Ivory

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a human. I had a conversation with a friend last night, and we spoke on the phone for over an hour, with part of that time being about what it means to “live a good life.”

My friend said it’s to “be a decent person, enjoy our lives because we only have this one, and take care of the earth and the world around us.”

I said, jokingly, “we have to be stewards of the earth,” which is a phrase we both learned in our religious schooling, but we both agreed that that is what we mean, even if we don’t use those terms. To live a good life is to be decent, care for the world, be a good ancestor.

How to do so, however, is where it gets murky. Because how does one quantify '“decent?” How do you decide what is “good?” And who gets to subvert those definitions for their own purposes? Because the power doesn’t rest in good, decent people, but in those who wrest power and control from, or away from, them.

In thinking about all of this, and in how I want to contribute to the world, how I want to ‘be a good ancestor,’ I often return to my writing. What I write, explain, teach, offer, or think about and ultimately share, is my way of trying to make the world a tiny bit better than how I found it.

But often, I feel it falls short of what I want. Not the least because of my own intellectual limitations, or my understanding of the world, but also because of the reach I have. I think about authors and intellectuals, who write books that make it out to the public, that change curricula and how people speak of others, and I wonder, what did this actually do?

The questions I keep coming back to are: did their work change anything material for people? Did it effect policy change? How people view and treat others? Perhaps, on a small scale. But certainly not on a grander one, I don’t think. I think what I fear is that people may change how they speak, but not what they do, especially those in power.

Which brings me to my own work. On one hand, it is better to offer what you can, and hope it means something to a small thread of life. On the other hand, I wonder if this is some sort of balm to soothe a grief-stricken soul that power and the ability to change is even in our grasp. Ultimately, I wonder if this is all simply ivory tower meditations.

The question I have is whether the small-scale work we do, like writing, can compete, and outcompete the machinery of war, propaganda, racism, etc. that we all suffer under? I’m not sure it does, but I hope that it could.