It often seems that those with heart and brains and the big picture on the foreground, the ones who feel what's wrong in this world like lifelong musicians that can tune a guitar by ear when everyone else just hears noise, are scared. A natural, but toxic, next instinct is to decide, "I'm smart enough to understand what’s happening in the world, and I'm smart enough to know there isn't a thing I can do about it." It is a fear-flight response. With that said, if that's the contemporary portrait of “safe and practical” --- then those states of comfort are worth moving away from.
The moment the people with heart and vision and a vision ahead of their times stop fighting for the future they want to see, that is the day they create the very dead end they predicted out of that fear. That is the first day that they are right: it is never getting better. As long as people do nothing because they believe they can only do nothing, nothing is all that is left. It is a wasteland.
This is why it is critical that you never give yourself permission to cop out and check out. It is so easy to stand back, watch it burn, and say, “I told you so,” and to tell yourself, “this was inevitable.” Who cares if you are right if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy? Nothing will calcify you faster than failing to challenge learned-helplessness.
Cynicism is a protective mechanism when going out on a limb feels dangerous, but in facing modern challenges, it is not going to save you. Every action and inaction matter and serve as equally powerful catalysts for what comes next: a positive difference, or enabled lesser acts by others.
1. Enlightenment Philosopher John Locke
Have you ever heard an environmentalist say, "Every switch you turn off, every appliance you unplug, every minute in the shower matters in the battle against climate change"? Have you ever heard any civic participation activist say, "Every vote matters"? It does. They do.
What would you do if you weren’t afraid to put yourself ourselves out there and fight for what you believe in? What if this was a basic human instinct, where theoretical virtue became as courageously catalyzing and life or death is anxiously catalyzing, and we all went for it?
Some philosophers suggest we would have a system and a society worth having. For Enlightenment philosophers, like John Locke, who argue that the people ought to have ultimate sovereignty in a given political system, it is true that the best outcomes for everyone are dependent on civic engagement. Without it, the collective voice is incomplete – or even nonexistent. In order to have popular sovereignty, an idea found both in Greek and Rome's democracies and republics, the people need to be get involved and participate. Otherwise representatives are non-reflective of the people they represent and democracies are ineffective.
2. Existentialist Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
It's not enough to vote for the right person. It's not enough not to be an awful person. It is not enough to post disapproving memes and mumble witticisms about wanting to drink yourself to death in a hopeless void. Even my existentialist friends will agree Jean-Paul Sartre, one father of the philosophy, would respond to that with his most infamous hard-hitter: “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.” Even if your cynicism waxes existentialist or even nihilist, meaninglessness is not an excuse for allowing bad things to happen or failing to be a part of the world. We are doomed to freedom because it implies the obligation that we have responsibilities to do positive things with it: like be a part of a better future and actively build a better life for ourselves.
3. Deontological Philosopher Immanuel Kant
In contemporary activism, what is the ethical imperative?
I don't care if you're maladjusted in a society that is sick. I don't care if you're uninspired or discouraged. If no one is saying, “action” -- declare action yourself. If no one is going, start going. The entire point of a grassroots effort is that individuals, one at a time, come together in a crowd. They forget “top down”, or leaders, or traditional signs of success (power structures or funding or prospects). They just do it, and they see other people doing it, so more people do it, and it starts with one and two and three. Start to live to create the world you want to live in. Carve it out of the marble. As long as you think the only way the world can, or will be, is the way people in power say it is, you will have no ground to disagree with them. If it can be better, and that is something you see it and feel and believe, you have an obligation to help realize that improvement.
4. President Barack Obama
Cynics, pessimists, and misanthropes only ever breed a world worth being cynical, pessimistic, and misanthropic about. People that tune in, tap in, dare to try something or fight for something or believe in something or put themselves out there? They change the world. They live interestingly. They’re worth connecting to. They’re worth watching. They live lives worth living.
If the future inspires you to create -- build a life, plant roots -- and the past has you negative and dwelling, dare to look ahead. It is a much more productive conversation to talk about what's next, what can be better, than walking around relentlessly talking about what you despise.
The reality is that our political climate is unpleasant and polarized, our sociological reality is heartbreaking, our economic future is discouraging, and most actions feel like a drop in the ocean. Those feelings are valid. As excuses, however, they do not stand. Cynicism is enough to suffocate a generation. Don't do that. Learned helplessness will leave you powerless until the day you die. The future is malleable. Barack Obama spent his presidency living this point: “You can’t afford to be cynical. Cynicism is fashionable sometimes. You see it all over our culture, all over TV, everybody likes putting stuff down and being cynical and being negative, and that shows somehow that you’re sophisticated and you’re cool. You know what — cynicism didn’t put a man on the moon.”
5. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
You're a powerful, multifaceted human being with a full spectrum of experiential possibility. You are capable of more than one thing, even more than one thing at once. Most people are feeling something, doing something else, and saying something completely different from either. Empathy, love, rage, heartbreak, hope. You don't have to stop on "anger", or be exclusively devoted to it. You can make a choice in the name of something good. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Relentless civic engagement is exhausting, and sometimes the investment is difficult to justify as a mere act of optimism. However, it is also our responsibility to the future. That is something worth fighting for.
Good is still an option. It is always on the table. Make space for it. Don't tap out.