No, We Don’t Need Change.

Sometimes something is just a tragedy.

A mother dies in childbirth.

Soldiers die in defense of their homeland.

A senseless mass shooting that kills .000001% of the population is talked about for 5% of the year.

WHY?

We want to know. We demand to know.

We want justice. We want to prevent unnecessary death and suffering.

But mostly we are bargaining with ourselves.

Death is terrifying. WE won’t be forgotten. Our lives will matter. History won’t erase us.

So we demand “change.” To fix “the system.” As if we were educated or insightful enough to understand the millions of moving parts that influence our systems.

And so by demanding “change” (using whatever arbitrary metric we use to measure change) and watching it come to pass we hope to silence our fears for good:

“See? We did something that mattered.” We forcefully tell ourselves, ignoring the fact that we may never see or understand the consequences of our well-intentioned demands.

But behind the facade of righteous indignation, we know how arrogant this is.

And we cry in admiration when we see great humans respond differently to the tragedies of life and death.

Subconsciously, we know better.

A meaningful life isn’t about removing suffering. It is about accepting and transcending it.

And so our demand for “systemic change” at every. single. publicized injustice rings hollow as we look less like humans overcoming hardship and more like sheep in denial while [political/corporate/individual] opportunists use our demands as a trojan horse for their own ends.

It’s human nature at every step. Laziness, selfishness, and ignorance and we are the participants.

We’re not indoctrinating people with our limited perspective, we’re “raising awareness,” right?

What good politicians we are, especially to ourselves.

As a rule of thumb, doubt people who provide more answers than questions.

And don’t automatically demand “change,” please.