I gave before I read this at Shakesville, as I’ve always liked Doctors Without Borders, but it made me feel even better about my choice:

DWB was operating three medical centers in Haiti, providing some of the only accessible care in Port-au-Prince for poor pregnant women, new mothers, and infant children. All three of the medical centers were destroyed in the earthquake, yet DWB “has already treated more than 1,000 people on the ground in Haiti following Tuesday’s earthquake, but the needs are huge. An inflatable hospital with operating theatres is expected to arrive in the next 24 hours.” They really need support.

Also, from an interview with David Graeber:

I think though the world is starting to call our bluff — the radical academics, that is. More and more one has to choose between working for NGOs, or government, or marketing, or for departments that are run like corporations and openly trying to bust their unions — or, alternately, actually connecting in some way with real social movements that do not want us to simply impose ourselves as their vanguard. I think in a way that’s a good thing. Most of those people posing as wild postmodern radicals in the ’80s and ’90s were actually classic liberals: that is, interested in increasing personal freedoms and minority rights without actually challenging institutions like the state or capitalism. That’s fine. Who am I to tell people what they should think? But it does annoy me when people like that claim to be the super-radicals. Increasingly such people are starting to admit that, well, yes, actually, they are pretty much liberals. For me that’s refreshing. It’s like, finally we can start to have a real conversation.

Sounds about right to me. Richard Rorty argued that the classic liberal institutions are the best solutions we have (so far) to the problems of humanity, basically, and argued for liberals to feel patriotic about them, to own them, warts and all, to keep hammering away at piecemeal solutions towards ever greater equality, fraternity and liberty. To some extent, I’ve always felt he had a point.

However, I also always felt he was a bit short-sighted in that argument, and it somewhat contradicted his argument that people must always be trying to imagine better solutions, and that future generations would imagine better solutions than “ours.” Well, if that’s the case, those who try to imagine those and bring them into being also have a strong case to make.

Particularly, I personally am increasingly questioning the focus of so many on persistently petitioning authorities to give us political solutions at a time when grassroots, practical solutions are essential to our survival. This feeling is echoed in this post at eleven o’clock alchemy, where you’ll also find the excellent “Why I broke up with the anarchist community”

“Practical, community-based direct action, not magical solutions granted from on high, will get us closer to where we need to be.”

I feel ever more enamored with “people solving their problems and getting on with life.” I realized today that my entire job involves basically “problem solving” and “routine work” (getting on with life). It just so happens that neither interests me or is personally important. But I’m great at problem solving my own problems, and mostly great at doing the routine work that has personal relevance! How can I structure my life so that I am doing less and less work that is important to other people, and more and more that is important to me? This is the personal question.

For the extra-personal, I’ll return to Graeber: “There have to be buildings to make laws in, and someone has to clean them, and paper and transport and funky wigs…”

OK, I just wanted to quote the part about the wigs. But I do feel the passage I took that from, which touches on the processes of human living and how we create the world, relates to what I was talking about “people solving problems and getting on with life.”