On thinking carefully about our approach to the coming years
Earlier this week, after the recent federal election, I offered some thoughts about the implications this moment has for those of us whose role is promoting health. I have since then spent much of the past week in conversation with many colleagues and friends on this very question, and I thought I would follow-up today with a note, co-written by Dr Nason Maani, about how we may think about our approach in the coming years.
We shall start with a reference to the writing of someone we both admire immensely. Martin Luther King, in his address to Cornell College in 1962 argued that extreme pessimists, and extreme optimists, agree on one point: that the best thing to do, when faced with challenges, is to sit down and do nothing. Dr King argued rather for a realist view, that is, a perspective that suggests that we cannot ignore where progress has been made, acknowledging hope, but doing so while also being mindful of the immense challenges one may face, acknowledging despair. However, a strong theme to his writing was that not acting is simply not an option. In particular, when there may be a sense that the wider systems around us might have capacity to inflict suffering, we must match that by our capacity to endure and to create a better world.
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