Every day, if we are not wary, we can be overwhelmed by the inhuman torrent of information that blasts our consciousnesses. It's a riot-hose of data, knocking us back, making us angry and anxious as events utterly beyond our control consume our attention.
It's all at such a scale that it can seem beyond our ability to do anything. Wars and storms, murders and corruption, our knowledge ecosystem bludgeons us into sputtering helplessness. How can we hope to change such a vast and catastrophically borked system? How can we bring justice to a world that is so utterly unjust, and hope to a world where every moment serves up moral horror and outrage?
We can't. You can't. I can't.
I can't change geopolitics, because I am so small. I cannot change the great blind injustices of our economic systems, our our species-wide eagerness to inflict suffering on one another in the pursuit of power. Even community tensions and family conflicts seem to at times become so complex and intractable that no amount of my effort can bring them to resolution. The activist's mantra...that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere...becomes a recipe for despair and dysfunction. We stress and we rage, and Lord have mercy, does it seem futile.
Where, then, can change occur? Where can we make things better?
It occurs first and foremost at the very smallest level, meaning it's a quantum thing.
We tend to think of "quantum" as a word that shimmers with futuristic promise and cutting edge resonances. Quantum computing! The insights of quantum physics! Brands slap that label on themselves if they want us to imagine they are Very Forward Thinking.
"Oooh! Quantum. It must be good!"
But "quantum" just means "the smallest possible thing."
The term replaced "atom," which Greek philosopher Democritus used to describe the invisible and indivisible particles that he believed made up the whole world. Science once used the term "atom" to describe the atomic elements, but eventually realized that "atoms" were in fact not the smallest possible thing. There was a "subatomic" realm, a philosophical oxymoron that would have given Democritus conniptions. Rather than science saying, "Oops, our bad, those elements aren't actually atomic," we called the things smaller than atoms quanta, teeny tiny spooky indivisible units upon which all other things are somehow made.
What does that have to do with making things better?
That's you, morally speaking.
You, in your unique personhood, are the smallest possible thing. Your soul, your personhood, your agency? That's the fundamental unit of analysis, the Cogito that Ergo Sums. You have agency over you, assuming you are a sentient being, which you hopefully are. You are the place where change happens, and where you are empowered to make change happen. The place where hate ends. The place where compassion begins. Where grace reigns.
Unless it doesn't.
All you have to do, again, is allow yourself to be changed. Which is just super duper easy, as y'all know.
But it can be done.
Always start small. Small is plenty hard enough.
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