The irony of saving the world today

Every generation, when young, has encountered some sort of drive to change the world. Typically into a better place, too. The better of course depends on the individual and can be interpreted to mean a greedy, capitalistic, free-market world or a closed Communistic system or something in between. Recently better has been defined as being green, saving seals, etc. The difference this time round, to be slightly provocative, is that nothing is happening.

The current method of helping causes is to click on the "Join This Cause" link on Facebook. And 'lo and behold, nothing happens. It's pretty similar to me sitting in cafés, drinking overpriced espressos, eating healthy salads and bitching and moaning about the state of the world only to eventually head off to work to optimize my financial situation. And as good as "we're helping raise awareness around this issue!" sounds, ultimately it's completely and utter BS. Talk is cheap and that's about it.

This might sound like a very cynical view, and it most likely also is, too. But the problem is familiar yet again. How does one actually help make the world a better place? I was recently in a situation where this topic was brushed upon and a friend of mine who had some knowledge and first-hand experience with dealing with crisis zones as a peacekeeper suggested that there might not be that much that an individual person can do. He suggested that buying a blanket for a homeless child is equivalent to, well, nothing. It won't solve anything and instead you should focus on fixing the more fundamental problems instead of fighting a fire by fighting smoke problems. In a way I can agree with that. It feels intuitively appealing to think that a primary motivation with smoke fighting is selfish--you can feel good about yourself for making the world a slightly better place, even if that's not necessarily even true.

How should we go about solving the world's problems, then? In a way I have personally accepted the fact that I do not have the drive to focus on saving the world, at least not before I'm able to save myself first. So instead I feel that financially supporting different causes is the best I can do. A group that has the financial means to perform even larger projects around the world is undoubtedly capable in improving situations than an individual. But even better would be if instead of completely open charity we would actually be able to, for instance, get Africa on its feet in a financial sense; teaching the countries how to increase their GDP by means of international trade, etc. To become self-sufficient without relying on alms, to summarize. Of course this sounds harsh and discards the plight of individuals, but as cruel as it sounds, such is life. Sometimes the well being of the society at large perhaps should be placed before the convenience of individuals. This is the tradeoff that, for instance, has to be made in free trade. But in the long run it is a tradeoff that maybe should be made to allow everyone to be better off.