How You Can Change America in Five Simple Steps

How You Can Change America
in Five Simple Steps
Bill Bekkenhuis
September 5, 2010

1 Become selectively and creatively unhappy about things.

We recognize the great good in America despite its serious flaws. Hating everything will paralyze our ethics and make us bores at cocktail parties. So we pick and choose where to focus our efforts. We allow our unhappiness about the state of the world to trigger a creative response to whatever portion of America's problems, large or small, we're capable of putting on our plates rather than falling prey to apathy, silence, conformity, scapegoating and complicity.

2 Insist on quality information.

Everything – and I mean everything – in the media is designed first and foremost to entertain us and sell us something and only secondarily designed to inform us, to teach us to think critically or to encourage us to become better and more humane people. So we intentionally choose which media sources we allow to direct our attention and to inform our participation in the great national conversation.

3 Commit to producing true value and consuming true value.

A life-affirming culture, economics and civil society cannot be built on a foundation of garbage. Much of what we uncritically accept as value has been force-fed to us by the media in its promotion of consumerism. So we thoughtfully consider every investment of our time, our talents and our money as votes for the values America should embody. In America, we vote every day, not just on Election Day, for our security, our food, our health care, our education, our housing, our arts and music, and our economic opportunities - for ourselves, our families and our communities.

4 Reach out to others with respect and charity.

Having begun the process of getting our own lives realigned with what we thoughtfully and intentionally determine to be of true value, we reach out to and enlist our family, friends, neighbors and co-workers as allies. We photocopy and distribute this message to those who are interested. We admire and emulate those with greater commitment than our own, we are patient with those with a lesser commitment than our own and we seek the positive intent behind the thinking of those with a different commitment from our own. We organize potlucks and discussion groups using the best articles, books and DVDs we can find. We help build stronger neighborhoods and communities.

5 Invest in like-minded voluntary associations.

Voluntary associations are the mediating institutions between individuals and the Powers That Be. We invest our time, talent and money to support those institutions we determine to be aligned, however imperfectly, with our values knowing that groups working together to share information and values and to deliver the money and votes that come from large organizations can change things in America.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: There is no more information. This is the program. What we do with it is up to us.