How can I make a difference?

[FillerDmon]

I'm a college student working 4-2 at a burger joint, who spends his spare time with the vidcons and the youtubes.

I'm just a small grain of rice in the hodgepodge of stew called the United States.

But plenty of people have done amazing things starting off with even less than me, and I'd like, if nothing else, to be part of such things.

How does someone like me get informed where it matters? How would I be able to learn about situations that I can actually have some influence in?

Like Net Neutrality: is there anything someone as small and low down on the scale as myself can do to help positively affect what's going on, so that the internet doesn't get enslaved by the big boys with the piles of money?

I want to help make a difference, but I wouldn't know where to start doing so. What can someone like me even do?

 

[tippy2k2]

Do you want my angry jaded answer or do you want the idealistic nice answer? I'll give you both I suppose...

Jaded Answer:
You can't. Our political system here in America is stupid as hell. It's two parties who, rather than work together and compromise would rather picker and argue and take their ball and go home. If demos are in the white house, repubs will drag their feet so much that nothing can get done. If repubs are in the white house, demos will drag their feet so much that nothing can get done. It's a giant waste of time for everyone involved except for those guys since they're getting paid six figures to fail at their job.

Idealistic nice answer:
Find out who your representative is and mail them a letter (find them here [http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/] if you don't know where to look). Don't email them because they get a ton of those from crazy people and it takes zero effort. Mailing them something shows that you care enough to gather the info that you need and take the time to mail out your opinion (or at least that's what I've been told...I personally partake in the "jaded" side of the debate).

Many big causes will have their own groups and whatnot that you can join where you can get info on things like protesting and whatnot. You'll probably have to Google for that stuff though since that's going to vary location to location.

Good luck!

EDIT: Also, I assumed you were referring to big changes with this request. If you're looking to just plain make a difference, places need volunteers a lot more than money a lot of the time. I am a soccer coach and they're always struggling to get volunteers to coach for example.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

You may make difference but it might not be apparent that you have. Difference isn't something which is easy to perceive oftentimes. Difference usually is small and minor and when added up it can sum up to an actual visible shift. To expect of yourself to cause this shift is to put yourself above millions of people and expect to be the super special messiah who delivers society from its ills. Just ground yourself, live true to your ideals and don't be an asshole. If you're lucky enough you'll be one of those very very few people who get to affect everything more than 99.9% of us.

 

[Mezahmay]

"Making a difference" is something whose scope scales infinitely. You could be making a difference by picking up litter in a local area, recycling more, using reusable containers, you could volunteer your leftover time with a community organization, etc. And that's just the cliche stuff they tell you about being a good citizen. It could also mean making a video that at least one person watches and likes. Little pick me ups like that can help a lot, but in a different way.

Change on a large scale means involving others in your scheme to "make a difference." It means rallying others to a common goal, like making a community recycling organization (I know I'm using recycling a lot, but I can't help it.) It also means tons of effort and having an unwavering drive for a cause that many don't have. If you have an idea and the drive to pull it off, the sky is proverbially the limit.

However, as tippy2k2 stated, in the United States, our political system is a god damn mess. There was a study published a few months ago that suggested the United States has functionally been an oligarchy or moving toward a corporate oligarchy for the last several decades. This is evidenced by the amount of lobbying on the part of Big Cable to the FCC about ending net neutrality so they can earn more money for an objectively worse service and many other legal cases and such that the study researched. Making political change is damn near impossible outside of your immediate community and the only power you have over corporate culture is not spending your money.

I hope that gave you an idea of where to start. I'd love to help more, but I've been in pretty much the same mindset for around five years. If it helps at all, you get used to disenfranchisement the longer you live with it. It just becomes one of the miseries of life that you carry around with you.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Well...you could always try to be a good person, and encourage others to be one as well.

A lot easier than it sounds, and it's something ongoing, you have to keep self-examining. Even just finding out what makes a good person is hard.