Causes, causes everywhere but rarely a solution to be found.
It’s interesting, isn’t it? There is a sky high pile of causes. Yet, nothing ever seems to get “fixed”. It’s no surprise.
It’s all part of what I would call the great activism hoax.
I don’t like the word activism. It’s another modern garbage word. It means nothing, but it sounds good.
Here’s what activism really is. It is a media saturated culture seeking out ways to belong to something that helps them solidify the identity they think they want. People are showered with platitudes and talking points from public service announcements, teachers, politicians, junk science observational studies and a host of other sources.
The result is what people call activism and it has become absurd.
What happened to priorities?
There are lots of problems in the world. There’s no doubting that. Among the top problems are…
- wars
- government corruption
- an economy built on a scam called central banking, causing world wide economic problems
- a horribly failing education system
- people being purposely dumbed-down
These are big problems with wide spread effects on the human race – death, destruction, abuse, oppression, loss of human liberty, poverty… and a general lack of humanity, intelligence and civility.
Every Opinion A Cause
Instead of focusing on these problems that are the major causes of human suffering, people get caught up in petty activism.
- Save the [ insert animal / thing that is not human]
- People striving to make all people eat how they want them to
- Niche groups of easily offended people working to get government to force people speak and think how they want
- Short people claiming discrimination and trying to get step stools in all grocery stores
- Tall people claiming discrimination because auto makers don’t make cars to fit them well
- Fat people claiming discrimination because they can’t fit into movie seats
- Lazy people who take no responsibility for their own lives claiming everything under the sun is a right.
Nothing would surprise me at this point. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Al Sharpton attack jelly bean companies because the black jellybeans have a flavor that a lot of people don’t like.
Where does it end? There will always be a person who is offended or hurt by something.
At sometime, I bet a child got injured slipping on bubble mix while playing in their driveway. Shall we claim bubbles too dangerous for play and try to ban them?
The food nazis, safety nazis and other wanna-be dictators are infatuated with controlling how other people live. Then there are those people who are in denial of reality. Life has risks. People will be hurt. There will be accidents. People and animals die.
All of this petty activism is a giant distraction from fixing large scale human problems (which are mostly caused by governments and central planning & fixed by the market). Instead, we fool ourselves into thinking stepping behind a curtain and pulling a lever every so often is some kind of solution. That’s the sad part. We defer the problems causing the most human suffering to the people causing it, politicians.
Petty activism distracts us from fixing the big problems and stopping the big scams.
Everybody is an Activist
Everybody these days is an “activist” of some kind. It’s annoying. What do most “activists” really do? They complain about stuff and argue with people of differing opinions. Oh, and they belong to groups.
Isn’t it nice to belong? Doesn’t it feel nice? You are a member of an association. Aren’t you special? You are important now, aren’t you? Now you have something to mention at mixers.
Plus, you can make snarky comments to people who aren’t part of your movement. The member of the vegan group who wants everyone to be like them can say “Are you really going to eat that burger? Meat is murder, you know”.
Meanwhile that holier-than-thou vegan supports the politician engaging in multiple wars responsible for large amounts of unnecessary deaths and murders of human beings. It’s nice to know people have a priority list and massive amounts of human death isn’t on the top of it.
There is so much activism that the word activism has lost its meaning.
“Activism” Keeps People From Focusing on Their Own Lives
When you are an activist, it’s always the other person who is the problem. The world would be great if it weren’t for that other person or group or thing that is not me.
There is an old saying…
Take care of each moment and you will take care of all time.
-Buddha
This is true on another level. If each individual took care of their own life, all of society would be taken care of.
Can all people take care of themselves? No. There are disabled people, injured people, young children, elderly people, and other people who just ran into bad luck. In these cases, activism is not the best answer either. The best answer is strong individuals lending a helping hand – friends, families, neighbors, acquaintances and others.
Think about it. Wouldn’t a world where the values are deeply rooted in able-bodied people focusing on cultivating a life of self-reliance, self-empowerment, strong minds, strong bodies and personal independence be the best one to help those in need? A society full of self-reliant individuals who focused on creating a healthy, fulfilling, abundant, financially sound life would be full of people who had enough resources to help their friends, family, and neighbors.
Isn’t it interesting that in a society with rampant activism and the focus on the collective that we have elderly parents being sent to institutional senior living communities? Isn’t it interesting that in this society of big government programs and activism that individuals do not have the financial resources to take care of their own family?
Maybe if people spent less time on activism and more time on being strong, intelligent, principled, self-reliant individuals there would be less problems and less need for activism.
Activism Enables New Government Controls & Failures
There is an especially dangerous aspect of activism that people don’t talk about much. Activism is an excuse for government to take more control of your life and take away more of your freedom.
When an activist group protested after acouple young people died from taking too much ephedrine (misusing it), the government used it as an excuse to ban over the counter access to it. It was perfectly safe when used properly. Now it’s not available for public use at all.
This happens all the time in all sorts of ways. Just take a look at the news. Some activist group will protest something and the next thing you know there is a new law doing one or more of the following things:
- telling everyone what they cannot do
- telling everyone what they must do
- allowing the government to take more from people
- allowing the government more access to your personal business and decreasing your privacy
- reducing your liberty
The government must enjoy this rampant activism. With all of these causes from the thousands of label happy groups, it gives the government a never ending stream of opportunities to get more power and control over our lives by “fixing” things. Only things never seen to get better. You never hear government brag about how many people they save from poverty with their programs do you? You won’t. They only make people more dependent, poorer and less free. As Ludwig von Mises so wisely said, any addition of government is a negation of liberty.
Furthermore, all of this activism has diluted the much need focus required to make improvements to the major problems facing our society such as the military industrial complex, government corruption, an economy built on scams and phony money, the merger of government and global corporate interests, and other large scale problems of human suffering.
When people are divided into a thousands and thousands of niche activists groups, politicians can pit them against one another instead of focusing on the politicians themselves who have either caused the problem or have failed miserably at fixing it.
Stop Activism. Start Action.
Activism has a pretty terrible track record. Most of the activism that has “worked” was funded by big money and agendas that expand government and usually just caused a whole new set of problems.
It’s time to rethink activism. It’s time to stop being an activist. Be an individual of action.
Take care of your life, your family and your business.
Be a self-reliant, independent person with the ability and the means to help others.
If good people do this, then more good will be done. The best part is that it will be done by empowered individuals taking action and voluntarily collaborating with others.
