Change Is Not Made Through Outrage

You start to shake a little as you reach for your phone.

You quickly and effortlessly punch in the code to unlock the phone and find the Facebook app. You tap your foot as it takes a few seconds to load.

You start to scroll through your feed and you see headline after headline that makes you upset.

Some politician is going to bring about the apocalypse with their new plan. Someone said something horrible on twitter. Too many white people at the Oscars!

You are upset, the world is horrible, America is awful and you need to do something about this.

It is at this point where the activist puts away the smart phone and picks up a sign and goes out onto the street to wave the sign at people in an attempt to make the world a better place. They start to form a group and manage to get a protest going.

They feel good being part of something. They feel good for standing up to evil and speaking truth to power. They feel good for doing their part to make the world a better place. They then go home to an empty apartment, pull out their laptop and look at social media again.

The cycle repeats itself.

Never once does the activist think, maybe Western culture is a good thing. It gives me freedom and I have never lacked for much of anything, much less basic necessities like food and clean water.

Maybe capitalism isn’t so bad, I mean I do enjoy flying on an airplane, seeing movies, using my laptop and smart phone, the internet and eating out. These things never occur to them as they put on their Che Guevara t-shirt and hold up a hammer and sickle banner.

It also never occurs to them that standing in the street holding a sign that says I’m against poverty is useless.

No one is for poverty and what good does it do to wave a sign with your beliefs on it at other people? You could spend that time actually fighting poverty.

Get a job where you can make extra money and use it to donate food to the hungry. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Sort out your own life so that when your parents or siblings needs help, you can help them.

Instead of maligning people and telling them they are wrong, why don’t you look in the mirror and find out what is wrong with your life, and fix it.

And once that is done take a small step out and fix thing with your immediate family.

Start small, because that is where you can make real change. You do not make change through outrage and protest, but through small real life actions that relieve, in a small way, the suffering of life.

Remember that the next time you want to grab a sign with an idea on it and start yelling at people. It may make you feel good for the moment, but in the end you are just a person with a sign yelling at people, only making their suffering in life a little bit worse.