How to change the world
By Stéphane Bisinger on Sunday, April 5 2009, 17:58 - world - Permalink
Last night I happened to talk a little about politics. Not political ideologies, parties and such, but about the real politics, how to do something to change the society where you are living in. There was a friend of mine who does not believe she can make any difference in the world, which is a very common feeling at least here in Italy, and a guy she met last night whom I could depict as a "Berlusconian communist": he really is the kind of communist Berlusconi is so afraid of, one of those with a long beard who believes in revolution and such. Now I usually don't like much that kind of thinking, but he made some good points and I was glad to talk to someone who had an understanding of a real democratic process, even though we would never agree on a lot of things. Anyway my friend was basically asking where do we find the courage and inspiration to go on and fight for something different, how do we know that what we do makes any difference? Since I think this is an important question, I will write here my answer to that.
Where to find motivation?
The most important thing is motivation: what drives you to take an active stance in politics and social life? Of course people may have many different reasons, but it basically comes to what makes you sleep at night. There are some nights when I can't sleep because I think of how we are destroying our environment and nobody cares, nobody does anything to prevent it. I sure didn't do anything to improve the situation and that made me feel unconfortable. So I started to get informed - which is the first step - to have a better understanding of the issues and their solutions. This may look like nothing to most, but it actually means a lot: if you are informed about issues, you know when someone is giving you a real solution or is selling you bullshit. I may make some exaples of this in later posts. Some people may stop here and it is fine, if they feel like it's enough, but I sure wished to do something more.
And now, down to business
The second step is to stop being passive and start doing something a little more active, which doesn't mean you have to pick up a pitchfork and go in the streets to protest; It can range from something as simple as getting your lazy ass to some event that deals with the kind of problems you are interested in to finding your own project to accomplish something. Personally, I started to think about what I could do, according to my skills and interests. This is when I decided to start a web project to facilitate Car pooling in my local territory: right now I'm still starting the project, but once I get to a usable state I wish to push for it in local administrations and try to encourage people to use it. This makes me feel better about myself because I know that I am trying to do something useful.
Feeling down
Now people will ask: "but how do you know that this will change anything? Even assuming that you can have a success locally, what difference will it make overall?". Everyone, sooner or later, will feel overwhelmed and ask herself/himself that question and the answer lies in what I see as my developing political idea.
Rediscover your own, little, local world
In a time like this we tend to forget that we live in small communities, we are taught that we are part of some big country with several million people in it, and this is what makes us feel useless and unimportant. This is wrong and in my opinion it's the reason why we live in a world where political power is too distant from the people they should take care of, it's the reason why politicians are like superstars you'll never see in your entire life, but will decide for you what is wrong and what is right. This of course has led to a systemic corruption where basically people we don't know decide things we don't know and we end up having a screwed-up world without understanding why and how we came to this. We must change that and the only way we can change it is by rediscovering the local community, getting involved locally to change our own little world made of a few thousands people. Beware, I am not talking about protectionism, enclosing yourself in little borders and have a somewhat hostile attitude to outsiders, but I am talking about rediscovering what we have available locally. For instance, why should I buy meat from, say, brazilian cows when I have plenty of cows within my own community? Why should I carry something I have available here from the other side of the world? Why should I drink water that comes from 500 km afar and not drink water that is available locally? Why should I buy wheat from Africa if I live amidst wheat fields? This is madness and this is killing the world, our economy, children in third world countries and ultimately it is killing us. One of the problems with this kind of system is that you know nothing about what you are buying, you have no control on how things are made, so it becomes hard for a random gal/guy to change something that is happening on the other side of the world, possibly in a non-free country. But changing things in your local community is possible, you know who to talk to, you have people to negotiate with, you share some common values and it is easier to get support for your ideas because it benefits the community in a very direct way and people understand this much better than a problem located somewhere on the other side of the world.
Spreading the disease
The next objection that arises is: "but if you change things just locally, you won't make much of a difference, the rest of the world will go on the same old way and your effort will become pointless". Here's the deal: good ideas should circulate. When faced with a problem, a community finds a solution to that problem; a neighbouring community that must solve the same problem can adopt the same (or similar) solution by letting ideas circulate around. This will spread among communities and in the end you'll have a global change. This is absolutely possible nowadays with such easy communication, we just have to create the correct mindset - and this will require some time, but I think that the economic downturn will speed this up. So basically good ideas should be like epidemic diseases and they should spread around from community to community, of course with local adaptations - because every community has its own peculiarities.
Conclusions
I hope I expained myself clearly enough so that everyone can understand. To sum things up here are the main points:
- Motivation comes from inside of you, you do what you feel like you should do, nothing more, nothing less. This will also make you feel better about yourself
- Start by the smallest things, like getting informed and participating in events organized by others. Whenever you find inspiration to do more, do it and you'll find yourself in an active positition before you even realize it
- Act locally, think locally. Try to solve problems in your own community and forget a little about broader issues. One issue at a time, your range will improve and in the end you may change something bigger.
- Share knowledge and ideas. Try to find out if someone else solved an issue you'd like to solve in a way that works for you and your community. Share your successes and insuccesses so that others may build on them
There is much more to it, this is a first introduction on what I think and it would be great to have some discussion about it so that I may extend and improve my exposition. People who will ask any question that will try to prove me wrong will be rewarded with a big pat on the shoulder and an answer.