Image source: Creative Review
I think we all have moments where we question whether what we’re doing is making an ounce of difference, or at least, I hope we do. Smart Bubble Society is quite new-new in its take on activism, in the sense that our mandate is to make a difference through raising people’s awareness through infographics, something that we have to define to most people before we can explain its impact. But if we woke up tomorrow and the internet was reduced to a smoldering cube, we would be screwed. What would we do then? Motion graphics would obviously fail to survive. Would we tell stories in person? Create traditional art to convey our messages instead?
Sometimes, when I see footage of an overwhelmingly huge protest or march, I wonder if I’m in the right place. What’s more powerful? My computer? Or my feet? To remedy the perplexing, seemingly unanswerable question, I remind myself that we all have different tools with which we communicate our desire for change, and make a difference. Some people do use their feet. Some use their voice, others use their paintbrushes, and we just happen to use our design talent. But there’s a second part to the question, and it relates to us as a whole. Why are we as a global community, so seemingly ineffective at battling today’s issues (forgive me for the momentary pessimism)? We’re seeing several simultaneous wars, a impending global catastrophe that I don’t even need to explain, and more. Much more.
Micah White speaks to this problem in a recent article entitled, The Future of Activism. In it, he discusses the necessary marriage between physical activism and mental activism:
“Untangling this difficulty begins with acknowledging the complicated relationship between our interior reality (the mental environment) and our external reality (the physical environment). Mental pollution is not just an annoyance; it is a tool in our oppression. The interjection of advertising and other info-toxins into our mindscape neutralizes our attempts to construct an alternate future because from a poisoned mind spring only poisoned deeds.”
(If you’re intrigued by Micah White’s passage here, be sure to check out his Thought Bubble on Junk Thought).
Indeed, our minds our poisoned. Everyday we’re barraged with advertisements selling us an overwhelming assortment of THINGS, and illusory concepts (‘buy/do this and you’ll be beautiful’). In Canada, I’d say in a very general sense, we’re comfortable enough that there’s no real need to rise up and fight for anything as a country, though there are plenty of reasons to stand up and scream. What Micah also explains, is that we can’t fix the world by fixing only our minds, and we can’t fix the world by fixing only the world:
“If we burn the world without a change of heart, it will resurrect; if we change our hearts without leveling the world, it will persist.”
So we have to address both frontiers at the same time. But I think it starts with our heads; our Thought Bubbles, if you will. If we’re indeed too distracted and comfortable, then we simply need to regain our focus. We need to clearly see what’s wrong with the world, rather than ignore it and pretend everything’s a peach. Peaches are wonderful, but they have pits, and you need to appreciate both aspects to see a peach for what it is. Ha! What a random analogy, but it works eh?
If we can at least allow ourselves the SPACE in our Thought Bubbles to see the world as it is right now, that’s enough to pit us (pun intended) against any ridiculous attempts by certain entities to take advantage of our ignorance. Because such entities will likely stick around, it’s how WE choose to live each day that matters. That’s how we begin to change our Thought Bubbles. It’s about every single decision we make, from whether to buy tomatoes from across the planet or from that farm across the street (which if you have one that close, lucky you!), to whether to spend two hours looking at what our quasi-friends are doing on Facebook, or reading a book about our country’s history (real history, please). WE are our most powerfool tool, but it starts with our Thought Bubble.
Micah White continues to say that:
“Each of us knows that a tremendous crisis is looming, but it is so large that we are paralyzed. Knowing that our future constitutes a world without ice caps and fish, a world that is dominated by constant starvation and hordes of refugees, we can only continue our day-to-day lives if we suppress the fear of collapse.”
I think our tendency to ignore what’s going on in the world is very possibly rooted in our fears about it. Like the peach analogy above, we have to see the pit, and it doesn’t mean we have to eat it (it’s bitter and gross), but we definitely have to acknowledge that it’s there before we can enjoy the glorious sweetness of that peach flesh. And the pit doesn’t have to be all that bad (apparently is has health benefits): Check out some alternative news sites, turn off your TV a few nights a week, open a good non-fiction book, engage in a meaningful conversation with someone, think about what you’re about to buy, who made it, how they made it, what the value is, and whether you really need it to be happy. And to round it all off so that you don’t end up depressed in bed at night, snuggle with a loved one, human, or furball. That’s the peach flesh. Yum.
