I love to change the world (7/27/2020)

When I was young, much younger, I was an idealist with a goal to change the world. Don’t we all at some point have these aspirations. But then we grow up. I listened to tunes from Ten Years After where they sang in their song “I Love to Change the World:”

Tax the rich 
Feed the poor
Till there are no 
Rich no more 

And,

Population 

Keeps on breeding 

Nation bleeding 

Still more feeding, economy 

But then there was this refrain to the song:

I'd love to change the world 

But I don't know what to do 

So I'll leave it up to you 

For many of us it was a difficult thing to do, to change the world. We were flower children, peace, love, but what else?

I protested against the CIA’s involvement in Chile. My wife and I spent almost two years working at a leprosy center in Africa, after an obligatory period in the Dutch Army (I was too chicken to be a conscious objector, although I did my best to be as difficult as possible while serving). Did that change the world? Not in the tiniest bit, but in addition to almost losing our life, it made us feel we might have done something.

Then, after two more international development jobs, it was time to settle in for middleclass life, or as we sometime say in my native language little house, small tree and a small animal (or huisje, boompje, beestje). So here I am 40 to 50 years later, after living a middleclass lifestyle, nothing has changed, or maybe somethings have changed for the worst. I would still love to change the world; although I still am not sure how to do it. Here I sit back in my armchair and I am secretly encouraged to see that a different, younger generation seems to be taking it upon themselves trying to do something about it. Things like gay rights, gender equality, and now black lives matter.

I am far from disappointed with my almost 70 years of existence. Working for the government I have to change the world in a more subtle way, and I do that with my teaching. I have tried to do that a little bit in the blog posts that I have written in the past. While they were intended to be more educational about nature and the environment, a lot of my posts have become more political. Necessarily so, with such a horrible person in the Whitehouse.

I am hoping to have at least another 20 or so productive years to go. Twenty years where I have the freedom not to sit back, but to work on changing the world. Right now, I am wondering which of the causes to pick up. There are so many pressing ones. My first inclination as a biologist is to work fork for the environment. Without a clean environment there will be no future for the next generations. Moreover, environmental justice is a very important issue which touches the environment, children, poverty and racial minorities. Moreover, research by Richard Louv and others has shown that criminal behavior including gang affiliation can be reduced by exposure to the natural environment.