Is sexiness the answer to a more just world?
What makes people give a damn about social justice? And what gets people moving from just accumulating more and more (depressing and infuriating) information about ‘issues’ to actually doing something about them in their day-to-day lives? What can we do to get people engaging in stuff ‘on the ground’ to make a difference?
I’ve been thinking about what made me shift from someone who took the bus and gave a bit of money to charity, to actually getting a bit more involved in stuff like intentional community, more political engagement and other stuff that goes a bit deeper than putting out recycling every week. A big change in my life was when I got to know (and got a huge crush on) a really socially active, anarchist, vegan hippy (please excuse the false black and white categories) who helped me to see the world in a new, more real way. Which is a bit hard to replicate on a broad scale in terms of a building a social movement! (Or perhaps not, perhaps the way to build an authentic active social movement is for us all to change the way people live by our sheer sexiness?)
What makes or made others get involved in social justice action? A sermon? A media report? Friend’s roping someone in? Stuff people learn at school or uni?
Is it a case of learning about an issue, and then doing something about it? Or is it more often after getting involved in some kind of action, maybe even by accident or circumstance, and that involvement opening someone’s eyes and getting them passionate about the cause?
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