Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want

"I should say that as part of my evasion of bestness, I just did this list in alphabetical order. No hierarchy among the five is implied! Benjamin’s argument is that while we need massive systemic change to confront the political problems of contemporary life, there is no magic lever to pull and make that change. In the face of that, we can often get paralyzed and not know how to proceed. Using a combination of anecdotes and historical evidence, she shows how small changes—participating in mutual aid groups, writing academic critiques of eugenics, changing how we view those convicted of crimes—can ‘virally’ grow into the kind of big changes that we need. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I recommend it because, whether you agree with every detail of her argument or not, I find that many of us are trapped in this vicious-cycle-mindset that if we don’t change the world, we’re not doing enough, and yet we can’t save the world, so we don’t do anything. While we should push ourselves to make big changes, we should also recognize that we do have power and agency to transform some things, and the stories and arguments in this book can help us see that. Overcoming the anxiety of political paralysis can be a big self-help breakthrough. It’s certainly a theme in the genre. And I think it’s because basic misconceptions really can have massive cascading effects. If we correlate becoming wealthy with being happy, for example, we’ll never actually be happy. And if we think that “being happy” means never experiencing pain or sorrow, we won’t have a very good understanding of human life. Tweaking these ideas in our head, creating a better alignment between the possible and the actual, can make a big difference."