Concentrating On Problems You Can Solve Isn’t Apathy… It’s Smart And Noble
Today’s post is brought to you based on a Twitter joke I made with Ed Latimore. Ed doesn’t vote because he’s politically neutral, choosing not to pick between two parties he feels don’t represent him.
(This is the democratically correct position to take. You pick the person best fit to represent your needs. Though that’s not how it works in practice.)
I decided to jump in, joking that he needed to man up and pick who he wanted to get screwed over by:
For the record, joking or not, the above – whilst jovial – is my general view of politics and big systems in general. Power corrupts is a universal rule, not just a catchy proverb.
We’ll get to my serious thoughts in a minute. Let me finish the story first.
Ed has many, many more Twitter followers than me. Whenever he retweets me, I get exposed to a bunch of new people. Some comments are smart and make me rethink my position. Some are so unbelievably dumb that I can’t believe they aren’t trolls.
Most fall in the middle and whilst they don’t change my mind, they force me to think about how I’d clarify my position.
Take this tweet:
Now, this guy made me think about how I’d clarify my position – and there are a lot of lessons in this for potential businesspeople, critical thinkers and even the politically hopeful. Let’s talk about those.
Focusing On Problems You CAN Solve Isn’t Selfish, It’s The Right Course
In my opinion – and I don’t like talking for other people – the guy above made a simple error of thinking. As a principled non-voter, (i.e. I’m not going to vote unless I believe in the candidate’s policies – all else be forgotten,) I’ve noticed this “error” a lot.
“You don’t vote therefore you’re apathetic.”
The error here is equating political affiliation, or a lack thereof, with apathy.
It’s an error because you can be passionate about a political cause without affiliating with a political party.
Assuming a person doesn’t care about politics because they abstain from voting is an error.
You have a limited amount of time and energy available to you. You can solve a limited amount of problems. Many people spend their energy trying to convince others to “join the team” and spread political awareness and similar things. This is mostly wasted energy.
Let’s say there’s a political candidate who cares about an issue you also care about. Let’s say it’s “a better environment for small businesses.” You can spend twenty hours a week on Twitter trying to get this guy elected. Now, without going into specifics about the likelihood of a candidate’s pledges happening, ask yourself: what have you gained after those twenty hours?
You haven’t solved a problem. You haven’t made your area better for local business. All you’ve done is helped some indirect goal possibly inch a little further towards completion and flag-waved for a figurehead which, even if they’re earnest, might not be able to achieve the goals that they and you want.
Instead… you could spend twenty hours a week actually helping local businesses. Offer discounted rates to small business. Buy local produce. Go on Twitter and promote businesses in your area. Put one guy in touch with another guy.
This achieves your goal.
Localised Problem Solving Is Achievable, Realistic And Within Reach Of Everyone
There are a lot of angry people out there. I’m sometimes one of them. A lot of young people are angry; you can see that on your television, across the internet and basically everywhere else.
Young people have a lot to be angry about. In a big way, they’ve all been sold down-the-river. And it’s not just young people either; plenty of people get their pensions wiped out because some over-zealous banker decided to do some dodgy deals or rough trades.
Inevitably, this descends into political, cultural, racial, social and gender divides.
It’s hard to keep the hope up when you’ve got an unsustainable economy, environmental issues and the government is probably putting chemicals into your water that are turning the frogs gay.
Ultimately though (and this is totally an opinion piece…)
There is nothing you can do about that. You might never get a pension. Nor might you ever be a homeowner and if you are one, there’s no guarantee that you’ll keep your home.
But there are things you can do to improve your life quality and even fix some of those big problems in a way.
That way is by solving the problems you can solve and forgetting (or forgiving yourself) those out of reach things.
You can’t save the environment, but you can commit to reducing your own waste – and building eco-friendly alternatives. (One person I know of made a ton of money with bio-degradable shoes. If everyone wore biodegradable shoes, how much cleaner would the environment be?)
You can’t eradicate poverty in your country, but you can allegorically teach men to fish.
Importantly: you can’t rely on politicians to save your bacon, but you can build a community that doesn’t need politicians to save you.
Doing The Above Isn’t Apathy
Apathy is thinking that the only power you have is a tick on a ballot box every four years.
There’s nothing stopping you from solving real problems and pushing the world forward on a local level. Those things add up over time and have an exponential effect. There’s also nothing wrong with doing a cost-benefit analysis of your actions and solving the problems that’ll generate the most benefit.
Finally, there’s nothing wrong with assuming that politics is a rigged game and you’re better off concentrating on other stuff. That doesn’t make you apathetic – it makes you smart for utilising your better judgement.
As a side note: I’m not condemning people who vote here. If you think that voting does some good, provides benefit and helps to make the world better, then go for it. Should you believe a political candidate will act in a manner that’ll bring the world you want to see into being (and you think that that they can achieve that) then vote.
But don’t equate political affiliation with actual agency in the world. They are not related and if you do, then you’re inherently limiting yourself and your capacity to do useful stuff.