In the Market for a Cause

The world is a messed up place. Just glance at any newspaper, which take such pains to remind us: the bloody struggle in Syria, robo-calls, the controversial Kony2012 campaign (and by extension, the LRA), the abhorred Enbridge pipeline. And these are only the current events, the timely ones. Poverty, racism, bullying, climate change, a crippled education system, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia--I could go on for, well, just about ever. But my intention is not to depress anybody. Rather, it is to illustrate the diversity of problems we must face and overcome if we are to make this world, in some small way, a better place.

Before I continue, let me clarify. If you don’t believe we can make the world a better place so there’s no need to bother trying, then the following will be of no interest to you. If, however, you look at the status quo and you don’t like what you see and you do think it’s worth the time to at least try to improve matters, then we have something to talk about. If you believe it takes an organized effort to bring about change to make the world more open-minded, compassionate and sustainable, and you want to be a part of that change, then consider yourself an activist, and let’s get to work. But what happens when you are a free agent? An activist-for-hire, as it were?

Information

Thanks to current technology we live in an age of information; we have more ways of finding out about what’s going on in our world than we could have ever dreamed of before. We don’t know what to do with all of this information, and that’s something I would like to address. Harold Bloom has asked the question in at least two of his books: in an age of information, where is wisdom to be found? We don’t really know what to do with the vast landfill the internet has become, for example. Its variety and its volubility has created this false sense that we are capable of managing it. And yet we’re expected to know instinctively how to manage it.

Rule #1: Stay Informed.

Okay, sure. Sounds reasonable. But exactly what should we be staying informed on? Everything the media throws at us? Sounds daunting. If we are to be the bright and shiny citizens of the 21st century who care deeply about the world, are we expected to be experts on every single topic? Of course not, you might protest. Yet I feel that that common sense isn’t as common as it ought to be. At least not articulated clearly enough. Besides being something a person might do if they wanted to score world-savvy points with their peers, the task of knowing about every current event seems, and probably is, impossible.

Choice

There’s nothing new in pointing out that we have become inundated with choice, at least in the consumer world, and it has not necessarily made us happier. I can certainly say for myself that choice is overwhelming, and the more options there are the less enjoyable the freedom to choose becomes. This is the curse of consumerism, but I think it’s also true in the world of activism, humanitarianism, and social enterprise as well.

As tech-savvy groups have turned to social media to get their ideas across, more and more groups from various different causes have begun competing for our attention, much in the same way businesses compete in the world of commerce. We are living within a vast marketplace of causes, many of them noble, all of them vying for our awareness, for our money, and for our participation. I remember seeing this playing out quite clearly on Victoria’s Earth Walk last year, where there were booths for Students For A Free Tibet, The Canadian Tibetan Society, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, The Victoria Secular Humanist Society, the Communist Party, the Green Party, and a number of other grassroots activist groups. Many of these groups will argue that it is our moral imperative that we listen to them and follow their advice. Judging from the turn out at the Earth Walk, these groups seem to have roughly the same target demographic, even if their means are different, and sometimes even in direct opposition with one another. Many of them may make equally compelling cases, but I for one don’t have unlimited time and resources to devote to all of them, so I have to be selective, right?

The question is, in an age of various competing causes, how does a person decide which horse to bet on?

With so many delicious problems to choose from, how do we know which one is the most urgent, or the most crucial? For some people this is a no-brainer. Perhaps a person has lost a loved one to drugs and alcohol, or has recovered from them, so they feel compelled to help people struggling with substance abuse. Their imperative may take the form of volunteering, or it may become a career, leading them to become a social worker, police officer, doctor, teacher, or even—yes, even this—a politician. A person may have experienced so much abuse in the workplace that they become involved in labour activism. Or for some, the meat industry (à la Jonathan Safran Foer) is the great dragon to slay. For some people it simply is not a matter of choice. They have lived through events they cannot forget. They have seen things they cannot unsee, and the choice is clear. But what about those of us who haven’t been directly affected by any single major ill, and whose livelihood is, at least by comparison, morally neutral? Are we to wait until one of our loved ones has been beaten by a cop or gotten sick from something the government is dumping in our water, or killed in a massive tsunami? I certainly hope not. Thankfully we have our capacity for empathy and compassion that allows us to imagine what others are feeling.

Shotgun vs. Laser

I do grant that staying informed is an essential starting point to that empathic act. But we must go further. Keeping abreast of current events is like standing in a hallway with many open doors, and peeking inside of each. For some people that’s quite enough, thank you very much. But it seems to me you can’t stay in the hallway forever, if you mean to take action. The next step is to enter a room and spend some time there, which also means forgetting about the other rooms for the time being. This I would call the laser approach (specific, sustained action), as opposed to the shotgun approach (general, inconsistent action). I favour the laser to the shotgun, in theory, at least. I hope the Occupy Movement will stay alive for a long time to come, but one of the biggest issues I had with it (and other more intelligent and better informed people have commented on in greater detail) was that it seemed like an airing of general grievances, so general that it became ineffective. The shotgun is inconsistent, our donations and our petitions signings completely dependent on our whims and our limited awareness of said issue. “1%” can’t even begin to cooperate if we don’t know in specific terms what we want. The shotgun can also be overwhelming, lumping all the world’s problems together into one big hydra. Being a jack-of-all-trades activist is doable, but as a rule it doesn’t offer a person the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of a particular issue and become a more effective agent for change.

Despite everything I just said, I do think we can and should still pay attention to more than one issue; many people in BC who are furious about the toll we’re taking on the environment were also furious about the HST when it was introduced, all the way up till the day it was led to the guillotine. The downside of a strictly laser-like approach is it overlooks the simple fact that many of our world’s problems are deeply interconnected, and to take on one implies taking on many. It also means a lot of other problems must be set aside for the time being. This, I’m afraid, is something we have to accept.

Actually, let me reframe the laser/shotgun analogy. Perhaps it is better to have a shotgun approach in theory, and a laser one in practice. In order to commit to something we must forgive ourselves for excluding the other causes we’re not committing to. As I said before, we have to be mindful of the one we’re currently in, forget the other rooms for the time being, and forgive ourselves for forgetting. Empathy must be extended beyond the self, but it also starts with the self.

Choice, again

But that doesn’t answer the question of whose shoes it is our moral imperative to be walking a mile in. How do I as an individual decide what is the priority, if it is unclear to me? Or at least how do we know where to start? Do we choose the one that is most likely to succeed? or do you choose the one that seems to have been neglected? Or the one closest to home? Or the most urgent? Is it more responsible to focus on the welfare of the Tibetan people, even if it means we don’t concentrate on helping the indigenous peoples in our own country who are living in third world conditions? Do we try to help the homeless in our own streets, or do we focus on the ones living in more extreme poverty on the other side of the globe? Do we try to address inner-city gang violence if the Syrian people is locked in a bloody struggle against its own government, perhaps long after the media spotlight has passed and precious international pressure has been exhausted? Multi-tasking is not good for us, so why would it work with activism?

You’re probably aware, dear reader, that none of this answers the question. You may have even guessed by now that I don’t have an answer. But I think whatever it may be, it lies in the acceptance that you can’t help everybody, all the time. You can’t play God, (even God can’t play God, it seems), so relax. If those of us with the luxury of stepping back can do just that and allow ourselves to let go of all the other problems when the time comes to concrete action, that stepping back frees us from feeling obliged to choose all of them. Deciding may boil down to a person’s interests, or gut instinct about a cause, which ones they see themselves helping. I also think the answer has to do with enjoying it, too. Like work, you have to love what cause you’re investing yourself in. It may also mean accepting that your contribution may not be felt within your lifetime, but that it may be part of a cumulative process, and that any small act will do. The motto think globally, act locally makes great sense within the context of the shotgun/laser approach; in fact it’s just another way of saying the same thing.

Choose something. See what happens. As Joseph Campbell said, "follow your bliss." And while you're at it--I'm sorry for belabouring the point-- forgive yourself for setting aside the others. Take heart in the accomplishments of those who have gone before us: the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, feminism, the fall of the Soviet Union, the abolition of slavery, children’s rights--I could go on forever, but you get the point. Sure, Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t solve world hunger or broker peace between Israel and Palestine, but I think it’s safe to say that the dream he did have has helped to mend the world in other ways. If the world’s many problems really are interconnected, then whatever you do may have a farther-reaching effect than you might imagine. And the upside is that whatever horse you do bet on—it almost doesn’t matter which—I feel as though it is a million times better than if you don’t bet on one at all.

Here's a website Kayla showed me called Do Something for anybody who wants to do more than sign online petitions to try to make the world a better place, but might not be sure where to start. It looks like it's aimed at teens (which is an excellent idea), but I think it applies to anyone and everyone.

Anywho, enough sermonizing for today. Have a good night!

Liam