One of the blogs I read pretty regularly is Dave Pollard’s How to Save the World. Occasionally, something he writes strikes a particularly resonant chord with me — like his February 4th gem A Miniature Truth: Becoming Authentically Yourself.
I’ll admit, some of these things I’ve thought and compiled myself over the years. But to see these 9 ideas strung together, in fact, dependent on each other in such a way that in order to accept one as truth, you really have to accept them all, for better or worse, in order to truly understand the implications of each, is a step I’d never taken until reading Dave’s post. In summary, these truths are:
1. We do what we must, then we do what’s easy, then we do what’s fun.
2. Things are the way they are for a reason; if you have any hope to change something, first understand what the reason is.
3. Life’s meaning, and an understanding of what needs to be done, emerges, most often, from conversation in community with people you love.
4. Community is born of necessity.
5. To get people to change, first Let Yourself Change, to become a model that shows people personally, one-to-one, a better way to live.
6. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
7. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
8. To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
9. Our civilization is in its final century.
For more detail, please refer to Dave’s blog 🙂
