How to change the world? Good grows out of unhistoric acts | Letters
Those looking for inspiration on how to be a better person should look to the novel Middlemarch, writes Andrea Dow, while Bruce Higgins reflects on his rewarding charity work
I agree with Rutger Bregman that the definition of a “good” job needs to change (No, you’re not fine just the way you are: time to quit your pointless job, become morally ambitious and change the world, 19 April). But I’m not sure those fine minds of bankers and influencers bent on personal financial gain are likely to agree their efforts are a waste of talent or that they might be persuaded to swap financial ambition for the moral sort anytime soon. Nor do I share his enthusiasm for the western, paternalistic vision of the lone crusading world-saver. Do we need another hero? Or do we need governments with the moral ambition to create more equitable societies for those who elect them?
Bregman is dismissive of those who prize awareness over ambition, but awareness can itself be influential (as those who react with savagery to “wokeism” instinctively grasp) and can lead to change in ways that are not easily quantifiable or measurable in clicks or likes. I wonder if he has read Middlemarch, George Eliot’s great investigation of moral ambition, which concludes: “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Andrea Dow
Rothesay, Isle of Bute