Cav's Place

I’ve been recently asked by somebody I hadn’t spoken to in quite some time if anybody managed to convince me to face this stupid world we live in since she last heard from me. I replied by asking how could anybody convince me to do something I’m not capable of, yet now I wonder if I’m not facing it more than those who do the things she meant when she asked that.
I wonder how many hundreds of petitions I’ve signed in the past few years, how many other hundreds of e-mails I sent to various institutions, authorities and officials from around the world and how many thousands of messages I posted in various places… Of course, a person doing only this is worth about as much as an ant, yet a colony of ants, given enough time, can take down even an elephant.

I’m angered by people who say they’re unhappy with the way things currently stand, yet do nothing about it. I respect people who oppose me when I voice one of my ideas, as long as they have arguments to back their opposition with, but can’t stand those who agree with me but do nothing about it because “there’s no point, nothing is going to change anyway”, or simply those who complain about something but do nothing else about it for the same reason, whether I agree with their complaint or not.
Of course nothing’s going to change as long as you aren’t doing anything to make things change! Change is hard, why would someone else struggle to change things for you if you don’t? And what gives you the right to complain afterwards if you don’t act when you have the chance?

Of course, the more “visible” you are, the more you can do. But this means time, eventually money, and certainly people skills, since we’re talking about speeches, interviews, being on talk shows and so on, so we can’t ask it of anybody, and I certainly wouldn’t do such things myself. But what’s stopping you from signing petitions and sending e-mails when something is bothering you?
What’s worse, why do you resign to being unhappy? If you feel wronged, pick up your weapon of choice, be it a keyboard, a pen, your vocal cords, (where possible) the power of example, or (in extreme situations) an actual weapon, and fight!

But the worst part is the “it’d be nice if I wouldn’t have to, but my own principles start to be worth less when society makes me violate them in order to be able to do something that makes me happy” attitude. This only proves to those who have every interest in keeping things the way they are, whether because they really like it this way or because a change would mean too much work on their part, that you can dissuade “rebels” by lowering society’s tolerance to their requests, making it even harder to have a decent life without “conforming”.
So yes, I get angry when I’m told such things, because when you say something like this you not only rob yourself of the chance of no longer needing to compromise at some point in the future, but also make it harder for me to get what I want, even if I’m fighting a different fight…

What triggered this rant was talking to somebody who, if I remember the survey results right, is part of a group comprising 2% of the country’s population. There are certainly way more than that bothered by this law, but let us go with a number we can be certain of.
If you look at that percentage you might tend to agree, what can 2% do? A party needs 5% of votes to get any seats in the parliament, so 2% is not enough to get a party interested in their demands. Then, if you round Romania’s population to 20 million, to make things simpler, you also realize that 2% means 400000, so not enough to start the procedure of changing the Constitution, as that requires half a million signatures from people pretty evenly spread throughout the country. Therefore nobody fears them and, if nobody fears them, nobody listens to them either, right?

Wrong! Or, better yet, only right as long as they stick to only muttering to themselves and complaining to their friends.
But what if 400000 people would start e-mailing, writing and calling the authorities with their complaint? Would they still be “invisible”? And what if 2% of those 2%, meaning 8000 people, would march through the streets tomorrow, then again next week, then the week after that and so on, making their demand even more “visible”? And what if a couple of them would also go to the media, express their complaints thoroughly and back them up with solid arguments?
Or, in a more organized manner, what if those 400000 people would sign a petition, 40000 of them would back it up with personalized e-mails, letters and calls to the proper authorities, 4000 would march through the streets raising awareness about their complaint, 400 would act out a working example of their proposed solution, 40 would constantly improve upon said solution and four would handle the media side of the “fight”?
How long do you think it would be before those “invisible” 2% would become “400000 people whose rights are being violated and for whom a solution must be immediately found” if they would do this?

When you fight for, or against, something, you end up wondering whether your worst enemy is the opposition coming from those who disagree or the indifference of those who agree, but don’t show it… And I won’t even mention those who just don’t care either way…
I find myself reaching the conclusion that people are unhappy with the world because they want to be unhappy with the world, perhaps because they’re afraid that, if they’d do something to solve the problems they notice, they’d run out of things to complain about…