How You Can Become an Activist

Some ideas on how you can become more involved in your community.

February 18, 2006

A Place for Theory: Some thoughts on theoritical discussion versus pratical discussion.

Activism versus Politics: Looking at the role of the activist versus the politican.

Boycotts: Individuals only have the power to boycott when they join together.

Defining Instrumentalism: Defining the meaning of an important term in critiquing social policy.

Defining to Repudiate: Some thoughts on the word in context with modern society.

Dialetic of Irrationality Revisted: A simple explanation of my Dialetic of Irrationality.

Ethics of Bourgeoisie Society: Andrew looks at all the rules and regs and risks that us suckers in the middle class always end up facing.

Get 'R Done v. Public Debate: Government must focus on results and process.

Governing for the Little Guy: We need to give local government more authority.

Guns from a Symbolic Interactionist Perspective: A look at those things that scare some people and are a natural part of others lives.

How Change Works: An overview of Andrew's theory on social change.

Human Reason v. Rationality: Thinking beyond the limits of rational scientific pursuit.

Humanistic Alternative to Irrationality: Considering the best way to look at the world.

Locke on Property: One Man's Interpretation: A rather historically incorrect, but interesting new interpretation of Locke on property.

On the Mass Society Paradox: Thoughts on mass society, it's problems, lack of solutions, and fakery.

Person and the Political: The individual is often quite different from the political positions he represents.

Problems with Marxist Thinking: A brief look at the issues that Marxist thinking poses to society.

Proposed System of Class: Developing a systematic way to look at class.

Public or Private Individuals: Notes on the philosophy of public-private individual conflict.

Role of a Liberal: How liberals must work to push pragmatic and progressive policies.

Rule By Law: Despite having bad connotations, all governments rule by law.

Strong Politics: Parties and the Executive: I am kind of divided on the whole strong v. weak party issue right now. But things have their advantages and disadvantages, I list them below.

Three Questions of Theory: Thoughts on three political questions.

What Does Politics Mean Today?: A look at politics, it's essence, and how it effects us as individuals.

What is Dialectic?: Exploring the dialectic method of looking at conflicting forces.

What is Law?: We talk about laws and obeying, but rarely what they mean.

What is Public Policy?: Coming up with a better defination for defining public policy.

What is Time?: Considering what we call to be time and how it effects us.

Why Communism Failed: Communism was too rational for our irrational society.

Why Some Facts Matter: Some facts we accept and others we reject.

How You Can Become an Activist

How can I get involved? It's purty simple. Just do something. Attend some meetings, volunteer. You can be the social change that you want to be.

Find out the differences between a social activist and a politician and the inter-relation of the two concepts.

Looking for some other activities that you can get involved in? It is a three step process to get involved: figure out what you care about, find people with similiar interests, and then attend meetings and contribute. Sounds simple, but few people take these three steps. Let's investigate them further.

First off, think about what you care about. Do you want to get more ATV trails built? Hate what our President is doing to our country? Need better government in your community? Don't want to have the city dumping garbage in your backyard? Hate suburban sprawl? You have the power. Activist Resource lists many groups you can get involved in.

Second, read the local papers and search the web for opporunities to get involved. There are groups that fight all those battles and so much more. To the right is about two weeks of events from ActivistResource.org.

Don't stop there. That list is far from exclusive, and many groups do not yet have an internet presence. Sometimes you have to dig. Most important is to actually attend meetings and contribute (your time, resources, money). That sounds easy, but is the second most difficult part of activism after finding a group to join. We need your help to change politics, now more then ever!

And remember it's a journey.

Road in Cooksberg
From the Farming Series. Added 6/5/06.