Look Around

Do you like what you see?

Photo by Justin Bautista on Unsplash

How are your roads? Well paved or pot holes?

How about trash?

How about homeless people?

Drugs? Trafficked women and children? The value of the dollar? The cost of necessities?

I found this interesting quote by the Greek philosopher Plato.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

Note that he didn’t say politicians.

I think we are finding that a republic, which is the representative form of government we in the USA have, is as good or corrupt, not as its politicians, but as its people are. That would include me.

It is our job to hold the politicians accountable. And we are finding this isn’t easy, especially when we come so late to the games being played.

If my city is doing poorly — which is the part of the society that I physically see and walk in, then there is something wrong in me. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but then I can’t swallow pills for anyone else, at least not safely.

For the most part and for the most people, the sin is one of omission more than commission. This means that my problem has more to do with complacency than complicity. I am willing to accept a level of mess in myself and justify it by noting that at least I’m not as bad as someone else, not realizing that this is proof that I am as bad as it gets. It is the willfully blind that are the biggest problem. Things mostly don’t change because most people don’t really care.

Now we can always say that it is impossible to fix everything and I agree. But it is very doable to struggle internally in order to find a few challenging tasks to take on, like cleaning my room.