liv | January Journal: Social causes (Reply)

zhelana filled the last lonely-looking gap in my January list by asking about social Causes I work towards

zhelana's is one of those good questions because my first answer is that I don't really work for Causes, and thinking about that has brought some insights. Basically, I don't see myself as being into activism. I put a much higher priority on being the most positive presence I can in my own communities, whether that's Jewish, workplace or especially friendship groups.

I think that's partly because I don't feel it's my place to tell other people what to think, but obviously that's not entirely true. I mean, I do want to tell anyone who'll listen to me not to be racist, for example, but I don't dedicate a lot of time to putting across anti-racist arguments. I'm extremely disillusioned about political protesting; I've never really been keen on being part of a crowd reducing causes to simplistic slogans, but since the government simply ignored two million people marching against the Iraq war I can no longer see any advantages to that style of making a political statement.

If I have to pick, the cause I'm most passionate about is diversity and pluralism. As far as I have any ability to change the world at all, I want to create contexts where people can have productive community interactions with others from different backgrounds. So I do quite a lot of interfaith dialogue, for example, and one of the few political opinions that I do go around insisting on is being vehemently pro-immigrant. I think this partly influences the fact that I don't do a lot of social cause activism, because being very committed to a Cause can make it more fraught to work with and connect with people who hold differing opinions. Also because my experience and belief is that the only way to get real diversity is through personal interactions between individuals, just making a big noise about how diversity is important doesn't get you all the way.

That's not to say my approach is superior to that of people who do devote a lot of time and energy and passion to their favourite Causes. I think that's a very admirable thing to do, it's just not really my inclination. I'm much more likely to be using my skills to create a supportive religious and community environment for the the people who happen to be members of my synagogue, or doing research towards better cancer treatments, or trying to influence my students to be thoughtful, considerate doctors.

[January Journal masterlist]