So there's a little aphorism I hate, attributed to Margaret Mead.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
On the face of it, it's a stirring message of hope. If you're like me, you picture Martin Luther King sitting around a kitchen table with Bayard Rustin and Ralph Abernathy and James Orange and Frederick Douglas Reese.
But looking at it closely, the aphorism rankles. It's vanguardist, almost anti-democratic: never mind most people and mass movements, it's the committed few who matter. It's Green Lanternism: will matters above all. And the romanticization of “changing the world”, which one sees a lot of in the tech industry, is not entirely wholesome. Change is inevitable and not all changes are good; I want to look to what will make a better world.
Plus, there's no evidence that Mead ever said it.
Plus — and this to my mind is most damning — thinking about who might draw inspiration from the thought of a small vanguard changing the world through he force of their will, and remembering Rhett's Law, I feel moved to offer Korman's Third Law:
If it makes a funny “Nazi-spiration” meme image, it's questionable motivational advice.
You cannot make this stuff up. Irony-impaired former Kent State student Kaitlin Bennett tweeted this:
4 comments:
Granted, but... on the one hand I don't think I've ever seen motivational advice I *didn't* find questionable, especially if taken out of context, and on the other hand, evil or not, we can't argue the Nazi regime was insufficiently *motivated*.
--Ember--
Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
A group of people no matter how committed can never accomplish anything. History shows that on any scale, large or small it is always a single committed individual that for good or usually for not so good can feel the prevailing needs of a large group of followers and provide a focus for their beliefs.
Whether it is a genetic imperative as some argue, or a conditioned belief like the major religions, without a committed leader nothing happens. The leader may be human or supernatural, which is the power of religions, but H. Sap. need to believe in something or someone to do anything.
I wonder if you are watching Mr. Robot. it's a great meditation on young people who desperately want to change the world facing the old people who run the world.
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