HIPS: The Best Opportunity To Change The World? Not Politics

By Bryan Hyde

If we’re serious about making a difference, there’s a question we must be willing to ask:

Is politics really as important as it’s being made out to be?

A healthy society has many more institutions than the government to solve its problems. These include family, clergy, business, community, academia and media.

Notice that only one of these institutions uses force to accomplish its work. Only the government claims that prerogative. 

This raises another question:

Why do so many of us believe that the government is the only institution that can make a difference? Especially when so few of us have any real standing in the political arena.

In reality, each of us can make a measurable difference in the world around us in these other institutions.

Why? Because we actually have standing in family, business, our church congregations, and our communities. 

Each of us can also be educators outside of the classroom and the digital realm makes it possible for our voices to reach large numbers of people without the approval of media gatekeepers.

Why waste so much time and effort on politics, trying to exert a majority of our influence in a place where so few of us have standing? Try using it where it can actually be felt.

By putting our influence to work in these other societal institutions, we learn that our ability to change the world is not nearly as limited as we’ve been led to believe it is.

* Hyde In Plain Sight is written by KDXU personality Bryan Hyde. Catch his daily HIPS vignette at 7:50-ish every weekday morning on KDXU and listen to Bryan's show weekends at 7 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday nights.