Repairer Of The World — The Healer in Society

Much to our surprise, the much loved Oprah Winfrey reappeared after a long absence on the LinkedIn website on August 17, 2026. At least it was a facsimile of her. Otherwise how could she still be so young and beautiful? Not with the aid of cosmetics but artificial intelligence that transformed her into an avatar. She is now 72 years old but AI has made her eternally young.

Oprah has spent years about 39 years on philanthropic work. According to AI, she has 22 million followers on Instagram, 35 million on X(@oprah), and 21.8 million on Facebook. He world consists of givers and takers, and she was gifted with a personality which is compelled to donate her time and skills and her money. She is worth about $34 billion according to Forbes magazine. But her greatest asset is that she has achieved happiness.

She has always managed to look happy, and happiness is contagious. When we consider our new generation of teenage students, they fall into two categories — the self indulgent and unhappy ones and the ones who are happiest when giving services to others. Unhappiness is just as contagious and results in political activists undermining society and causing chaos. When we generalize about that new generation of adolescents, they are easily divided into those two categories. For some reason worthy of deep investigation it is largely the students in elite universities who appear to be most miserable, even neurotic, perhaps because they have been indoctrinated by more negative students.

Some mothers have remarked on media that it is the fault of their education. Certainly there is a marked difference between teenagers taught at expensive universities who take whatever they can get in attention and funding, and those at community colleges. Whereas the former often appear to be takers, the latter are givers. Giving their time and services to others in healthcare, hospitals, and as nurses is their way to achieve happiness.

As society indulges those who enroll in the top universities, se;f indulgence appears to be their right. When they can’t have what they imagine they deserve from society they often become political activists aiming to undermine society and looking for something to rebel against. Of course that is a broad generalization inspired by the student campus riots in2023. And closer examination found that the belligerent students were mostly foreign ones from Iran who were coached by Palestinians to be abusive and obnoxious. We all know plenty of teenagers who do not fit that profile. Hopefully, most wish to better themselves and not become antisocial rebels but those who choose to “repair the world” instead. It is a lifetime occupation.

Students at community colleges fall into that latter category. They are fortunate to have discovered that giving is better than receiving and seek occupations like nursing or engineering. They are the ones who keep civilization afloat. The division in society between caring for people and self indulgence is clear. To repeat, there are givers and takers. People like Oprah Winfrey fall into the giving category as healers who know how to encourage other people to improve themselves and how to induce them to solve their handicaps and problems. Life is hard for most people and they need healing. Because the pain of suffering has become more widespread.

Apart from Oprah Winfrey today the most popular of that enviable breed is TV presenter and lecturer Sir Stephen Fry. He is reputed to have around 800,000 followers on Instagram and more than 12 million on X/Twitter. Unlike Oprah, Fry does not have tens of millions of followers on a major platform. Nevertheless, the reason for his popularity is that he is a healer like her.

Fry’s early books about himself described his miserable childhood with his handicaps. He suffered from what is commonly known as manic depression. He was also gay and felt alienated from society. But he sought to overcome his difficulties and problems. Slowly and surely he managed to turn his handicaps into assets by admitting them candidly in his books and in talks to audiences. It encouraged all sorts of maladjusted and marginalized and unhappy people to identify with him. He gave them hope of recovery. He too became a genuine “repairer of the world.”

Fry’s dedication to repairing the world derives from several different segments of his life and outlook, including humanism. He often emphasizes reason, compassion, curiosity, and improving the lives of others around him by healing depression, addiction, and other mental health problems. It encourages in particular those who are suffering and marginalized.

Stephen Fry advocates education and the accumulation of knowledge, free expression, literature, science and critical thinking — all the subjects that universities used to teach. He believes those are ways for society to become more human. At the core of it is generating loving kindness. Fry believes we all have a responsibility to repair the world and make it a better place than we found it.

If we wish to explore the idea of repairing the world by social justice, we find it goes back thousands of years to tikkun olam, a Hebrew phrase that for a long founded historical tradition of human rights. Many of the ideas that contribute towards that historic rabbinic tradition of social justice appear I the Jewish Torah, the Hebrew “Book of the Law.” It encourages taking care of the vulnerable in society, like widows and orphans and the handicapped, freeing the oppressed, welcoming strangers and always pursuing peace.

Popularity has its advantages. Stephen Fry is now estimated to be worth around $40 million. But it is not in monetary wealth alone that he and Oprah have benefited, but in achieving happiness by giving rather than receiving.