I have been thinking a lot lately about do-gooders and well, the do-nothings.

My first thought is the notion of 20/80; 20% of the people doing 80% of the work. The work in this case is volunteering, watching out for, being apathetic towards and caring about people other than your self.

Now that we live in a “globalized” world we can see more and more people who need more and more. This has left our developed world in quite a predicament because we now see how well off we truly are.

Thinking about the atrocities, poverty and misfortune around the world is hard to do and I am finding, even with myself, you either have to approach global issues fully or forget about them all together.

I know that seems like rather an unconcerned thing to say but you see it all the time. You have people who are SO into the third world, exhausting themselves volunteering for every cause or catastrophe and then you have your neighbor that couldn’t locate Uganda on a map or even spell genocide.

I am not saying that being interested in helping the third world is a bad thing. I think what happens is that the people who do those things see great misery and misfortune that they become apathetic and skeptic towards local issues because the magnitude isn’t as dire. So because your situation isn’t the worst you don’t get assistance at all.

Because we live in this 20/80 world, the 20% of those that care about people become overwhelmed with the misery of others while the other 80% are concerned with the latest UFC match and whether or not they got a raise at work.

I am not here to argue over whether this 80% population needs to get their head out of their ass however I am sure you know my sentiments on that matter. I will say this though, for those of you who struggle with the woes of others and do not act because you’re overwhelmed; I do understand your attitude. You turn on the news and see poverty, death, war and hunger in a part of the world you didn’t know existed and instead of feeling concerned about or helpless to affect you turn it off. I get that because I find myself in that place constantly.

Another issue I am seeing more and more is this notion of “it’s not my job; someone gets paid to do that.” We have now made processes and hired specialists to deal with poverty and people in need in our own community. We just assume that everyone is fine and accounted for.
This just isn’t the case at all. If anything we are ghettoizing all of cities with pockets of poverty and calling them “that part of town” while the more privileged stay glued to their own neighborhood occasionally looking out the window to see all the lawns are mowed, everyone is good, great!

I will tell you this much, you don’t need a degree to be able to care about your neighbor, neighborhood or city. You just have to turn it on.

If I have a target audience for my blog it would be to those in the 80% who see the world and think there is injustice and do not act because they are overwhelmed. I would say to them to start somewhere, just something small. Volunteer once a week doing anything, it doesn’t even have to be for poor people. Just start with anything!