~a column by Colleen O’Brien
This is a question like What’s your favorite pie? Twenty persons, 20 pies.
But, it is a question worth thinking about on a personal level; personal meaning not what “they” are going to do about a moral issue but what I can do. If I can articulate what I think is the Big Question, I’m more likely to look for answers, perhaps work for answers. And if I’m putting the question to myself rather than the amorphous “they,” maybe I’ll at least do some little thing.
The more that people work toward solutions to big questions, the better off we are. It’s the sitting around complaining that adds so little and creates such gloom; discontent without action to get rid of it is itself as bad as — no, it is — one of the problems.
Following is a list of possible Big Questions of social and moral import that I’ve thought about (I really do like many kinds of pie, so I have many questions), plus my thin answers to myself:
- What am I going to do about the rich? I started with this one because I usually start with: What can I do about the poor? Answer? Too big a question, either of them. So, I have to write to my Congress folks to make sure they’re implementing decent regulations for banks and betting on the stock exchange, as well as making sure the least among us get help from those at the top, the social contract that holds the American Dream together.
- What am I doing about climate change? Answer? Among other things, such as recycling, I try to walk to the store rather than drive my 2,000-pound car for a one-pound loaf of bread.
- What am I doing about the decrepit infrastructure of the country? Answer? Not much other than holding my breath when I go over a certain bridge in Cincinnati that’s been on the it-could-go-at-any-time list for years.
- What am I doing about educating all of our children at least as well as the other rich countries manage to do it? Answer? Questioning governor Walker of Wisconsin for his decisions that have hurt the teachers, students and schools of his state; voting “yes” on school bonds and working as a reading mentor in a Florida school. I never could see myself as a teacher of hordes, but I like one-on-one.
- What am I doing, as a citizen of the wealthiest country ever to have existed, to promote universal health care? Answer? Supporting AARP, a big lobbyist for old folks, and speaking up for the Affordable Care Act, even though it doesn’t help me on Medicare.
- What am I doing, with the most overpaid CEOs in the world, to institute a living wage for the employees? Answer: Repeating this news release for the hundredth time: a single mom with two kids needs to make $28 and some cents an hour to live in a decent house and get her kids to college.
- What am I doing about equal pay for equal work, a situation in which for more than 40 years we’ve been talking about — women making 75 to 80 cents to every male’s dollar? Answer: Again, not much. Never in my life was I able to demand more money from a boss, let alone ask for what my male cohort was making.
- What am I doing about race relations? Answer: Every time I hear someone start on a racial joke or use the “N” word, I speak up and say I prefer not to hear it. The first few times, it took a lot of nerve to do this; now, it is easy. Even if it isn’t sensitizing people to the power of language, it at least shuts off their insensitivity momentarily.
- What am I doing about just saying yes to the Bastrop County Republican Party in Texas in encouraging them to secede from the country before President Obama continues his “history of attacking Texas” by establishing martial law to cancel the 2016 presidential elections in order to extend his term of office? (These people need all the help and ideas we can give them.) Answer: Well, just writing about it tickles me. People can be so radical in their stupidity, and it’s not only fun but important to talk about them.
What am I doing about social and moral issues? Not a lot, I see. But I used to do less. A little progress is better than none. And the practice of it grows on me. The more I do, the more I feel I can do.
Is it my business as a citizen of the world only to take care of myself, support my family, pay my taxes? Living in a town like Jefferson, I find it very easy to see, in the actions and volunteer work of so many, that the more each of us does, the more others do. If it makes for a vibrant and functioning Jefferson that at least to my knowledge is non-racist and works for the underdog, surely it helps the wider world.
