Don’t plant a tree, grow a forest
So, I have a theory, but I will preface it by saying that anyone with half a unit in Anthropology 1A could probably find massive flaws in my argument — but here it goes anyway.
For the sake of the argument, I’m going to divide the world into three very simplistic camps — 1% of people who do good deeds, 1% of people who do bad deeds and 98% of people who I would classify in the “neither” category — they’re not driven by any ambitious agendas, they’re just trying to live their lives.
The good camp folks are the ones who do social work, hug trees, were at the forefront of recycling, volunteer in war zones and probably eat quinoa.
Folks in the bad camp are the ones who run big oil companies, bankers who only care about profit, arms dealers, dictators and Nestle’s board of directors.
The folks in the neither camp are what we often call the “normal” people. They attempt to follow whatever their local version of The Dream is and don’t go out of their way to either be in the good camp or the bad camp. Their ambitions generally start and end at their personal goals, which mostly land in the vicinity of career, children, food, shelter, car, some basic investments… and hey, nothing wrong with that.
The problem is that the good people believe that if they do the right thing and so do the others, the world will be a better place. They believe in the inherent goodness of the neither camp. They plant a tree and think that if everyone else does the same, we could tackle climate change. Whereas the bad camp people are happy to use the neither camp folks to further their agenda. They think big, are ambitious and extremely efficient in pursuing their goals. Yes, I’m saying that the good people are inefficient in doing good deeds.
A good person plants a tree, a bad person cuts down a forest.
For every person out there looking after hungry children in refugee camps, there’s a bad person using their army of normal people creating more inequality, manufacturing weapons or peddling fuel-inefficient cars. We take two steps forward over a decade and are set back five steps over weeks. If we continue along this path, we will keep losing.
I believe we need to mass produce good.
It’s time for the good camp to be more efficient at what they do. I know they are not necessarily going to use the neither camp to further their agendas, because that’s part of what makes them good, but they do need to figure out a way to have an exponential impact.
It’s time for the good people to think bigger, be more ambitious than the bad camp and be more disruptive.
Don’t plant a tree, grow a forest.
While I’ve been stewing on this theory for quite some time, I’ve only just put finger on keyboard to actually type it out. This piece is part of my attempt to write 14 posts in 14 days. Tell me how flawed this theory is — I’d love to finetune it. Of course, hit the ❤ if it struck a chord.
