One of society’s favorite things to do is habituate to problems. It’s the same story every time: the media goes to town on some recent scientific discovery, political scandal, or God knows what, it gets shared on every platform imaginable, a few YouTube videos with flashy captions describing the gist of the dilemma go viral, and before you know it SNL is writing satires that help everyone forget it was ever something to be legitimately concerned about.
Whether nervously joking about moving to Canada if Trump gets elected or blaming bad weather on climate change, it is easy to remain on the outskirts of the matter, where we consider ourselves to be removed from being a part of the problem. So often, we paralyze ourselves from become active players capable of making real change happen because we believe that whatever happens will just happen. One person’s opinion can’t turn the whole thing around, right? In doing so, we become the driving force of the issue at hand. Sure, we are safe on neutral ground, but so is everyone else. The “majority” is preventing us from making a difference, we say, because even if we do something it will be impossible to change everyone else’s minds. The majority, however, is the neutral group we are a part of. We are all just “going with the flow” and allowing a few powerful people to control exactly which direction the flow goes.
It’s been said time and time again; individuals can change the world. However, this seems like such a daunting task, and most will shy away (rightfully so). Instead, we should be trying to change one other person’s mindset towards the problem we are concerned with. It’s as simple as starting a compost pile in your yard, which then inspires a neighbor. It’s going out and voting, which reminds your friends to do the same. It’s telling a teenaged girl she looks beautiful, which helps prevent her from skipping meals that day. It’s donating clothes to a local shelter, so that one more person is wearing a winter coat this year. These actions, though simple, can do a lot more good than a parody video on Facebook ever will.
There is a principle of chaos known as the Butterfly Effect, which states that a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico will cause a hurricane in China. It follows the idea that if said butterfly had not flapped its wings at the exact moment that it did, the hurricane never would have happened. The chain of events that spurred from the butterfly’s wings would have followed a different path, and thus the storm would not have accumulated. This theory shows exactly what it will take for each of us to help improve the world we live in. There are a whole lot of problems that need fixing, that fact cannot be denied or ignored. The wonderful thing about it is though, there are also a whole lot of people who can help fix each and every one, simply by flapping our wings.
