Acting for a Good Cause
A friend of mine who is teaching at an American university sent me yesterday the following interesting lines:
“I have been cruising the web the past days for material I can incorporate into the class I teach and found a current development in Hollywood circles quite inspiring. It seems that more and more celebrities take action toward a good cause and use their fame and social status to help make the world a better place.
For example, Leonardo DiCaprio has produced a documentary about environmental damage and its effects on our planet titled The 11th Hour. What is most incredible about it is that he and his team don’t leave it there. They have created a website with a lot of information for people on how to make changes and contribute individually.
Another actor who’s been in the media recently for his activity for a good cause is Brad Pitt. He’s spent millions of dollars to help rebuild New Orleans’ homes in an environmentally friendly way.
Someone who is having a great impact on the Native American nation that is close to my heart is Viggo Mortensen. He founded a publishing house where he publishes books about the Lakota Sioux nation of the Dakotas. Mortensen was a published poet and painter already before he landed the role as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. Among other books that pertain to Lakota culture, he wrote a book titled Miyelo in 2003 in which he documented the history of the Lakota and the tradition of the sundance. The greatest part of the sales of the book flows toward the Pine Ridge Reservation where Mortensen was welcomed when he learned the Lakota language for his role in Hidalgo. It seems he has found a second home there.”
Doing good doesn’t only inspire Hollywood stars. Today I came across an article about “Silent deeds for a better world”, an ad-campaign of a German soft drink producer (“the official drink for a better world”) who has realised a website called Stille Taten (Silent Deeds), which inspires to do anonymously good deeds to others and gives an occasion to write reports on it. This initiative has caused a great deal of discussion in blogs and the press. Though it is an PR-campaign, it leads people into a good direction.
Another friend from the States sent me today the following lines of H. P. Blavatsky’s “Secret Doctrine“, which fit very well to this theme:
“Altruism not simply in name. The suppression of one single bad cause will suppress not one, but many bad effects. If virtue in distress, and vice in triumph make atheists of mankind, it is only because mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself his own savior and his own destroyer.”
Spreading some sunlight into the life of others
