Awake Enough

Gareth Williams
Nov 11, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Nov 13, 2025

I think we are living in a very paradoxical age. The world seems simultaneously both better and worse than ever. By many measures, life has improved beyond anything our ancestors could imagine. As Rutger Bregman (2025) reminds us, child mortality has plummeted, slavery is almost universally condemned, and even the poor in much of the world enjoy comforts once reserved for kings. And yet - war, inequality, ecological collapse, and mental health issues hang heavy in the air. The very system that has raised living standards now threatens the planet itself.

Moral Ambition

Bregman calls for moral ambition: the courage and dedication to use our privileges, knowledge and capacities to make the world a better place. He challenges the culture of personal virtues and wellbeing - mindfulness and self-regulation while the Earth burns up. Awareness, he warns, is not enough; we must act. But action without vision and depth of understanding can end up adding to the noise. Moral fervour alone can breed burnout or self-righteousness, perhaps widening gaps of division and polarisation.

The Knife and the Hand

Einstein warned that “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” So when we argue for ambition or moral heroics, we need to tread carefully. The drive that builds can also destroy. A knife in a surgeon’s hand can heal; in a murderer’s, it can wound or kill. The tool is the same - what matters is who’s using it - and how.

Our task, then, is not to abandon ambition but to transmute it: to let our drive be guided by humility, empathy, compassion and curiosity, rather than certainty or ego. We need not only the drive to make a difference, but a mind that both understands the complex, delicate interconnections of life and knows the human capacity for self-deception and hubris.

Collective Agency

If Bregman calls for moral ambition in the individual, Chomsky reminds us that moral courage must also become collective. He cautions us against sentimentality and denial: the system as it stands — economic, military, ecological — is driving us toward the brink.

Yet his answer isn’t despair but collective agency; clear-seeing and shared action. Chomsky, like Bregman and Margaret Mead before him, each believe that informed citizens, working together, can alter the direction of vast forces. It’s a sober kind of optimism, grounded not in faith that things will be fine, but in the knowledge that human beings can still choose differently.

Clarity of how desperate things are without some hope can paralyse; but hope without this clarity can delude and lead to either complacency, easy answers, or more trouble. In the in-between might we find a middle way - a clarity about the enormity of the world’s problems and faith in our capacity to make a difference? Perhaps this is what Joanna Macy called Active Hope.

Milarepa’s Advice

For me, a Tibetan story told by James Low expresses another piece of the puzzle. Milarepa’s students ask if they should leave their retreat to help the suffering world. He answers, “Do you think there will be no suffering when your training is complete?”

The point isn’t withdrawal; it’s preparation. Until we’ve confronted our own demons and met our own chaos, we might merely end up passing it on. But I think we can’t really wait forever for some enlightened perfection before descending the mountain. And especially as we all find ourselves so close to the precipice, how long can we afford to wait?

Good-Enough Awakening: From Heroism to Participation

Maybe the situation we find ourselves in today doesn’t call for heroic enlightenment. Instead, maybe it’s about good-enough clarity, good-enough compassion, and good-enough action.

Then:

We meditate to see more clearly and find some more inner calm

We act as concerned and committed participants

We inevitably make mistakes, and we can learn from them

And so the work continues

In this view, the inner work and outer work are not two separate paths, but beats in one rhythm, belonging together. The contemplative work steadies us; the worldly work challenges us, enriches us, and invites our participation. Each feeds the other.

Thus the modern world doesn’t need saints, it needs compassionate participants, as many as it can get: people awake enough to care, humble enough to learn, and committed enough to keep showing up.

Awake Enough