Those who do not take action are at the mercy of those who do

    This one's a simple rant.

    Every so often you get a video or article in your feed about the latest scary happening in some city or on some university campus. And the punchline to the article is ARE YOU SCARED YET?! or WAKE UP!

    I think we are all scared and awake enough. We need to move on from this phase. Make peace with the fact that you were taught a cartoon version of the world when you were young, but now you see the truth and that you've been lied to about the evil in the world. And once you do, pick up a shovel and start shoveling some gravel.

    In my twenties I remember first becoming acutely aware of the evil in the world. Not in the abstract sense, but seeing it face to face in an undeniable way. I remember feeling so powerless about it at the time - what could I do? Now in my thirties I know: evil people with power got there by taking consistent action over time, and they did not care about what anyone else thought. Good people with influence got there because they did not stand idly by, but took consistent action over decades.

    And then I had to ask, what was I doing? Trying to learn and build anything of value to anyone? Or was I just posting memes and playing games?

    One of my heroes is a CEO of a small software company, who started out writing code in his free time after work. What he wrote was an open source project that is now used by thousands of people in e-commerce. And now this man, who usually shows up to cons in sandals and shorts, has a team of ten and is opening up new opportunities for people like myself to go around established companies. And look at Minds. Ten years ago there was no Minds. It exists because a couple of brothers decided to make it exist.

    I've seen the same phenomenon in politics: One city councilman I've met had his home seized in an eminent domain case. It was a quarter million dollar property, and he got a "fair value" of $19,000 for it. He didn't take it laying down, ran for office, and guess how many people voted in his town of 100,000?

    73 people. But now he can raise hell and fight eminent domain inside of City Hall, which he most certainly enjoys doing.

    In the end, there is no question that there is injustice, or that the deck is stacked against you. People who walk through a door of success have a way of slamming it shut on everyone behind them. However, you get to choose - will you dedicate your life to doing the right set of actions that will put you in a position to fight an injustice, or will you pretend to fight by sharing memes? Are you just going to stand there and try to describe with maximum accuracy how you are being deceived and cheated, or are you going to make it stop?

    The next time you see an article going around saying "Are you scared yet?" The answer is "I am done being scared."

    Thanks for reading. If you like this post, you can check out the Plan for Action, which I wrote as a follow up series.