The world's not falling apart because of you

This may have already came through in the other posts I've written about Greece, but the dominant thing I took away from the trip was a feeling of hope. There isn't anyway to write about this without being a bit corny, and I imagine when I'm twenty-six I'll find this post embarrassing.

I've always been interested in the concept of heroism, ranging from people who change the world and stand up to obstacles just in the way they live their lives. When I was in ninth and tenth grade, I wrote thousands of pages about the examples of heroism I saw in my friends, calling it the "Hero Project."

As I've gotten older, the people I have known have increasingly been able to shape more than their own lives. I'm grateful that no matter how throughly I've learned to, say, problematize a development initative, I've never lost the ability to be inspired by other people.

In Greece, I was surrounded by people who were interested in transforming available information in their countries. They wanted to tell true stories and wanted to hear the stories other people told. In parts of the former Soviet bloc, this is the first generation that has a free press. It takes integrity to report on business or economics in a place where traditionally businesses bribed reporters for favorable coverage. It's brave to be a reporter in a country where a Nobel Prize winning author was prosecuted for "insulting the Republic."

It was also really interesting to hear about the projects people were working on. The German participants, who were all university students, work for a student-run TV news project called "NGO TV." They do media trainings for people who have less media awareness and access, and then put together broadcasts collaboratively. They're just starting out, but they made a twenty minute documentary on the recent EU youth economic summit in Poland.

It felt like a 30 under 30 list, the civil society version.

At one point, I was having a conversation with some of the participants in the hotel lounge, and a young woman said something like, "Well, the world's going to end soon anyway from terrorism or nuclear war, so we might as well have fun in the meantime." She was just kidding, but I was still struck by the glib fatalism.

I just don't believe there are intractable problems-- or at least problems not worth the struggle of trying to fixing. Is this an America thing, or a Swattie thing, or a me thing? A couple of professors mentioned that structural explanations are much more popular in Europe, and Marxist models for understanding history are still academically in vogue, so perhaps there's just more emphasis on individual agency in America. (Let's single-handedly unseat dictators, who cares about waiting for structural change!)

The title of this post comes from a Dar Williams song, "The World's Not Falling Apart Because of Me." It's never been clear to me whether she's talking about keeping the world from falling apart through her actions, or whether she is instead mocking her inability to have a dramatic impact on the world.

I know there's a healthy dose of hubris in talking about fixing problems or changing the world. My best defense is that I feel this way because of the people I have known, and not because of what I believe I as an individual am capable of.