I'm here to declare the death of "activism." It's become a trend for every little college prick, housewife revolutionary and basement intellectual to adopt radical ideas and then brand themselves "activists." Already from the beginning you can sense there's something wrong with this. First of all, most of the members in an organization, movement or project will never ever get anything noticeably important done:

Those of you who have ever been involved in a project involving a small group, or perhaps in a small church, may be familiar with the phenomenon: You start out doing things, and you do some work and help, and then the time comes when you say to yourself, "Okay, that's enough. I've done enough for them. I'm sure they have other people who can do the rest. They can't expect too much from me."

The moment when you grow up in your interaction with that group is the moment when you admit the obvious. There is no them. Or, to put it alternatively, you are them. There is just that group of people. It may be ten, it may be two dozen. But what gets done is what that group of people, including you, does. There isn't some gigantic organization that exists apart from you, to which your contribution is just a drop in the bucket, which will continue getting just as much done without you. This is a small church, a small organization, a volunteer group. If you don't do it, it doesn't get done.

The fiction of "them" is very comforting. And unfortunately, it is fostered by our present societal arrangements in which so many things seem to be done by big groups--be they corporations, charities, churches, or government. Everything is big. And so being a mere fellow traveler and doing only, and only temporarily, the amount that seems reasonable (read "easy") is all too easy. Because after all, they can't expect too much, and they were doing just fine before you came along, and they will do just fine if you leave, or drop your involvement, or whatever. It doesn't really matter.

Having been involved in both party politics and journalism for several years, I've learned one simple lesson: A lot of people want to join a project to get personal recognition, but few of them will stick around to carry any heavy load. That's why we've had hundreds of contributors to this site, but only kept less than 5 % of them as staff. This offends most people, because they like to believe that just because they wave some flag at a demonstration or write a disorganized essay, they're suddenly heroes.

The real reason why projects go under is because of activists, e.g. people who claim to be important but seldom or never act. They're like fat on your muscles or desperate boy/girlfriends, clinging on to anything that might get them a free ride to more power. In the end, they're all users, trying to push responsibility over to the small group of people who may not be loudmouths, but surely get things done when no one's looking:

Activist: A person who believes so strongly that a problem needs to be remedied that she dedicates substantial time to … getting other people to fix the problem. It used to be that activists sought voluntary help for their pet problem, and thus retained some semblance of honor. However, our self-styled elite became frustrated at some point in the past that despite their Ivy League masters degrees in sociology, other people did not seem to respect their ideas nor were they particularly interested in the activist’s pet issues. So activists sought out the double shortcut of spending their time not solving the problem themselves, and not convincing other people to help, but convincing the government it should compel others to fix the supposed problem. This fascism of good intentions usually consists of government taking money from the populace to throw at the activist’s issue, but can also take the form of government-compelled labor and/or government limitations on choice.

I will add one thing: I have to lay a lot of this failure on universities like my own. Having made students jump through unbelievable hoops just to get admitted, and then having charged them $60,000 a year for tuition, universities feel like they need to make students feel better about this investment. Universities have convinced their graduates that public pursuits are morally superior to grubby old corporate jobs (that actually require, you know, real work), and then have further convinced them that they are ready to change to world and be leaders at 22. Each and every one of them graduate convinced they have something important to say and that the world is kneeling at their feet to hear it. But who the f*ck cares what a 22-year-old with an Ivy League politics degree has to say? Who in heavens name listened to Lincoln or Churchill in their early twenties? It’s a false expectation. The Ivy League is training young people for, and in fact encouraging them to pursue, a job (ie 22-year-old to whom we all happily defer to tell us what to do) that simply does not exist. A few NGO’s and similar organizations offer a few positions that pretend to be this job, but these are more in the nature of charitable make-work positions to help Harvard Kennedy School graduates with their self-esteem, kind of like basket-weaving for mental patients.

Here's the problem: Activism, especially political activism, tends over time to reinforce its own activity instead of aiming for actual goals. Activism means showing up at rallies, which besides possibly 1-2 minute recognition at a local TV station are totally useless, handing out flyers no one cares about, holding speeches to people who already agree with you, and writing articles for the same old audience. This is why radical movements on the Left and Right don't get anything done: Since they're marginalized, they feel forced to engage in activism, but in the end all they do is simply repeat their dogmas and work to secure their own existence.

At that point, calling yourself an activist is the equivalent of saying "I'm with these guys, see?," e.g. "proving" you belong to a movement, but not to a goal. I first realized this after moving from my small home village, where my next-door neighbours were vast forests, to a bigger city where people called themselves "greenists" but had barely seen a tree in their entire lives. Something seemed awkward to me about these people talking about the environment, yet living so disconnected from it. I didn't care about nature because people on TV told me it was important--I cared because I'd spent my whole life living next to it, and therefore wanted it to remain healthy. "Activism" to me meant picking up loads of trash from forests on a Saturday afternoon, not holding random discussions at coffee shops to gain attention.

And so we reach the finale, which I've expanded upon before: People who talk about big ideas but cannot even plant a tree or organize a church meeting, are deceivers--even worse, they're self-deceivers. The grand theory of a new world is appealing, but remains grand and only inside our minds, until we make it real. Activists today are people who are looking for causes, but not goals. They want the illusion of participation, so that symbols slowly can replace reality. I don't care about symbols anymore, and I don't listen to people who claim they're participators. I know there's a better life waiting ahead, and only I can make it happen with my own bare hands.