Betterment and Praxis

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The community for cool things you've done out in the real world, or are doing in the real world!

Covers things like volunteer work, community gardens, political activism, organizing clubs and communities in your public circles, and all the information surrounding how to do that stuff. Also covers self-help and betterment, because to help your community it helps to help yourself!

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How do you deal with feeling like you’re not doing enough? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by TimTheEnchanter@beehaw.org to c/betterment@beehaw.org

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I try to do what I can to make my local community better. I research and vote in every election, donate money to local nonprofits and also volunteer there when I can (heading to the food bank in a bit, yay!), and try to speak out and offer words of encouragement when I can.

But I live in a very socially, politically, and religiously conservative community. And I…am not. It constantly feels like any effort amounts to pissing in the wind, and yet also like I am not doing nearly enough at all. It makes me anxious a lot.

The latest iteration of this is local people trying to get “obscene” children’s and YA books in the public library moved to the adult section. And to be clear most of these books are not obscene they just acknowledge that, hey people who are LGBTQ+ (sorry if I got that initialization wrong!) exist and that racism is a real thing. I went to the public meeting and was mostly ineffective except I got to thank the library director for her work pushing back against this. I would love to write a Letter to the Editor of the local paper to speak out, but there is a risk of retaliation against my family members and their local businesses. And most of the community seems to be behind this which is absolutely bonkers to me. I don’t know what to do.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this. I think I just needed to say it. Anyone else deal with something similar- feeling like you need to do more but also feeling completely defeated about actually getting anything to change?

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[–] Radiant_sir_radiant@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From what you write it sounds like you're already doing more than most people. Whether that's enough for you is for you alone to decide. Just let me quote something that's helped me tremendeously:

It's not your job to unfuck the entire world.

You cannot possibly fix every problem. Not least because "problem" is very subjective and not everything that you perceive as a problem even wants to be fixed.
You'll never convince a group of peple to stop being misogynistic, homophobic or otherwise bigoted or just backwards. That's a losing battle. But maybe you can get a few people to question their beliefs? It's up to you to decide whether that's good enough for you or whether you give up and move somewhere more tolerant.
Either way, I for one salute you for doing what you do and fighting for what you believe is right.

[–] TimTheEnchanter@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks! Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in thinking you need to fix everything and easy to forget that small things can be impactful.