A Positive View!

Howard Zinn was an historian and educator.  My daughter recently sent me something he said that I want to share with you.  We had been talking about how bad things have become and I expressed a sense of resignation that the world was going to improve.  What Zinn said didn't relieve all of my concerns, but I found it a useful point of view:

"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 good utopian future.  The future is an infinite succession of presents, 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."