Complain or Contribute?

Things are broken. It’s time to build.

There's a role for critical analysis. There's a role for raising awareness. But it sure seems that at the moment we have overinvested in pointing out what's wrong and underinvested in making a contribution.

In "The Case for American Seriousness," venture capitalist Katherine Boyle argues for the need to build. She writes:

"Building is a political philosophy. It is neither red nor blue, progressive nor conservative. It is averse to the political short-termism and zero-sum thinking that permeates our aging institutions that won’t protect us in this era. There is no fixed pie when it comes to building... When the projects we believed were Teflon strong are fraying like the history they toppled, the only thing to do is to make something new again."

In reading Boyle's essay, I thought about St. Ignatius because a) I'm a Jesuit and think about Ignatius often, and b) Cardinal Avery Dulles uses similar language to write about our founder:

“A great weakness of the church in the Europe of St. Ignatius’ day was ignorance of the faith. Many priests were barely literate, and the laity in some countries did not know the basic elements of the Creed. Rather than complain and denounce, Ignatius preferred to build. Popular education, he perceived, was on the rise. Taking advantage of the new desire for learning, Ignatius quickly set about founding schools, colleges and seminaries.”

There is so much broken in our world, but there is no shortage of opportunities to build. 

We could complain about what's wrong, or we could contribute to making things better.

Thanks to those of you who have purchased a copy of my book, The Freedom of Missing Out. If you have read it, it would mean so much if you left a review on Amazon.