Bob was a nice man. He never believed in honesty of politicians or bankers, but he didn't care or think about them too much - the world is still spinning around and our promised glorious future is bound to come one day. So he paid his taxes, got speeding ticket only once or twice, he was relatively happy.
Then in 2008 that big financial crisis hit and Bob experienced first-hand what big economy has to do with little guys. He still had job, his personal situation wasn't affected too much, but some of his friends and family members - they had all sorts of problems.
And so Bob wondered, how was it possible? And as situation unfolded, banks got bailed out, bankers looked like they possessed immunity codes in some computer game, and generally nothing changed, it made Bob realize that there might be something really wrong with the system of the world. Not only with particular greedy bastards with too much influence, but something hideous hiding behind, deeper.
Bob went on-line. He never paid attention to conspiracies and theories, thinking that people who wear tinfoil hats are crazy, but started reading and suddenly it all started to make sense. He read about Federal Reserve, fractional reserve banking, gold - he even attended few protests and shouted loud with other people there demanding that all this needs to stop.
But it didn't end there, it never does. Bob read about chemtrails, vaccines, HAARP, CIA dark projects, mind control and aliens. It made him feel uneasy and not once he thought to himself "is this real?" - but then he discovered Flat Earth and that made him feel better - by comparison with the Really Crazy People chemtrails, vaccines and tinfoil hats are normal things to be concerned about. So Bob read, watched hours of documentary movies, he learned. And when he learned enough he joined on-line communities and is now spending time talking to his friends and investigating the truth.
This is very short story about why Bob is not going to change the world. He is still paying his taxes (he hates it, but what can he do?), he buys necessary stuff in supermarkets, he tried vegetarianism but he likes chicken wings too much.
What could Bob have done differently?
Just one amazingly simple thing. He could have noticed that from all stories about who and how is really ruling the world, from countless theories and narratives (which might be true or not, it is irrelevant), we can choose those we can do something about, and stop being concerned about what we can't change (unless Bob was determined enough to become superhero and stop all airplanes from spreading chemicals (not that I believe that they do)). And the most basic of all common denominators is of course money. This is about the only thing, short of real revolution, that can make a difference. Corporations and banks could not care less about protests, people, whatever, but they do care about profits the same way TV channels care about number of viewers. To hit them, stop participating. Participation in the system validates and strengthens it. The system is mostly a special, complex story in our minds, and when we realize it, we can write small threads for ourselves. Bob could have written "I understood the system, and then I left it". Just remember, chemtrails, flat earths and conspiracies are only threads in the big story too. They are inevitable parts of the system, helping to keep it intact - impossible to prove and impossible to fix. Mind traps for people who want to change the world, but if they are kept occupied enough within the system - they never will.
