Lobbying governments and otherwise engaging in policy-shaping is an important role. In my mind, one can give of time or money, and the policy engagement falls into "time" for me, though I can understand how some might categorize it differently.
This whole debate reminds me that apathy is perhaps the greatest ongoing threat to our social fabric. These quick feel-good but largely ineffective actions I fear only have the result of taking air out of the balloon: one may have been motivated to do something "tangible" but given an easy way of getting the social recognition of having performed a noble deed, they instead change their facebook photo and leave it at that: they've now done their part. This example excludes those who were not motivated to do anything in the first place, and merely did it because it was zero effort. They are "meh" but the former is a real loss.
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Date: 2010-12-06 04:51 pm (UTC)This whole debate reminds me that apathy is perhaps the greatest ongoing threat to our social fabric. These quick feel-good but largely ineffective actions I fear only have the result of taking air out of the balloon: one may have been motivated to do something "tangible" but given an easy way of getting the social recognition of having performed a noble deed, they instead change their facebook photo and leave it at that: they've now done their part. This example excludes those who were not motivated to do anything in the first place, and merely did it because it was zero effort. They are "meh" but the former is a real loss.