Each day we watch the slow grind of the forces that shape our world in terms of environmental justice. We ask ourselves questions that have no answers currently: How much of the Amazon rain forest will we be able to preserve? Will the migration away from fossil fuels occur in time to save the Greenland Ice Sheet? Will Chevron eventually be forced to pay for the devastation it caused in Ecuador? Phenomena like these, unfolding as they are–not across months or years–but over a period of decades, are why the destruction of our natural environment is often referred to as a “train-wreck in slow motion.”
Given all this, it’s easy to forget that each one of us plays an important role in the outcome, and that a few key individuals have single-handedly brought about huge redirections in the course of humankind—even previously unknown and indistinguished people like the Chinese man who defied the armored tanks in Tienanmen Square in 1989, or the young fellow who lighted himself on fire, bringing on the Arab Spring in 2010.
Speaking of individuals who changed our civilization, let’s consider Voltaire (pictured above with one of his more famous quotes, which translates as “reading enlarges the soul”), a man who was anything but indistinguished. According to the Writer’s Almanac, last Tuesday marked the anniversary of the
“….day in 1778 that Voltaire returned to Paris after living in exile for 28 years in protest against France’s religious fanaticism. He was a crusader for human rights and one of the most respected people in Europe. When he was allowed to return home, more than 300 people came to visit him his first day in the city. One of those visitors was Benjamin Franklin, fresh from helping to lead the revolution in the United States of America. Franklin had brought his grandson with him and asked Voltaire to bless the little boy.”
When you look at the horrors that Muslim extremists are wreaking around the world, and on their own people (especially women), remind yourself of one of the fundamental reasons for all this mayhem: that this part of the world never received the fruits of what Voltaire and just a few others brought us: the Age of Reason/the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and so forth. Keep in mind how radical these ideas were in their time, and how limited our human rights would be without them.
Then consider what we all can do to bring about a new Enlightenment — one that respects the basic rights of all seven billion of us, as well as the health and sustainability of the natural environment.
