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How Best to Change the World?

Of all the endeavors that come with no map and no guide, changing the world—in any way, shape or form—has got to be one of the most challenging. People don’t easily change. And so to impact or effect positive change in any larger group or society can often seem like a Quixotic or fool’s errand.

My mother worked for most of her adult life on desegregation, fair housing, and making a positive environmental impact on the Bronx. And I used to tell her, when she got frustrated, that when she got done cleaning up the Bronx, I thought the Rocky Mountains would look nicer 200 miles to the East, since she seemed so intent on taking on impossible causes.

And yet, when I asked my mom why she kept plugging, despite the frustrations and lost battles, she used to tell me, “if you want to change the world, start where you are and do something, no matter how small.”

For most people who care about changing the world, that means doing what my mother did: eschew high paying jobs to work in community organizing, local politics, and non-profit organizations looking for impact more than profit. But an article in a recent issue of the Brown Alumni Monthly, about two brothers who both went to Brown University and graduated in the 1980s, raised an interesting question: if you want to effect change in the world, is it better to do work directly—hands-on, in a low-paying non-profit job, in the field.

Brian Moynihan (no apparent relation to the late Senator from New York), graduated from Brown in 1981. If his name is somewhat familiar, it’s because he’s now the CEO of the Bank of America. His younger brother Patrick graduated from Brown in 1987. Patrick runs a school for disadvantaged kids in Haiti. Patrick jokes that he makes in a year what his brother makes in a day. And yet … Brian contributes more than $150,000 a year to the Haitian project, and that money, along with money Brian helps raise from colleagues, makes Patrick’s work possible. In fact, Brian is the one who got Patrick involved with the Haitian Project, and the Louverture Cleary School in the first place.

One of the ongoing challenges of running a non-profit organization, regardless of how worthy the cause, is the never-ending search for operating capital. Good intentions alone do not change economies or give poor children food, medicine or a decent education. The danger of saying “I’ll make a lot of money and then use it to change the world,” of course, is that all the things money can buy can be so alluring that the “use it to change the world” part never really happens.

But I think the article is worth reading, if only to raise the question of how any of us can best effect change in the world. Is it selfish to try to donate money, instead of a life of sweat and toil? Or is it like so many paths in life—there are those who are drawn to surgery, those who are drawn to art, and those who are drawn to business or management. The world needs cancer surgeons, of course, but it also needs music.

I never went into the Peace Corps, because while I could live in a mud hut in Africa, like my sister did when she was in the Peace Corps, I knew I wouldn’t thrive in that kind of situation. My interests and talents lie elsewhere. Does that make me less of a good person? I can’t answer that for anyone else except myself, and I don’t even know that I have a clear answer for myself on that one.

But I do have a sense that changing the world is a very complex and uncharted challenge. The world needs so many things. And maybe, in the end, who we are is more important than what we do. And an ethical banker could be as much a power for change as an educator or health care worker.
Food for thought, anyway.

{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Larry Baum August 17, 2010, 5:45 pm

    As you say, it takes all kinds of people with different outlooks on life and commitment. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are seeding a $600Billion effort to change the world by challenging those who have amassed fortunes to give most of it to charity. Without their genius at making money and having the foresight to create and manage these kinds of funds, there wouldn’t be the efforts to eradicate Polio and other diseases along with all kinds of other good works. However, the “on the ground” work also needs to be done. The people who work in Haiti, or fly the mercy missions into the African backcountry are just as important. Both are needed.

  • Gene Jordan August 26, 2010, 9:50 am

    What Lane writes is so true. I spent 22 years in the eastern jungles of Ecuador in a C-185 or C-206 flying in and out of very small, unimproved airstrips. But, I watched as communities received health care and emergency air ambulance flights. I hauled cement and tin roofing to build schools. I flew a government team with a portable camera/printer that visited all of the communities that had airstrips and watched as they printed out ID cards that granted citizenship to these remote villages…and this was just in the late 80’s.
    None of this would have been possible if it were not for a group of people and churches in the US that allowed us to live and serve in the Amazon. It takes many facets of a team to pull the job off, with all contributing their part to build a strong whole!

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