There is a certain kind of person who sincerely and
desperately desires to have an impact on the world. This person; for whatever reason be it
spiritual, emotional, experiential, logical, empathic, or even political; has become
convinced at their core level that the best way to go through life is to spend
a good deal of it helping others. This
desire comes in a multitude of varieties (see following paragraphs), but
essentially they all amount to the belief that we change the world by affecting
change in the people around us.
For some, this desire manifests itself in social
outreach. Your Peace Corps workers, your
family counselors, your Big Brothers and Big Sisters are all examples of this. These people don’t need a lot of money. They don’t seek recognition. They make sacrifices of their own time, and
in some cases their dignity and relative sanity as well, for the chance to improve
the life of someone else even if it’s only on a small scale, even if it’s only
one person affected and it takes an entire year to affect them. Such people believe wholeheartedly and
without shame that such an effect is both valuable and worthwhile. Yet for even the most selfless person, a
little recognition, a little gratitude is still desired. Without this, it becomes easy for someone to
doubt the effectiveness of their actions.
Some people believe that to truly affect change
one must be in a position of power in order to do so. These folks strive to become religious
leaders, politicians, or in some cases particularly outspoken rebel
activists. They seek power and attention
not for their own glory (although there are those for whom this is the aim) but
for the position and opportunity to affect change on a large scale. These people often find, once they achieve
their position of power, that much of their time ends up being devoted to
keeping that position of power by making relatively happy those who have
influence over it, and significantly less time goes into directly improving the
world on a grand scale simply because there are only so many hours in the
day. These people find that to be a
successful leader in American society, one must often compromise, one must be a
little less extreme than one would like, for to be extreme is to narrow your
sphere of influence to only that audience which shares your extreme views while
completely alienating those on the other extreme and rendering yourself a
laughable cartoon to those more balanced of mind. So in compromising, these leaders often must
partially sacrifice their high ideals for the sake of accomplishing anything at
all. As time goes on, some become
corrupt. Some become discouraged. But there are those who persevere, often
going prematurely gray and developing heart conditions in the process, and they
accomplish much.
There are others who believe that education is the
most important instrument for social change.
These are not only your teachers, your principals, your charter school
developers, but also your writers, your scholars, and your museum curators. These people love knowledge; they value
curiosity and strive to always be learning. They believe that to change a person
who is set in their ways is difficult but not impossible. Any learned behavior can be adjusted,
corrected, or replaced. But even better
than that, why not just try to reach people at an early age by teaching them
passionately and tirelessly while their minds are still malleable? These people believe that crime, immorality,
unhappiness, destruction, and hatred can be greatly reduced if we only train
people to better understand themselves and the world. These people remember their formative years
well; they remember the stupid decisions they made as result of their own adolescent
insecurities, which resulted in large part from not yet having a great deal of
education or life experience. Such
people put much stock in statistics that correlate high-school dropout rates
with all manner of negative social action because it seems fairly logical that
if you cease all education while in a state of extreme insecurity you will
continue to be insecure throughout the rest of your life because you aren’t
learning anything new which will allow you to change. And an insecure person is a volatile and
potentially destructive person whereas someone who understands their place in
the world (or at the least has become comfortable with the notion that their
place in the world can be vague and ever-changing) is better equipped to deal
with challenge and less likely to feel threatened by those whose purpose and
place are much different than their own.
These lovers of knowledge sometimes find
themselves in conflict between their own scholarship and the spreading of
knowledge to others. Some, often the
teachers, become so fully involved in the world of education that they stop
setting aside time for their own intellectual growth. If this goes on for too long, these people
can lose sight of why they love education in the first place, and at that point
they cease trying to inspire, instead settling for a yearly routine dispersal
of the same repetitive curriculum. Others,
often the writers and scholars, become so involved with their own academic
lives, their own learning, that they forget how to truly affect others. These people are full of valuable information
and experience but end up lacking the ability or the time to effectively impart
this wisdom on others in a manner that is in any way interesting.
Those are the three most common and most effective
types of change-makers. They have
different methods, different strengths and weaknesses, different values—but they
all stem from the same core desire, the same need, the same purpose: to make
the world better.
I once read a theory (reproduced below, from
Vonnegut’s Bluebeard) that to truly
change the world, you need a team. One
person cannot do it alone.
“Most people cannot open their minds to new ideas
unless a mind-opening team with a peculiar membership goes to work on
them. Otherwise life will go on exactly
as before, no matter how painful, unrealistic, unjust, ludicrous, or downright
dumb that life may be.
“The
team must consist of three sorts of specialists. Otherwise, the revolution, whether in
politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.
“The
rarest of these specialists is an authentic genius—a person capable of having
seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. A genius working alone is invariably ignored
as a lunatic.
“The
second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent citizen
in good standing in his or her community who understands and admires the fresh
ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. A person like that working alone can only
yearn out loud for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be.
“The
third sort of specialist is a person who can explain anything, no matter how
complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or
pigheaded they may be. He will say
almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting. Working alone, depending solely on his own
shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being full of shit as a Christmas
turkey.”
A selfish and self-centered person will not change
the world except by accident. You need to
work both with others and for others in order to have any real or positive
influence upon others. This is not
easy. Everyone who tries is constantly
met with challenge. Everyone who is to
succeed must face and work through their own weaknesses. You must develop self-confidence without
allowing it to become self-absorption.
You must never lose sight of your ideals, but you must also refrain from
being blinded by them. You must care
immensely about what you are doing with your life, and you must also respect
what your neighbor Jeff is trying to accomplish with his. You must be able to undergo frequent
criticism, evaluation, and debate; both internal and external in nature. In order to know what needs done and how best
to do it, you need to be thoughtful and knowledge-seeking in nature. In order to actually accomplish what is
needed, you need to be decisive and action-oriented. In order to effectively work with others, you
need to be open-minded and willing to compromise.
It is not an easy thing to accomplish all
this. But it is possible. And it is in the effort of trying that most
people find happiness. When I look upon
my life as I’ve lived it so far, my most treasured moments are those in which I
felt I’d truly engaged the world around me.
Sometimes it was in big ways.
Sometimes it was one interaction with one person. Sometimes I knew the person well. Sometimes I had never met the person before
and would never see them again.
But there are days that are not memorable for me. These are the days I spent alone doing
nothing. Sure, every once in a while you
need a day like this to rest and recharge.
But not that often.
So in the simplest terms, how do you go about
changing the world? Start by putting
yourself out there in it. Go
places. Meet people. Contemplate.
Act.
