Making a difference

Had a kid request this Cranberries song, the other day. An era when songs like this one really did make a difference in the world.



This kid's going through a serious Cranberries phase, right now. Can't tell you how much that touches me given how much I loved the Cranberries growing up. Songs like this one and U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday helped create the political climate necessary to end the violence in Northern Ireland. And it moves me, a lot, actually, that a kid at a school for kids not terribly moved by much, except for their own egos, too often, was moved by Dolores and her motley crew on this song and all of their gorgeous music.

And after a long conversation with this kid, I felt like maybe I was making a difference in this job that I haven't felt in quite awhile, actually.

Maybe I am the sum of more than just all my mistakes. Which have been plentiful in my life. And felt mighty weighty this semester.

Perhaps I have something to offer. Perhaps he does. Perhaps we all do.

We shall see.

Maybe we really can do better

How refreshing. Journalism that is moving and big-hearted, rather than petty and small-minded.

Chris Henry, dead at 26, could have been a role model

Be a downright shame, wouldn't it, if everyone aspired to be bigger, like this? World just be a damned mess of violence and mean-spiritedness, pettiness, and narrow-mindedness, and general hard-heartedness if everyone was this soft and compassionate. This decent.

It's a good thing that this generation has finally transcended humanity's long history of indecency and inhumanity. And finally put the compassionate amongst us in their place.

Because the last thing we need is more kids like Chris Henry, and everyone else, for that matter, when we're honest, turning things around. No matter what the cynics, including ourselves, when that's the case, have to say on the matter.

The most important question history offers

When all is said and done, the problem with most of human history is pretty straightforward.

A lot of petty, small-minded people having a hard time facing honestly that it is their smallness and pettiness that has so unhaltingly torn down so many of even their own best intentions. Not to mention their own straightforward self-interest. And, most importantly, everyone else around them.

There is a reason why we study enlightened self-interest in history classes. Looking after others' interests does tend to do good for the person doing the helping as much as for the person being helped.

And much of human history is watching folks who have not figured that out fucking things up for everyone else, including themselves.

And for much of human history that means us, as much as anyone else.

Am I one of those people? Are you?

The most important questions history has to offer that I know of.