Think Local, Act Local
This essay is a part of the Plan for Action essay series.
When we start working the Plan for Action, one question we have to ask is how we can have the maximum impact. A postmodern saying, "Think globally, act locally" as coined to give the notion that you could change the whole world from home, but after gaining some insight from this podcast, I came to see that "think globally, act locally" is in fact very disempowering for anyone other than globalists. The alternative we should consider instead is "think locally, act locally."
"Think Global" is disempowering
First, the idea of "think globally, act locally" is something along the lines of "by buying a product here we are impacting villages in Bangladesh," or "by banning plastic straws we are doing our part in dealing with the Great Pacific Garbage Pile!" Once you understand the idea, there are two problems which jump out immediately. First, by turning your attention to places you will never visit, you are necessarily turning away from problems that are right around you. Second, the sheer number and scale of problems which are "out there" is far more than you can meaningfully impact, which means that the only way to "care" about what's going on is to submit to organizations which have a large enough reach. Which just so happen to be globalist institutions.
It can also be argued that "think global" is dehumanizing. If you really try to take on the hurt of an entire planet, and I mean really get down deep into it, you will feel the abyss and the non-stop news about evil in the world. Your life will be a never-ending Ramallah album (links to the song "Sleep"). And everyone else around you, by not joining with you, is first "not caring" about the endless stream of darkness you are soaking in. And by not caring, they are in fact "enabling" or "perpetuating" the stream of darkness, which means they are devils, and now you hate them.
In the end, you want to change the world, then you soak in all the world's evil, and come out bent on violence against the perceived perpetrators. In other words, you go in naive, and come out of that stream just as dark and blood-stained as everything you wanted to stop.
This is not the way to anything good.
Thinking local
The first challenge to truly thinking local is learning to respect other's boundaries. In other words, beyond a certain distance or boundary, no matter what is going on between two people it is not my problem. At a surface level it sounds uncaring, but again, think about what would happen if every single issue on the planet was suddenly your problem. You can't really care on that scale and for every conceivable issue.
So, instead of vapid, meaningless virtue signalling, you are making the conscious choice to prioritize the things that you are going to make "your problem."
The meaning of local
"Local" has two meanings. The first is the more obvious one - yourself, your family, your neighborhood, and the community you interact with every single day. The only person you can readily change in this situation is yourself, but when you do, these are the people who are actually affected, because they see you.
The second meaning of "local" are farther-away people that you nevertheless choose to intentionally include in your life. How "local" they are is measured in the depth of the relationship. For example, I support a particular missionary in another state and serve on his board, and I also support and occasionally write to a ministry in Thailand that helps kids get out of the drug and sex trade. All other such groups are "foreign" because I don't interact with them, mainly because I don't have the capacity to do more than currently.
The positives of thinking local
If "think global" is dehumanizing for the reasons mentioned above, "think local" is rehumanizing because each person you interact with has a face, has a name, and with a little investment you can understand both yourself and the other person. Instead of gazing into the abyss of a whole planet, you can pick a space that you actually can improve in your own capacity. By extension, you can inspire others to do likewise, and this mutual action and self/local improvement is what builds societies.
Acting Local
"Improving a space within your capacity" is the focus of "think local, act local." Per the book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, there is a "law of the lid," in the sense that organizations cannot out-grow a leader. In this context, if you start acting locally, with people you know, and try to do something that actually can be completed, you find out what your "lid" actually is. Whether or not it is substantial in some virtue-signalling sense is irrelevant, actually making an observable difference, and knowing where to go from there, is relevant.
What this looks like
Instead of "The starving children in [insert wherever]," try getting space for a local community garden and actually grow something for people locally. Or, pick *one* place, form *one* relationship doing aid locally, in which you might send money, letters, and possibly travel there to volunteer.
Instead of anything at all about Trump or Democrats, go learn how your local party elections work, and meet your state and local representatives. Or create an unaligned Meetup that deals with *one* issue in your city or county.
Instead of railing about Facebook censorship, make a "Choose Minds" bumper sticker and put it on your car. Maybe go in with some friends. Or canvas in other ways. Finally, if you know some code, there are other ways to contribute to the fight, as well.
There are many more cases we can discuss in the group, but the bottom line is, there are things we could all be doing, that have an impact we can see right now. I think this can snowball into bigger and bigger impacts, but we have to make the first step.