# Making a Meaningful Difference By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-10-15 What should one stand for? If one believes strongly in a cause, one should consider sacrificing something personal for it. Maybe it is risking one's job by speaking out of turn, freedom by protesting in the street, or something even more extreme. The question is whether that sacrifice is meaningful regarding progress. For example, let's say one is against a particular war. Can one sacrifice enough to make a difference? In some situations, the answer is yes. We look at martyrs who helped spur significant change as examples. They are often held up as great individuals and likely were extraordinary in some way. However, how much was driven by them, and how much was the result of collective actions and the flow of the system? We cannot answer such a question easily. There are just too many unknowns and unverifiable historical accounts. But, looking at the macro scale, one will see emergent evolutionary patterns independent of the who. The rise and fall of empires, geopolitics, belief systems, and industrialization, to name a few. Many people enjoy stories about people, but few enjoy stories about systems. So, one could conjecture that we focus on the who because it makes it easier to remember and more entertaining and relatable. Perhaps the who inspires one to action because they want to be the next who. This is very unlikely to be the case. One is one of 160 billion humans ever to have existed. How many can one name? The odds of you being one worth remembering are slim. With this in mind, how does one decide what is worth sacrificing? Will the system produce what it produces regardless of one's actions? Perhaps, but one's desire to act may be how one finds meaning, which is precisely how the system is intended to unfold. The decision to act may be a systemic illusion and human delusion, but what else can one do? Think, choose, sacrifice, and take accountability. This represents a pathway to progress, but only some are willing to sacrifice, and even fewer are willing to take accountability. #### Related Items [[Progress]] [[Beliefs]] [[Systems Thinking]] [[Accountability]] [[Sacrifice]] [[Decision-making]]