Hello Everyone, This is a short blog post today to talk about awareness vs solutions.
I've been an activist the moment I became a vegan. Going on YouTube, doing street interviews with people who are watching an animal rights protest that's going on or just even randomly in the street stopping people and having a discussion with them. You can check it out here:
While doing these type of interviews I realized that most people actually care about the cause. They sympathize.
Off course, it's difficult that accept that what you've been doing isn't the right thing and that if you would truly accept that you can't do anything but change.
But what allows these people to actually change?
Clearly, we lack discipline.
We always look for the easy way. Staying the way you are today, is easier than working on yourself and changing who you are. This takes time and energy. Something our brains are hardwired to avoid.
The less energy we can spend, the better.
We know what it takes to become healthier. Eat better.
We know what it takes to get a nice body. Do more sport (and eat better...)
Yet, we are bigger and fatter than ever before.
We over indulge in food because we have an abundance of it.
We go for the quick fix. The easy solution. And this turns is into a fat, unhealthy society.
We are not living longer... We are dying longer.
So what can we do about this?
Step 1) We need activists creating awareness.
Marketing is nothing more than creating awareness and showing people the right angle that catches them. Often this will feed off of insecurity from the other person. Get slimmer, Get fitter, Grow bigger, Lift more, Get Richer, Make your wife happy, and so on.
An activist is nothing more than a marketer/sales man. Selling his vision of the truth.
Step 2) We need Entrepreneurs
We need to create solutions. Once you are aware and you want to do something, think twice before you start. An activist alone is not enough. On my journey since being Vegan, I saw that many people want to do better but don't want to sacrifice their own comforts to do so. The only way to meet them half way is to offer them better food, better entertainment, better everything.
Off course you can go into a debate that it should be the moral standard to be vegan and people should stop putting themselves in front of everything else but that's probably a bad idea...
Do you have a smart phone? I know I do. An iPhone. Probably one of the least ethical phones in the world today.
The short version of why I use an iPhone (this is a whole article by itself) is that it's the best phone out there and I use it for work, 5-15 hours a day.
And this brings me to my conclusion.
If you want me to use a better phone, then don't complain about it. Make a better one!
I don't have the knowledge or tools to build one. But if I did, I would have done so.
Complaining doesn't get you anywhere... Especially when there is not a better alternative.
Telling people to change their lifestyle is useless if they don't have the options to continue their lives the way they want too...
If you want to bring change, create change.
I have an FB Group called The Vegan Entrepreneur. Feel free to join there and connect with me and over 400 fellow vegan entrepreneurs @ http://vgnfb.com