current conditions so that world can be achieved. We must believe that it is possible, or we will prove it isn't. This is also a major topic of conversation among my peers. Check out today's blog at http://hildygottlieb.com/; I am part of this community.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-30 05:15 pm (UTC)We are all changing the future every day - we might as well describe our dream and try to change the world towards that dream instead of aimlessly or hopelessly.
Well put. We can't help but change the world, so it might be a good idea to keep an eye on what we are doing, and change it deliberately for the better instead of incidentally for whatever results from doing the most convenient thing.
Like the difference between driving a bulldozer, and driving a bulldozer blindfolded.