A mirror on society...
Oct. 29th, 2008 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azekeilSo my intervention the other night inspired some reflection. This actually happened on Saturday night but I haven't got around to posting about it until now due to illness.
My intervention the other night made me question a lot of my motives and morals. I surprised myself in that I was willing to put myself at some personal risk for some strangers, and it lead me to question how I judged the risk and why I chose to act.
While how I judged the risk is an interesting subject, it's not what I want to talk about. Let's assume there was a level of risk which certainly not everyone would feel comfortable taking. What I found myself more interested in answering was why did I feel I should take the risk?
When I was younger I found myself unable to justify taking the risk. What would it achieve for me? Essentially I had a fairly selfish outlook. So presumably this must have changed somewhat, and it became apparent to me that various factors have influenced my morals: being at least partially responsible for children, my recent role change to team leader... possibly growing older...?
At any rate, I realised that I was more interested in 'the common good', more specifically in terms of the world I'd like to live in. Politics is too detached. I still don't feel much connection between politicians, policy and their effects on the world. What I mean by that is that I don't see enough choice and I see too much complexity and too much inefficacy to bother with pretty much the whole world of politics. I don't believe in individual contribution to change global problems. This all still holds true now. I'd be interested if someone can convince me otherwise; I just don't think situations which require the majority of people to think/act in a certain way are ever likely to be successful.
So what did inspire me to act? Well, all my life changes have been in terms of relatively simple actions - what does motivate me is seeing cause and effect. Touching something and seeing it change as a result. This is what motivates me in terms of bringing up the children. In my team lead role at work. In my relationships. In intervening on the incident on Saturday.
In the end, I guess it was because it felt like the right thing to do (and not acting when the situation was right in front of me seemed inexcusable), because the level of risk was somehow acceptable, because it made the world more like the sort of place I wanted to live in.
None of this means I want to take my desire to make things better any further, however. I think being a politician is a thankless task. I prefer to work at the smaller end of the scale, at least for now :)
My intervention the other night made me question a lot of my motives and morals. I surprised myself in that I was willing to put myself at some personal risk for some strangers, and it lead me to question how I judged the risk and why I chose to act.
While how I judged the risk is an interesting subject, it's not what I want to talk about. Let's assume there was a level of risk which certainly not everyone would feel comfortable taking. What I found myself more interested in answering was why did I feel I should take the risk?
When I was younger I found myself unable to justify taking the risk. What would it achieve for me? Essentially I had a fairly selfish outlook. So presumably this must have changed somewhat, and it became apparent to me that various factors have influenced my morals: being at least partially responsible for children, my recent role change to team leader... possibly growing older...?
At any rate, I realised that I was more interested in 'the common good', more specifically in terms of the world I'd like to live in. Politics is too detached. I still don't feel much connection between politicians, policy and their effects on the world. What I mean by that is that I don't see enough choice and I see too much complexity and too much inefficacy to bother with pretty much the whole world of politics. I don't believe in individual contribution to change global problems. This all still holds true now. I'd be interested if someone can convince me otherwise; I just don't think situations which require the majority of people to think/act in a certain way are ever likely to be successful.
So what did inspire me to act? Well, all my life changes have been in terms of relatively simple actions - what does motivate me is seeing cause and effect. Touching something and seeing it change as a result. This is what motivates me in terms of bringing up the children. In my team lead role at work. In my relationships. In intervening on the incident on Saturday.
In the end, I guess it was because it felt like the right thing to do (and not acting when the situation was right in front of me seemed inexcusable), because the level of risk was somehow acceptable, because it made the world more like the sort of place I wanted to live in.
None of this means I want to take my desire to make things better any further, however. I think being a politician is a thankless task. I prefer to work at the smaller end of the scale, at least for now :)
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Date: 2008-10-30 09:02 am (UTC)To be honest, if adults weren't so scared of teenagers and rough children - if more people had the confidence to intervene and say "no" to them - our society would feel a lot safer. Although it still can be dangerous, the majority of kids and teenagers aren't that bad, but left to their own devices things escalate. I am sure no teenager really wants to be responsible for maiming somebody else and the punishments that go along with it, they need people to help them arbitrate and set limits the same way children at home do.
It's a pity that things are escalating to the point where nobody feels happy stepping in in case they get knifed. If people were always stepping in then people would be a lot more aware of their actions and they wouldn't be having fights in the street in the first place - they'd wait till they got home and hopefully have cooled off a bit.
You're right - it is up to us, as adults (and its only recently I have thought of myself as an adult) to start making our bits of the world more like the sort of place we want to live in by stepping up and offering assistance when possible. It is just so hard to judge when your assistance will be beneficial and when it'll make things worse - I think that is the hardest bit. But every little helps!