Est. 1985
A script that generates latin phrases

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043 – A Better World

Hello, children! It’s getting cold here in Sweden so I thought I’d settle in for winter with something warm and a nice, easy question.  Benjamin Goldstein: How do we make the world a better place? Dad downs his cup of tea in one gulp, seeking strength. Well, here we go. Episode forty-three: A better world. A little peek behind the curtain: I’ve had a draft written for this comic for probably close to two years. It’s a huge, tricky subject that I can’t really answer in anything less than an 800 page dissertation. No matter what I wrote, I was never really satisfied with the answer. The world is huge, the problems insurmountable, our individual circumstances impossible to summarize. I'm just a little guy. But I'm going to do my best. Let’s establish something first: We are nothing without each other. All of us. Globally, across cultures. We are one people. The time, resources and lives we waste needlessly pretending that there’s anything fundamentally different between one person and the next is stopping us from progress. Not even progress: survival. We cannot survive if we keep thinking that we’re different from each other in ways that matter. Which brings me to my second point. Terry Pratchett wrote that sin is when you treat people as things. That’s where all crimes start. When lives and safety is put on a scale against profit, or comfort. When some people aren’t seen as people anymore, but animals. Objects. This is the core of it, for me. In order for us - all of us - to make the world a better place we need to build an iron clad conviction. People are not things. We are not different from each other in ways that matter. And when we center that in our world view, it becomes much easier to make good choices. To turn it into something practical and actually helpful. Protecting and preserving nature is in our best interests. We are not aliens separate from this world, we are part of it. We have to make better choices. What those choices are depends on your situation. It can be small, like putting out water for insects or big, like organising a river clean up, running for office, becoming a marine biologist. Helping those less fortunate than you helps all of us. It’s so basic, it’s what they teach in kindergarten and yet, somehow, people seem to forget. You can do something small, like standing up to bullies or something big, like volunteering at a homeless shelter or becoming a doctor. A word of caution! Helping people does not mean controlling them! We can’t do this work only to invent patriarchal superiority structures again! If the way someone lives their life doesn’t negatively affect other people in a way that matters, let them live their life. No one is hurt by a transperson existing, or a woman willingly wearing a hijab. There are big, societal changes that needed to happen long ago that can feel... impossible. But we can do something about that too. Politicians are public servants. If they don’t serve the public, they need to be fired immediately. If enough of us speak up when someone isn’t doing their job, maybe they won’t have it. Billionaires should be retroactively taxed so hard they wither into a fine dust like the obsolete crypt keepers they are. If enough of us push for change in legislation, maybe that can happen. And even if it feels hopeless, even if it feels like you’re not making a difference... it matters. I heard a story once about a man who stood every day outside the White House with a lit candle, in silent protest against the Vietnam War. Someone asked if he thought that would really change anything. “No” he said. “I’m not doing this to change them.” “I’m doing this so they won’t change me.”  Don’t let them change you. Find your iron clad conviction and steel yourself. Find the things you’re not willing to accept and never accept them. Even if you can't change them right away. Be kind, not nice. Do something, anything even if it’s just picking litter off the street. You’re just a little guy, doing your best. Like all of us. So what are you going to do? What are you doing already? Tell me in the comments, even the small things that doesn’t seem like much. All of it matters. You matters. In the words of award winning novelist Chuck Tingle: you are proof that love is real.  See you next time, kiddos! I love you!