I know my titles sometimes belie a penchant (weakness) for double-entendres, but this one I chose because the topic can truly be considered from both perspectives. Some changes really are difficult and challenging (adj.) and at other times I needed to confront and challenge (vb.) the changes coming at me. Let's see where I went with it all.
Have you ever tried to convince a tar sands worker that the petroleum industry is destroying our planet and green energy is what we absolutely must have? OK, so you don't have a death wish, but maybe you would like someone to have that conversation, challenging as it might be.
Maybe you want the shelling of civilians in Gaza to stop and you know that the people who need to get the message are the ones doing the shelling and they have a lot of money on their side. They used the money to buy weapons and they now have a lot of those. They also have a lot of powerful people with money on their side, and those people could have you fired or blocked from job promotion, so trying to change their agenda would be challenging.
Maybe you have become a political philosopher in your advancing years and you're trying to figure out how much government is too much. What services should a state provide and what services should commercial enterprises offer? Where is the line that separates too much state control from too much social licence? Dictatorship? Autocracy? Oligarchy? Fascism? Socialism? Socialist Democracy? Utopian? Laissez-faire? Do you want your own government to make changes in the way it governs so that maybe it will legislate changes in the way your country deals with climate change or the mid-east war?
Some things just seem obvious and it's frustrating when others don't see it the same way as you and your friends do. The argument or discussion or fight (depending on the fierceness level of the discourse) is usually stuck on the inability of one side or the other to present their argument clearly enough to be grasped by the other side. I think it's obvious that Donald Trump is a lying psychophant, but some people I see interviewed are very nice grandmotherly citizens.
We really do right now run our society on fossil fuels right down to most of the plants that generate the electricity for that electric or hybrid vehicle. There really is such a thing as anti-semitism and the Moslem-based Hamas group really did massacre over a thousand innocent civilians. Israel really has dropped bombs, some of them phosphorous, on civilian populations that everyone knew had nothing to do with terrorists. There's no way around the facts and the facts have been recorded and presented at international courts.
Then again, Palestine seems to be an idea more than a geo-political fact and Palestinians have never or have always been prevented from ever getting it together to become a nation on a par with other mid-eastern powers financed by oil revenues or US dollars. It's the "seems" that seems sloppy in that last bit, because it – the history, the forces and the present situation – are not as obvious to me as they might be to some historian like Edward Said or even to a journalist with a long association with the issue.
So where do we stand? I say position ourselves on the side looking to the future. I know that the very statement seems hopelessly romantic and idealistic, but I say that finding that position and occupying it rigorously is the only one with merit, and I define merit as a quality on the scale of producing the greatest good for the greatest number.
I haven't invented the replacement for fossil fuel, and even if I did it would take time to switch everything over, and the system we have is working for most everyone right now. But it is finite and we need to switch to renewable energy. I must stand with that progress, admit my hypocrisy when I encounter it and keep trying to act according to my beliefs.
You may not have the miracle fuel, but you can be actively supporting efforts to find it and reducing your own dependence on the present system. Or, you can resign yourself to feeling the whole thing is hopeless and get what you can before the planet stops working.
Also, in Palestine and other middle-eastern countries and even in some western nations, there are people who advocate and plan for the destruction of the state of Israel. There are also in the Israeli government, people advocating the erasure of Palestinians. So, it looks like the sitiuations are hopeless. What's a person to do?
Again, take a stand. Take a stand for the values you believe in. Take a stand for a change that you have no idea how to bring about, and don't apologize for it. Take a stand for a future you want to happen. The alternative is the status quo and that's where the problem lies because that problem has killed thousands and maimed so many more.
We will have to face the counter-arguments of course, and because those arguments are spoken from the present situation they will appear to have present strength. The stand for the future we want will involve some work. If we don't write the letter, speak our minds, attend the demonstration, then there will be fewer voices for change and the way it is now will go unchallenged.
And after that rather lengthy bleat, I insert a link to the substack posting of a Canadian writer I have been following for some time. Judy Haiven is a Maritimer (NS I believe) with some credentials and credibility in the area of justice and international affairs. I haven't scrutinized all of her assertions, but I have investigated some. I trust her work. Here it is as "The New Chutzpah" which is a list of repressive actions taken by pro-zionist groups in Canada:
Click the little hand and have a read. It's a long list, and in it there are a lot more little hands signalling links to supportive data. Put it on your desktop and come back to it – right after the rally.