We keep on waiting, waiting on the world to change...

Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it

John Mayer's hit single "Waiting on the World to Change" beautifully captures the apathy of today's youth. We know the world's not perfect, but we just don't know what we can do about it. This often causes us to just give up or stop caring. After all, what real difference could I make even if I wanted to? So we just keep on waiting and maybe something will change.

I think deep down inside most of us have a desire to do something of significance. Every now and then I'll get a glimpse of this, such as the Facebook group "For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur," maxing out at almost 500,000, and its hundreds of spin-off groups. We'd all love to do something to help the suffering over there, but when you think about it, even if this guy gives $498 to some charity, what is that really going to do? How do we know that throwing money out there will even do anything? So we keep on waiting...

But that doesn't have to be the end of it! The individual today has more power to change the world than at any previous point in history. A regular college student can start a facebook group with the potential to unite hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Anybody can upload a home-made video to YouTube and get millions of views. Admittedly, the majority of the groups and videos never rise above the double- or triple-digit status in recognition, but the point is that the potential is there for something that wasn't possible even five years ago.

Music sales used to be influenced by how well record labels marketed their artists into radio stations and MTV, etc. Now a regular guy who makes it on American Idol can choose to sing a song and see iTunes downloads for the week go up 1000% or even more. (3300 to 36,000 for Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" two weeks ago; 600 to 24,000 for Jason Mraz's "Geek In the Pink" last week)

Do you realize how incredible that is? Thousands of dollars are made (or not made) based on one individual's song choice. Alan Greenspan used to be the only single person with that kind of economic power. Every single person has a greater potential for influence than ever before!

So how do we bring peace to Darfur? How do we feed the homeless and reduce crime and change social attitudes of abortion and reduce the selfish message of pop culture and stop political corruption? How do we move from the hypocritical irony of words to real, effective action that changes the world?

Well, I don't know. I just know that it's possible. Anyone can do something to make a change, but anyone can't change everything. God has put different passions in the hearts of different people, and they'll each have to work with others to get things done.

One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

I don't know how it's going to happen. I just know that waiting isn't going to do it.

Edmond the Hun