There’s so much stuff happening right now, and knowing about it usually just makes you feel worse if you don’t know what you as a person can do. For instance, what can I do about corruption in Washington? What can I do to end the world’s addiction to oil?
Reading the news, by and large, only tells you what’s happening, not what you can do about it. So, with the biggest topics du jour (oil, terrorism, political corruption, bird flu, malaria, you name it), can I make a difference? How?
What organizations should I become active in? I don’t know.
Just curious. I want to do something. I’m tired of reading about what’s happening in the paper, then turning the page, thinking, “Oh, well, there’s nothing I can do about providing internet access to Africans now, is there?” “There’s nothing I can do about Darfur, is there?”
Well, I’m joining the Peace Corps. I may not change the world, but I’ll make a bigger difference than continuing to be a secretary for a dot com that is likely to tank within the year. If you want to stick around here, you can look in to the AmeriCorps.
Probably the first thing you’ll want to do is choose your battles. You are never going to save the whole world. You have to find the corner where you think you could help the most and focus on that.
What level of commitment do you want? On the lower levels, you can make a difference by not buying products with bad ecological, political or humanitarian effects. I’m reading a book on blood diamonds right now. It’s amazing that a few engagement rings have funded some of the worst human rights violations in history. Responsible tourism to developing countries can also be a low-commitment way to help out- tourism is pumping money in to the local economy, and as long as you be careful about what your spending money on (for example, wild animal parks are good…if it weren’t for those tourist dollars the villagers would probably go back to shooting the deadly annoying animals) but spending money on things like disfiguring foreign funded motels is probably not so great.
If you have more commitment, there are countless places where you can volunteer long term. My mom spent three months working at a Guatemalan orphanage. It’ll take a bit of research to find a program you can support (charity is not without it’s own ethics and nuances) and can get to, but you’ll find it. Figure out what skills you have to offer (even teaching English can provide a much better life for some people) and what areas you are most interested in. Then start your research. Universities, local churches, large volunteer organizations…these are all good places to start. There are also countless books on the subject.
In between, there is endless volunteer work you can do here- tutoring, teaching English, helping out at a clinic…just look around. Sometimes you can learn useful career skills from this, too.
You can’t save the world. But you can become a better person and become more active in it. As to how, I am not 100% sure. You can become a more conscious consumer and buy products that are from stores and companies that pay living wages and donate money to charity. You can write letters to politicians. You can donate money. I’m sure there are lots of small things you can do.
Take GW as an example. There’s an average guy who really fucked things up in trying to save a world that really didn’t want his help. Prior to the Iraq war and the “spreading of democracy in the mid-east” Iran was troublesome but now it is ruled by a democratically elected theocracy. The virtually terrorist Hamas wasn’t the governing body among the Palisinians. And so on.
Seconded. What we call “The World” is so complicated that even if you could make a major change on your own (You couldn’t, btw), it would screw the system up beyond belief.
Also, as you’ll probably find going through life, “The World” doesn’t want to be saved. “The World” doesn’t even want to be helped. It wants to be left alone to sort things out on its own.
If you really want to help, keep it local. Study hard in school, and be a doctor or nurse or teacher. Be a lawyer and do a lot of pro bono work or environmental stuff. Hell, get really really rich and be a philanthropist. Do you really want to improve the world? It all starts with you.
The first, crucial step is to accept that you’re not going to see huge immediate results from your own individual actions. You, personally, cannot save the world. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to help.
There’s no quick cure, but the best long-term antidote is for citizens to be informed about corruption issues, and to be politically active at your state and local level to support decent politicians who are more responsive to the voters than to deep-pockets lobbyists. Support a movement for Clean Elections in your state, on a par with the legislation enacted by Maine and Arizona, to provide public financing for electoral candidates who renounce lobbyist funding.
Figure out ways for you, your family, and maybe your community to be less dependent on automobile use. Could you or your spouse habitually walk, bike, or take transit to work? Could you perhaps cut down auto use enough to get rid of one of the family cars? (Reducing gasoline consumption generally doesn’t start to save you serious money until it gets to the point where you can actually reduce the number of cars you own. And although altruistic desires to save the world are nice, what really brings in enough participants to make a noticeable impact is the prospect of saving serious money.)
Shift your food consumption to include more locally produced foods; be more aware of what you buy at the supermarket and how far it had to be shipped to get to you. What’s up with your local farmer’s market or community gardens?
Ones that you enjoy and respect. There’s no point hanging around with do-gooder groups if you don’t think they have sensible ideas, effective methods, or enjoyable company. You will have more fun and probably more opportunities for useful work if you look for local organizations to participate in, instead of just writing checks for membership dues to large activist groups. (Some of the local organizations may be chapters of the large activist groups, though, and there’s no reason to avoid them if you think they’re doing good work.)
You can’t solve the political issues there singlehanded, but you could donate to a relief organization such as Oxfam, UNICEF, or Doctors Without Borders for their Sudan crisis funds.
Just writing checks isn’t enough to solve a problem, but it often helps somewhat. You might want to consider setting a budget for annual or monthly donations to good causes, and doing some careful research on charity and aid organizations to find out where your donation dollars will do the most good. The Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, consolidated in 2001 with the National Charities Information Bureau, is a useful resource for evaluating many charitable organizations.
The way I see it, the best thing that can be done for the world is to somehow increase the numbers of educated Americans who participate in the political process. Our country is leading the world over a cliff, and most of this could be prevented if we citizens had full awareness and understanding of how our government’s role in this process. So if you want to save the world, make Americans smarter and more involved in politics.
If you can’t do that, at least vote in the presidential primaries.
After you’ve lost faith on those approaches, you can try doing what I do, which is feeding all your kitchen waste into a worm bed instead of throwing it into a landfill.
None of us can save the entire world. We can only work on small parts of it, like individuals in crisis who need our help. Others here have made some excellent suggestions and provided some good links as well.
Here are a few more:
www.doctorswithoutborders.org Help these folks assist those in need of medical care in places where they might never get such help otherwise.
www.iAbolish.org. Reduce the number of slaves in the world. There shouldn’t be any, but as I said earlier, you can’t eliminate such a huge problem all on your own.
I just want to clarify that I was exaggerating the “save the world” thing. I figure most of you understood that I don’t really think I can save the world.
I’m just tired of listening to the news and not knowing what to do about it.
I want some ideas.
One comment, I’m irreversably globalized. My day to day life (my girlfriend, my family, my studies) covers three continents. I suppose I can act where I am, but I don’t have a stable locale for this point in my life.
That’s one big problem in wanting to help. I used to work in the soup kitchen and do habitat for humanity, but now I’m always either going somewhere or getting all of the paperwork done to go somewhere else.
Or you could passively save the world by having no children, having one child, or having one child and adopting the rest. Yes, I do realize this is a very unpopular option.
A lot of the world’s problems are caused by overpopulation, IMHO.
I think an easy way to start is to just do things you know are right. Such as driving less, or not at all, spend an extra 10 cents or whatever on that cup of fair-trade coffee, recycle, etc…
After the little stuff, the bigger stuff gets easier.
Two things you should know about important jobs that make a difference:
Quite a bit of your life is going to be spent doing paperwork. You might as well learn to love it now.
You will be spending an awful lot of your time travelling.
Generally speaking, the kind of jobs that make a huge difference and do quite a bit of good aren’t terribly exciting. Cops don’t spend most of their time hanging off the edges of runaway helicopters. Doctors don’t spend a lot of time fighting the clock trying to neutralize the deadly snake venom before it stops Little Timmy’s heart. The kind of work you’re thinking about involves the above-mentioned paperwork and travel, excruciating attention to detail, constant learning, and a huge capacity to wait for results which will not be forthcoming right away. This applies not only to doing the actual job itself but also to merely getting trained to do the work.
In short, you won’t need the strength of Hercules or the wisdom of Athena, although these don’t hurt. You will need the patience of Job.
As corny as it sounds you really can help the world by focusing on making yourself a better person. Kinder, more forgiving, or more honest and direct. Whatever direction looking at yourself and being very honest leads you in. We each create ripples as we go through our day and intereact with people. Like brings us experiences and opportunities to help and grow and as we grow we are more able to help.
Politics; I think we need to change the way campaigns are financed, and then we as voters need to stop tolerating the dishonest corrupt crap that goes on. In an old book about political corruption in Chicago the author suggested that we just keep throwing people out of office when we find some convincing evidence of corruption until politicians get the message that we won’t tolerate it. We have every right to know who is financing the campaigns and vacations, etc. etc. of our elected officials.
Volunteer work is a great thing but if you can’t do that then help out whenever the opportunity presents itself. Remember, trying to save the world may require some sacrifice. We choose what we value and act accordingly. If we’re unwilling to sacrifice anything to make the world a better place then there’s a good chance it won’t be.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world” Gandhi
I pay close attention to succeeding there. I’m always put in the “crying baby” section of red-eye flights and I have no intention of (1) putting other people through that (2) having to deal with that when I’m flying.
More and more, I worry that’s the case. Dealing with consulates, foreign universities, airline companies, foreign banks, and then trying to collaborate all of them together is the most stressful and tedious experiences of my life.
This is somewhere where I think I’m doing well. All of my time is spent with people from around the world. Some from places that aren’t much of a “threat” to the united states (Sweden, France, Argentina, etc.), but also people from places like Iran, Syria, and China.
I can’t tell you how many times I had people thank me just for talking to them and changing the way they view Americans. I feel like if more Americans went and lived abroad, studied in programs that weren’t just for americans, learned other languages, then there wouldn’t be as much of a disconnect between America and the rest of the world.
People around the world often need a more realistic view of America, and Americans often need a more nuanced view of the world.
make sure you know who your elected representatives are. If they are not acting the way you would act if you were in their place, they are not representing you and you should respectfully let them know that. Make your vote reflect your convictions, not your apathy. Corruption only happens in an atmosphere where no one is paying attention.
Figure out how much petroleum you use (gas, oil, plastics), and try to find ways to cut down. One of two things will happen: either you will find you live better, others will notice and thus begins a trend, or you will find that you live poorer, which gives you an opportunity to examine the causes of why your life has becomce so oil-drenched.
Others you mentioned: oil Again, if oil is actually a concern, try to wean yourself off of it. A market solution will probably work best here. terrorism Terrorism becomes attractive when people feel so downtrodden and lacking in legitimate remedies that an act designed solely to scare the world and call attention to oneself starts to make sense. Sometimes this sense of the world (if not the terrorism) is based on legitimate problems, sometimes people are just murderous assholes inventing an excuse. All you can do is make sure you are not contributing to legitimate problems that result in a rise in terrorism. political corruption Again, make sure your representatives know that you are paying attention. bird flu Bird flu may happen, it may not. The reason it made headlines within the last year is that, based on what we know about such things, should it become a human epidemic, it has the potential to be a disaster of epic proportions. The only way to keep teh damage to a minimum will be a large-scale coordinated effort of immunization, prevention, treatment, and quarantine. Those who are aware of the details of what that would entail on the worst possible scale say we are not currently ready for such a disease. Time to let that politician know what you think. malariaPrimarliy a tropical disease. Formerly preventable by not going where the malaria is, but certain realities in those regions is making such avoidance difficult. Again, see if you are doing anything to contribute to the continuance of those conditions, and stop doing whatever it is.
Countries have widespread internet access because they are rich. Africa is poor. Look to see if Africa has any potential wealth-yielding resource it can provide to benefit its citizenry so they have the opportunity to arrange internet access if that’s what they want. When you find one, the next question will be one of two: Either, Why does this non-exploited resource remain unexploited? or Why is the wealth generated from this exploited African resource not benefitting Africans? Work from there.
Probably not. People int he know can’t even always agree on whether it’s an ethnic cleansing or a good old-fashioned range war.
First you have to identify all of the problems that you see with the world. Then, pick the one(s) that you can and/or want to do something about, and have at.
