To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future.
The future is an infinite succession of present, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future.
The future is an infinite succession of present, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
- Howard Zinn -
Howard Zinn
You can't be neutral on a moving train
Beacon Press, 1994
Howard Zinn
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
City Lights, 2007
citato in
Occupy
Noam Chomsky
Penguin Books, 2007
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