Ch 5. Can We Change the World?

 “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”

– Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society

A while back, I was really struggling with my own shortcomings and my inability to get anything of substance done on this book or the larger project that this book represents. As a blue collar working-class guy, I drive a truck, delivering electrical supplies to various job sites and shops around town. It's an essential job, and it's a good one, but it doesn't exactly qualify me to write or to inspire others to work with me on a project of this magnitude and importance.

Feeling at the end of my rope, I called someone who has been a friend, confidant, and mentor to me all my life. I was just beginning to…kind of pour out my heart about how important this project is, and how I consider it to be my life’s work, regardless of my own inadequacies, when he interrupted me saying, “Look man. You can't change the world. All you can do is look out for yourself and your family.”

He then launched into a long speech spelling out this viewpoint. You can’t change the world. You can’t change people’s minds. All you can do is take care of yourself and the people you care about. And I listened.

As I drove my truck, that conversation hung heavily in my mind. 

You can't change the world.

Is that true? Is that really true?

I looked out the window, and saw a woman taking her young daughter to school, a public school. Before 1839, those did not exist in America.

In the schoolhouse, the girl will be able to read books made possible by the steam-powered printing press, invented in 1843 thanks to the advances of the first Industrial Revolution.

Unless she’s a convicted felon, the mother has the right to vote. I know this because women’s suffrage became the law in 1920.

I’m driving a truck with an internal combustion engine, single-handedly moving thousands of pounds of cargo at speeds far beyond what a horse and cart can achieve. That’s because the automobile was invented in 1886, as part of the second Industrial Revolution.

While I drive, I can call up and speak to another human in real time, hundreds of miles away, utilizing cellular and blue tooth technology that would have been unimaginable to someone living in the early 1900s.

This is just a quick snapshot of how much the world has changed in just a single century. The idea that you can’t change the world is absurd. People do it all the time.

We can change the world, and it’s going to change in ways we don’t want if we don’t take necessary action. The only thing you can depend on, the only constant, is that things are going to change.

To be fair, in the conversation I just had, I don’t think he was trying to instill a sense of hopelessness in me. I believe he was saying that you can’t change the minds of the powers that be (e.g., the government and the owner class who are making historical profits off the impending apocalypse). Perhaps, at first blush, it’s hard to argue with that.

In the previous chapter, I think I made it pretty clear that we can’t depend on billionaires or the government to come and save us, after all.

However, in the long term, he was just as wrong about not being able to convince people to change, as he was when he said you can’t change the world. Governments are powerful, yes, but ultimately they depend on the will of the people to exist. Businesses, no matter how enormous or powerful, are dependent upon the markets for their solvency and very existence.

And the market, simply put, is made of people.

Do I agree that it’s not easy to change the minds of the government and big business? Absolutely! I’m not pretending that this will happen overnight.

But clearly, change does happen. History shows us that things change all the time, and the main force, the main impetus for change, is the human mind. On a long enough timeline, if we keep moving in the right direction we, the people will emerge triumphant.

Unfortunately, we’re not on a long time frame. We’re under 500 days and counting until potential disaster. We must balance our intention for immediate action with a long-term strategy. They are not mutually exclusive. The truth is, they can work together quite harmoniously if done correctly.

In order for us to win, we cannot be indecisive, we cannot be equivocal, and we cannot afford to get bogged down in negotiations. We’ve known about the dangers of climate change and the catastrophe it could bring for more than 50 years. We've been struggling against economic inequality for decades. These are not new problems. 

When it comes to climate change, you’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. If you’re on the wrong side, you’re actively making the situation worse.

Do we want the children of our children’s children to look back and wonder how we could care so little about them? Do we want our history books to show that we were warned about the dangers of climate change for decades, but chose to ignore those warnings? That we showed such little regard for future generations, because it wasn’t cheap or convenient enough for us to take action? Is that the legacy we are really going to choose?

If we do care, we need to take action now, in the present, to prove it. It is our greatest responsibility in life to leave a safer, healthier, and more peaceful world for our children. The Japanese founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano said that every human has an obligation to make the world a better place than when they found it. 

If we act now, and maintain a clear and unwavering vision for our future, we can succeed in building a better world. In the next chapter, we’ll look at the key to change.