Changing the World and How to Do It

SOCIAL STUDIES - Times & Transcript

I have a confession to make. I want to change the world. I always have.

It is entirely possible that this marks some form of mental deviance, perhaps an under-developed ego, or id, or whichever psychological terminology is in vogue these days; but I doubt it.

You see, I imagine that deep down this is a goal we all secretly harbour. Admittedly, there are times when I would want to change it in a completely self-serving sort of way; creating, for example, a world where hot wings were a vegetable, or where video games counted as self-improvement tools.

When sanity returns I find myself wishing that milk cost less than Diet Coke; or that education and health care were of higher priority to those who dole out budgets. I wish that religious and social freedom were available to everybody, equally, in every country. And I want someone to develop a better system of economics than the ones we use now.

I guess I am a hippie at heart, wishing for peace, love, and hopefully even a bit of joy.

But then there are those days, and I know you have had them too, when you wake up with a headache, and life unfolds in a way to make you miserable.

Each moment seems to sap another ounce of hope out of your soul with such exacting vehemence that you swear there is absolutely no way that any of us could possibly make a difference.

Admittedly some of us spend our whole lives tilting at windmills,­ fighting enemies real and imagined only to find ourselves nursing the wounds of indifference with such bitterness and anger that our dotage is filled with sarcastic rage.

To save you from such a fate I want to offer a few suggestions, very tangible and practical that will help you to change the world.

Let's start with the most modest of activities; you could smile.

This is my favourite form of social deviance. It seems to be a dying art, go ahead and look around yourself today, at the office, on the bus, at the person next to you while you idle waiting for the light to change, at the clerk punching in numbers on the cash register.

Almost none of them are smiling.

How much better do you feel when someone smiles at you? Go ahead and try it, randomly smile at people and see what happens. For the most part they will smile back; and you, my friend, have changed the world.

Advancing to stage two would require you to go out and watch an Al Gore movie, or read some David Suzuki articles. Then you will shut that car down while idling, turn off the tap while brushing your teeth, flick a few light switches and choose to walk up and down two flights of stairs.

There are in fact a million little things you can do to change your energy consumption (just don't let NB Power find out or they might level some form of surcharge on energy efficiency).

Now let's start into financing the revolution. Bill Clinton wrote about a way that you could actually use the Internet to change lives. Oprah Winfrey picked up on it, and since then every major news source in the Western Hemisphere has introduced us to kiva.org There was even an article in the business section of the Times & Transcript talking about the wonders of this wealth sharing website.

Kiva works like this. They host a lending program for entrepreneurs in developing countries who post business plans and start up costs. Ordinary people like you and me can then read their stories and put up our own capital, as little as $20 dollars, to get them off the ground.

Kiva posts a picture of each loan recipient on the Internet, so that contributors can see who they are helping, read their name and learn their story through their business description. Field Partners post updates to each business throughout the loan term, and lenders can post comments in reply to the Partner Representative, asking questions about the business or expressing their encouragement for the entrepreneur.

Here is what I find most amazing; in the two years it has existed Kiva has lent out $19,171,685. The average amount that any one individual has lent is $86. They have helped to start 29,339 new companies. When someone in Morocco, Afghanistan, Thailand, or the Ivory Coast makes an application for a loan, the funds are usually raised by breakfast the next day. Finally, the repayment rate for loans made through Kiva is an astounding 99.84 per cent.

It is almost too simple to use Kiva to help other people and there are very few of us who do not have an extra $20 dollars kicking around once or twice a year.

If you actually keep your eyes open, I would wager that you could find a different way to change the world every day.

If we all started trying just a little bit harder, imagine what we could do.

And for gosh sake, sign that organ donor card.