People who are concerned about the fate of the planet often ask,
“What can I do to make a difference?”
This is the wrong question to ask, for three reasons:
- Your time is your own.
If you’re on a sinking ship — a ship that is in fact destined to sink — you still must choose how to spend your final hours. Are you going to play violin or are you going to bail water? At some point in the game, your decisions are about you, not the ship. It’s about how you stay good with you. - Cause and effect are rarely confirmed in the history of activism.
Many suffragettes died before women got the right to vote. Yet those early activists bear the names most readily identified with the movement. Their ideas provided the framework for later thinking. Their struggles and their lives were inspirations to the women who followed. The effect of their activity surpassed their lifespans.Henry David Thoreau went to jail for refusing to pay a tax which he thought was in support of the Mexican-American war. He did not stop the war. He did not start a wider tax protest. Not a single person was inspired by his example. However, his essay, later entitled, “On Civil Disobedience” introduced the concept of civil disobedience to later generations. - The goal of life is not to live in a perfect society,
in which one may forever relax and enjoy nice snacks, nor is it to find a comfy corner of an imperfect society for the same purpose. The goal is to better oneself through effort, through struggle. Society is merely an average of individual development. To that end, if you are in a time and place in history with worthy challenges, that is the most which may be asked. Are your challenges worthy of you? Are you worthy of them? The question of success does not enter into that picture. No one asks whether you succeeded at the gym. The question is, did you show up?
Now what?
Once you’ve decided that any action is better than no action, you might next decide that effective action is better than ineffective action. Consider it a matter of personal style.
Here we touch upon the right questions to ask:
- Who are you?
- What are your values?
- With what kind of style and flair do you deal with the world?
- Are you a militant?
- An engineer? A prophet? A healer? A complainer?