Hi Joe,
I have been working for so many years in community building, advocacy work and political campaigns. I won’t bore you with the amount of frustration I have for what it takes to get people engaged in the process, but it drives me nuts. I hear so many people say they are angry with how things are going and want to do something, but when I make suggestions, they turn off. Any ideas?
Over it
Hey Over it,
Yes, it boggles the mind. And this is the essential question that so many ask, “how do you get people to take their good ideas and best intentions and put them into practical action?”
Maybe the first thing to acknowledge is that what you do is extraordinary. Maybe it was never supposed to be expected that the majority of us have that level of commitment, passion and dedication that you have. I don’t mean that in a cynical, defeatist way. While I believe more and more of us are waking up to the inevitability of our inherent global interconnectedness and interdependence, and feeling compelled to get engaged, it takes us as human beings a long time to transform our viewpoints, habits and patterns.
Just like with a bad habit, trying to force someone to change, or stop doing that habit, rarely leads to success. Starting with, for instance, “I should do more yoga,” or “I should cut down on my sugar intake,” rarely gets us to our desired goal. So, instead of approaching this issue with “shouldas”, maybe consider starting with what might be possible, however large or small. Instead of focusing on what they are not doing, perhaps start with finding the things that would inspire their passion. I call this kind of involvement “creative social activism”.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my clients a couple of years ago. While she was very successful as a business executive, she didn’t know where to begin to do more to bring about social change; she felt powerless. While she gave generously to charities, she wanted to find a way to get involved. She expressed that she was not the type to protest or go on marches. She was also not interested in getting into politics or public service.
After some inquiry, I suggested she think about the things that inspired her, or that brought her joy and excitement. Eventually, she spoke about how much she enjoyed knitting. While we both acknowledged that knitting in itself was not going to solve our world problems, we stayed in the creative process until she came up with a plan. She spent some time researching and then approaching assisted living facilities in the area and offered to come one afternoon a month with needles and yarn to sit with the residents and knit with them, or teach them how to knit.
It was a risk; she didn’t know how it would go. But while sitting and knitting and sharing stories, she built a rapport with the others. After a number of visits, they asked her to come more often and she started doing the same with other facilities in the area. While this one act didn’t change laws or policy or make significant shifts in our global challenges, it certainly brought joy and a sense of belonging to others. In a world that is filled with so much anxiety, isolation and hopelessness, a simple act of helping people feel seen and valued goes a long way.
This is what I mean by creative social activism. When we find the things for which we have passion, and then turn that into an act of service, we contribute in a small way to the manifestation of a world that aligns with our highest values of kindness, connection, generosity, respect and dignity. Imagine if more of us were to find our way to this kind of civic engagement?
I see this kind of creative social activism happening all the time. I remember at the beginning of the lockdown of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, many of the residents of my neighborhood would take appropriately socially-distanced walks through the streets. Every afternoon around 4pm a young woman would stand in the garden in front of her apartment building and play her violin. She was obviously a professional; she didn’t ask for money. I’m assuming that she felt a strong desire in such a challenging time to offer some kind of relief to her neighbors with some beauty and comfort. It worked.
Yes, Over it, we need people like you to do the noble work of direct advocacy. But I would say that it doesn’t need to be all of us to be that engaged to bring about lasting change, just enough of us. What I’m offering is a more long-term strategy for getting others to put their best intentions into action. Perhaps when they start this journey of creative social activism, after some time they will be ready to commit to a level of engagement similar to yours.
Keep it creative,
Joe
Learn more about Joe Weston and his work here. Make sure to c heck out Joe’s bestselling book Fierce Civility: Transforming our Global Culture from Polarization to Lasting Peace, published March 2023.
Have a question for Joe? Send an email to AskJoe@fulcrum.us.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.