When I was younger, in my late teens and early 20s, it was popular to have passion for a cause, and one way to stand out from your peers was to latch onto one cause or another and really sink your teeth in. “Oh, I’m just SO passionate about [XYZ]!”
I’ve probably been on different band wagons from time to time, too, but I’ve ultimately learned that this doesn’t pay.
There was a time early in college when I was part of this Pro-Israel group one of my African friends roped me into. It was interesting, and cool, and he had connections and wanted me to make it to their annual meeting in Washington DC. But after going to just a few meetings, I don’t know, it just started feeling weird. The speakers were good at getting you fired up, and of course people wanted your personal information to keep you connected. I don’t even have any great reflection on how or why I started avoiding it, but I think those sorts of groups just are not my thing and never have been. I don’t even have strong feelings on Israel these days, except that I might consider myself slightly pro-Israel with nuances, and largely I don’t care. But you aren’t supposed to say that, you’re supposed to take a side and follow it religiously and threaten to dump friendships if they don’t share your opinions, because you’re clearly right in everything.
So you can guess where this is going.
Why do people think they are such heroes for taking on other people’s problems? I’ve seen this in missions communities and churches over the past decade. Of course not everybody treats it that way, but it’s amazing how spending two weeks in the boonies is considered “fighting for social justice”. There may still be value in those two weeks, but for many people, it’s just another check-mark they can use to prove how passionate they are.
It’s also pretty common to see single guys taking on these passions in an attempt to impress women. And don’t get me wrong, there’s some great-looking women in missions. I’m well aware. But I also don’t believe in being a fake. It reminds of a friend I always tried to convince to go camping. He’d never do it because he was too lazy, but as soon as he was talking to girls, it was all, “Oh, yeah, I love camping! [Please think I’m adventurous!]”
I think a lot of people are just desperate to see themselves as relevant, but they don’t have the imagination or the drive to find their own passions or purposes. I’m not saying you have to start your own thing, because people do that a lot when they are too prideful to follow somebody else’s vision, but there’s no shortage of people who barely qualify for jobs in the United States who think they can fly overseas, dig up soil and plant seeds and magically solve someone’s life problems. It’s like when I briefly considered joining the Peace Corp back in college, only to realize that I didn’t have any skills they cared for, and the alternative to skills involved rolling condoms down bananas in the backwoods of Somalia to be a part of “public health education”. God bless software development.
That’s why I can only feel annoyed by the social media reactions to this race stuff. I watched Blackkklansman last year. Great movie. What else do you want from me? People who have been my friends on facebook for the past several years, who have never said a single word about race, are suddenly now experts on the subject and have “deep” convictions. Apparently not deep enough to give a shit two years ago, but deep enough now, I guess. I was shocked by police brutality when the guy in Kansas got shot because someone “swatted” his house as part of an online gaming feud (he was white, oops, I guess you can’t share that without assumptions being made about where you stand on the immediate controversy). But I’m not so passionate I’m going to jump on social media and try to prove just how “woke” I am.
I have sympathy for a lot of things across the world, but I don’t make a habit of taking on the emotional baggage of those people. My fellow Christians fleeing Burma didn’t ask me to hate myself because I’m in ‘Murica. I just wound up working with one of those families for a few years. They claimed I helped, but they were actually better at helping themselves because they knew their problems better than I did. Who’d have thought?
You’d think it’s the coldest thing in the world to say, “I’m just going to focus on my problems”. “How dare you?! Have you no sympathy, you capitalist pig?!” Okay, sure. I’m writing software for a company in Nepal that hires marginalized people. This software can help improve their processes to produce better products and save money using better tracking methods, which could lead to them hiring and helping more people. If you want to play that game – there, fuck off. But in reality, software is not my passion, nor is helping women and children, though both are good things. This was a project I stumbled upon. It is a cause I believe in, but I still wouldn’t phrase it as “passion”, and I’ll be happy if it makes a small difference. I don’t lose any sleep at night worrying about the people of Nepal. I have a general concern for them, because that country was already struggling with jobs. But I don’t waste any of my time worrying for them. What would that accomplish? For that matter, what do overtures to solidarity accomplish, except maybe trying to impress women (the kind who can’t see through fakeness, the kind you probably don’t want to impress)? Congratulations, you’re not racist! You want a gold star? (Okay, okay, now I’m just being mean. Sorry)
Being loud is a common alternative to being relevant (ask advertisers).
Taking on other people’s problems doesn’t solve anything in itself. If you can actually help and want to, sure, go for it. If not, it’s just posturing. But I guess if I can rattle my ideas off, they can rattle their ideas off, too. I just want to ask, “What is the point? Are you actually solving anything, or are you just managing to make yourself look better and score some likes from people who already see things the way you do?” Ah, whatever.