Chris Jepson: Become a trim tab

"Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary – the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab.” – Buckminster Fuller

I, like all my readers, am a mixed bag of competing qualities. I am by nature an optimist but I think most human beings are, if they are lucky. Pessimists are seldom pleasant to be around. People have accused me of being cynical at times, but I prefer the word skeptical. Cynics seem more fatalistic. Skeptics merely entertain the possibility that “some” folks are motivated solely by self-interest.

Whether your political persuasion is from the left or the right, we are told that right now — today — we are living in the worst of times. As a student of history I know unequivocally this is not the case. A difference today, however, is our access to information. We can get a fairly accurate assessment of current events from around the world. In the past, daily updates of catastrophes, wars and mayhem were unavailable. You lived “relatively” insulated, mainly influenced by the events and people near you. That has undeniably changed.

A big change is economic. Right now financial markets are roiled over the uncertainty of China’s economy, the declining price of oil (commodity prices in general) and whether or not the “Bear” is now riding the “Bull” in America’s cyclical economy. Ford just announced moving more of its car manufacturing to Mexico. England is considering exiting the European Union, and deflation remains an issue in Japan. In America, the jobless rate has declined but so too has our Middle Class. America’s two political parties are at loggerheads over how to “fix” our economy and the U.S. electorate is as polarized as it has been since, well, some suggest the American Civil War.

Mix in our growing knowledge (since 1970) that humanity is unequivocally destroying the Earth’s environment and you have a recipe for what I would describe as a collective national despair, that events are out-of-our-control, that we’ve lost the political will to rationally address what “ails” us and that tomorrow unquestionably will be worse than today.

Another insidious factor is the feeling, rather actuality, that our nation disproportionately favors America’s uber-rich (see Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” account of the Koch family’s anti-democratic influence on America). That our Supreme Court has turned on the spigot of ungodly amounts of special interest money has only worsened the feeling of alienation within America. And, as we understand the issue of racism remains largely unaddressed.

The question — nay, the challenge — becomes what can we as individuals do from participating in a rising tide of national despair and polarization? We can embrace the timeless ostrich method of sticking our head in the sand, hoping any ill winds selectively pass us by. I recommend another way.

Rather, as Buckminster Fuller suggested, each of us—in our own inimitable way—become a trim tab. Pick a cause, an idea, a raison d'être and volunteer, join a cause larger than yourself. Do it.

“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.” – Betty Reese