The Passive Activist

1. I want the world to change. This is not to say I want to change the world – that sounds exhausting. But while my own world is quite comfortable, the world at large is too imposingly full of misery to allow me to really enjoy myself.

2. I want to bring in da noise, and perhaps one day da funk. Someone smarter than us famously wrote that we mostly live lives of quiet desperation. True enough. I’ve been down with desperation for quite a while, but I am kicking quiet to the curb. Holla!

3. I am not now - and likely never will be - over September 11, 2001.

4. I have commitment issues. In a breakfast of bacon and eggs, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. Many see the world as broken, but few will forge the A-team of the crusade to fix it. These are the Active Activists. I am a more Passive Activist, aka good B-team material. I support the campaign, but I’m not about to get all sweaty over it. Storming the Bastille is quite out of the question, but I’ll TiVo the news coverage and cluck vigourously when I get around to watching it.

5. I am afraid for my soul. I am a sinner in thought and in deed. I can date this fear to the cinema of my childhood. Sure I knew I shouldn’t hand over the Everlasting Gobstopper to Slugworth, but I was unsure what I would do in the moment. I still wonder. Modern cinema offers no sanctuary. I am hysterically hesitant about grabbing either the Red or the Blue pill, so I’d be completely bumfuzzled under the gun. When in doubt, repent. Click here to spring from purgatory. Hail Mary. God is Great.

6. I am ambivalent about the internet. While I appreciate how much it has transformed the former drudgeries of buying stuff and getting laid, I also want it to do just a little bit more – something along the lines of ending poverty, war, famine and disease.

7. I am ambivalent about Google specifically. I resent its hyper-wealth because it is obscene, and because I do not share in it. But the basic model behind all that wealth is instructive: Google only makes a teeny-tiny bit of money when we click on its sponsored links, but enough of these little clicks adds up to big bucks.

8. I know the Googlish baby-step approach to titanic capital gains can work outside the IPO model. I want the hipsters to join the hippies in righteous anger, in making love not war, in sticking it to The Man. I want to storm the investment bank gates. This is not your father’s economy, and I want to define and share in brave new currencies: Social Capital, Peace Dividends, Karma Credits. Pay It Forward.

9. I have some ideas which make up the Passive Activist Starter Kit. They are, by design, not terribly ambitious. More active activists may scoff at these measly ideas while they shout obscenities through the White House gates or chain themselves to endangered trees – and I suppose they’re entitled. But I bet they have read neither this Manifesto nor the equally persuasive Horton Hears a Who, so they are Philistines and can just bite me.

10. I want to know I’m not alone out here.