A new year is coming up, which means that resolutions are incoming. What’s more, social media has been flooded as of late with a wave of posts expressing distaste for the year that has passed us. Much of this is due to a number of celebrity deaths that have occurred this year, including David Bowie and more recently, Carrie Fisher. However, there’s also an underling element of social unrest to all of this:

2016 was a stressful year for many. Social movements like Black Lives Matter pushed for reform, but with mixed reactions and only smaller successes. Police brutality is still a major issue in the country, and it still weighs on the minds of those living in it. This, combined with a presidential campaign and election that can only be described as embarrassing for the nation and foreboding at best for marginalized groups such as homosexuals and Muslims, has led a good deal of citizens to simply want to be done with the year.

The problem is, none of this goes away when the ball drops. 2017 will not magically fix anything. First of all, people will continue to die and that includes celebrities. It always has. But far more importantly, the social and political climate is not going to clear up by itself just because 365 days have passed since last January. Something needs to actually be done to resolve the conflicts that have been ignited in American society, or 2017 will be just as bad, if not worse.

This doesn't mean that there's no hope. 2017 could be grand! But what it does mean is that it is not going to be a fix-all, and if there's one thing everyone can do to help, it's not allowing themselves to be fooled into thinking that the year changing over will have solved anything. That sort of complacency is what allows issues to crop up and worsen, and we need the opposite of that to make things better. We need conscientiousness, on an individual level.