In 2008, the fresh authenticity that seemed to define Barack Obama’s presidential campaign reinvigorated the hopes of tens of millions of youthful Americans; espousing themes of universal inclusiveness, and transparency in government, the 2008 Obama campaign seemed for many to epitomize all that could be done to improve both America and the world.

But most of it was not to be. The ensuing eight years would be defined by rigid congressional gridlock and levels of partisanship heretofore unheard of in a modern democracy.

In 2011, the Obama administration would begin a military intervention in Libya that was fated to ultimately plunge the once-functioning society into a state of utter chaos—one from which it has yet to recover. In June 2013 The Guardian would begin publishing a series of documents detailing the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone and Internet usage, a program continued and escalated by the Obama administration’s policies. In 2014, after the Ukrainian government balked at proposals of European Union exclusivity (to the detriment of its relations with the Russian Federation), President Obama publicly supported the overthrow of the constitutionally-elected government of Ukraine and covertly began preparations to install one of the West’s own choosing. Russia’s reaction to the prospect of a NATO member state less than 500 kilometers from Moscow was, in a word, predictable.

At home, the American political process became increasingly subjugated to the agendas of a corporate aristocracy that manages the selection of main party candidates for federal office, thereby ensuring the state’s cooperation in maintaining their interests and primacy. America’s urban police departments continued—at least in appearance—their transformation away from the benign law-enforcers of the past, into domestic soldiers in service of an outdated establishment.

Entrenched interests stymied major course-changes both internationally and domestically during President Obama’s administration, all the while their media mouthpieces bombarded the American people with tableaus suggesting supposedly natural ideological dichotomies, and sketches of political theater so neatly scripted that participants often forgot their lines. Imperialism abroad, the erosion of democracy at home; business as usual. The world changed when Barack Obama was elected president—that much is beyond doubt. It just didn’t change very much.

But what of those tens of millions of young people, all united in their support of the change that Barack Obama represented? Those young people who sat out the midterm elections of 2010, 2012 and 2014, not only not voting, but not speaking? Those young people?

Indeed, what of them?

The scant Millennial responses to America’s emerging indiscretions have been defined by their impotence, with few exceptions. Gay and transgender Americans are gradually beginning to attain the recognition and equality they should have always had as a result of sustained activism by the LGBT community and its allies—allies whose ranks admittedly include at least in principle if not in body the vast majority of Millennials. Police accountability is now a national concern, though the disproportionate targeting of African-Americans and the admirable kindling of their righteous fury in response has earned them the unfortunate credit for that accomplishment. No, Millennials have by and large contented themselves with reveling in their own compassionate inclusiveness, lauding their progressive humanistic ideals, and marveling at just how great the world is going to be after they've fixed everything. Celebrations are sporadically interrupted just long enough to accommodate the occasional public rally or rare protest outside a government office, but in neither case is an act with potential to result in actual change being undertaken; all of the rallies and protests that have in recent years epitomized the Left’s — and by usual extension, Millennials — methods of addressing political dilemmas have amounted to nothing more than displays of impotent rage, and even they are sadly infrequent.

The reality is that the men and women occupying political office in America have no incentive to listen to what can’t be heard. We Millennials are not relevant—our ideas are not relevant—so long as we are not acting. So long as we are not running for office. So long as we’re not making our voices heard in every election. Our unity on a number of issues is at this point abundantly clear; our task is parleying that unity into action. If we want publicly-funded elections, we need to take tangible steps to make that a reality. Many people, in extolling the virtues they perceive our generation to have, overlook the gulf dividing mere potential from real greatness—the action which realizes one’s potential and makes them great. Merely protesting is not acting. Merely rallying is not acting. Merely occupying is not acting. Merely writing for the Internet is not acting. The presence of the right conditions alone are not enough for the perfect storm to manifest in politics. People must act.

Which brings us to today. Today, there is again hope. The Millennial cohort—our Millennial cohort—has now definitively crossed the threshold into adulthood. We are now as free as we ever will be to make our voices heard by the morass of modern society, and better equipped than anybody in human history to ensure that what we have to say is worth hearing. In creating Odyssey, Evan Burns and Adrian France have done something of gravitational importance: They have created an environment in which the free-flow, and consequent refinement, of ideas between disparate and manifold minds is encouraged from the principle. The scope and potential of this project is utterly unprecedented.

So what of us, Millennials? All of this is to say something very simple: We need to be coming up with solutions of our own to the problems that we see. We need actionable plans, and we need to follow through on their executions once we’ve found the right ones. Old ways of thinking cannot sustain us any further; the interests that have for so long propelled societies’ actions both domestically and abroad must now be fundamentally reconsidered if lasting solutions to the problems that beset humanity are to have any hope of being found.

So let us reconsider. Let us re-examine, and let us re-investigate our own beliefs, and learn why we hold those that we do. Let us commit ourselves to becoming a more rational, a more informed and a more participatory citizenry. The ideas erected by the old world will loom over us only so long as we allow them to; so let us reconsider them.