Scream, whine, give up or act?

As the new year begins, if we take an honest look around the globe, we will see much good and much bad. I’m not sure which is winning. On the good side, daily, there are close to 500,000 children born, many in good health, people are loving one another, helping one another, earning an honest wage and otherwise engaging in activities that benefit their family, friends, society, civilization and the planet. Then there is all the bad stuff going on. We know most of the keywords: crime, disparity, climate change, pollution, armed conflict, water and energy abuse and the list goes on.

So what are we going to do about it this year? What am I, you or anyone else going to do? My guess is that most of us will whine. We will complain to our entourage, possibly write a purposeless blog or otherwise grumble that no one is doing anything about anything. Sure, some are screamers. They advocate for change. Thank goodness for them but still, the world does not fundamentally shift. We still have dictators, the greedy and the criminals.

So clearly, the screaming and the whining is not sufficient.

Then there are those that have simply given up. They have opted to live out their lives in the sidelines. I don’t blame them. When you look at the aforementioned stagnation, it’s hard to find motivation. When you’ve lived a life of serial policy failures, you just pull out the latin ‘alea jacta est’ out of the glossary.

Fortunately, there are a few left that act. My question today is: “who are they?” Who are the real actors? Who are the ones who either act currently or have the potential to do so (I’ll call them dormant actors of change)? Who, in this chaotic world of ours, has the power of leverage in their arsenal? Can the President of the USA, Russia or China take us on a better path? Can parliaments? Can the ten wealthiest individuals? Can those who attend Davos each year? Can the hacker group anonymous somehow change the course of history (for the better)? What about our faith leaders in Rome and Mecca? Who, I ask, can act on behalf of an errant human race? Who can put us on a path of peace and collaboration; preferably in one or two generations, not twenty?

In essence, I think we’ve been so busy thinking about the how, that we’ve neglected the who.