A Review of Justin Dillon’s “A Selfish Plan to Change the World”

The End of Activism

Mind. Blown. Those are the two words I can conjure up having read Justin Dillon’s A Selfish Plan to Change the World. I read the book because I’m getting more interested in doing social justice work, but the problem with that is that I don’t know where to begin. Basically, not knowing where to begin is where Dillon’s book is meant to guide you from. As it turns out, you have a pretty broad canvass to work with because the world has changed so much. Governments, non-profit agencies and charities have less of a role to play in the new world order, so it’s up to commoners such as ourselves to change things via open source means.

In Dillon’s mind, there are no more activists. He instead calls those who want to change the world “solutionists”. It’s not enough to merely protest for change. You have to become the change maker yourself. The how’s of doing this are a bit sketchy, but Dillon’s book is called A Selfish Plan to Change the World for a reason. First of all, the author is out to disable the entire notion that the only way that you can be a change maker is by being completely altruistic. Altruism is essentially doing good for no reward. Dillon claims that altruism doesn’t exist. He convincingly points out that even Mother Theresa had some self interest in the work she was doing to help India’s poor. (In her case, it was receiving love from other people that ignited her cause.)

Dillon, with this book, shows that doing good isn’t merely about giving away money, either. It’s about giving away your talent in a directed purpose that can help others through a process that can only be described as win-win for both you and the recipient. You walk away with a sense of meaning, the person you’re helping walks away by being, well, helped. So that could mean volunteering some time via Skype to tutor a student in Kenya. The ideas supporting this concept are a bit complex, and, to be honest, I’m not sure if the book does a fully successful job in illustrating just how much the world has changed for these not-quite-so altruistic means of doing good to really work. If activism doesn’t work anymore, for instance, why not?

There’s another important distinction of the book’s title, though, beyond it being “selfish” to help others. It’s that we’re out to “change the world”, not “save the world”. Dillon is interested in dismantling the supply chains that bind people to, say, poverty or modern slavery, rather than merely casting out to rescue those people who are caught up in the system of injustice. This is where the book really makes a lot of sense, even if it seems to run counter-intuitive to things such as sending money to World Vision or some such charity.

To criticize this book, you’d have to criticize the ideas — and I can’t do it, really, other than to note what the book lacks (as I’ve done up above). Dillon, to his credit, draws upon psychology as much as he does theology, which is pretty amazing when you think about it, knowing that he started out as a musician who became a filmmaker who became the CEO of an organization out to end human trafficking. I don’t know what the impetus was to branch out further and become a writer, but it seems that Dillon has reinvented himself a number of times to follow what he calls his “soul dream” of ending slavery. I would imagine the interested reader, who wants to get more involved in causes but doesn’t know how, would undergo a similar metamorphosis.

That said, Dillon is cautious to advise people to not deviate from the craft that they already know. That is to say, if you’re a creative person, do something creative; if you’re a good project manager, do something that requires you to track the books. When all is said and done and you take A Selfish Plan to Change the World as a whole, a lot of the advice makes sense. And Dillon does a good job of showing how one can make a difference in the world, and the things that might hold a person back from making that difference.

One of the things that I admire about the book comes early on. My favourite chapter is the first because it’s all about music — how the Clash influenced what would become the rock group U2 at a 1977 gig in Dublin, and how U2’s music clearly influenced Dillon in a profound way. This is a way to say that I’m pretty sure this is the first time the Clash has been namedropped in a Christian-themed book. More importantly, though, Dillon really sets up the scene of the Clash concert right down to the spitballs hurled at the opening band.

Outside of the musical references and namedropping, I found A Selfish Plan to Change the World to be an acutely inspiring read. One of the things that I’m getting some level of involvement in is a mental health working group at my church — and the reason I’m getting involved is because I care about mental health issues. So reading this book was a bit of a revelation as I felt I was getting involved in something my church might feel as being secondary to the entire slew of refugee, environmental and indigenous people’s rights work that it’s doing. That is to say, I was feeling “biased” in my pull to do more social justice work, and was avoiding the big ticket things my church does. Was that wrong, I wondered? I even asked someone at my church who was a leader if what I was planning on doing was “social justice” enough. (It turns out it was.)

You can see how my mind was blown in reading this book, because it essentially says, “No matter what the cause, if you’re passionate about it — go for it and change the world, just don’t bother trying to save it.” I like the attitude and approach, and the book is bolstered with some really good examples of how this works in practice. You’ll feel the weight of the world on your shoulders as you read A Selfish Plan to Change the World, but if going out there and making a difference means anything to you — and you don’t know how or what you should do — get your hands on a copy of this book. It’ll teach you a lot. It may, just may, even blow your mind in the process.

Justin Dillon’s A Selfish Plan to Change the World: Finding Big Purpose in Big Problems was published by Thomas Nelson on May 23, 2017.

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