Gin in my Milk

I see all the time, some of my friends are burning to contribute to the society with their noble feelings. One says she tries to save the planet by only using "go green" products, other one defends the open source software by using open source applications, one friend is against the current conservative goverment AKP and protesting by refusing to buy products of those companies which are close to the goverment.

Yes, such activism is noble and sounds great but in reality you contribution is very little (if not none). You will be shadowed by those who hold real power.

Here is a story: I studied at Bilgi University, a great school with leftist and humanist staff, huge fellowship percentage among students, speech freedom was encouraged, overall things were great. However, one day something terrible happened. Management was in debt thus they were looking for some sort of savior, in the end an American juggernaught named Laureate bought %51 share of the university thus became the new "owners". They started by limit education fellowship amount, after that they started cencoring students. In the end it was a real mess for the original staff, it took only a single year for them to destroy all that was noble and taken over 15 years to build.

There have been many open software advocates, however none was as influential as Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google. Instead of simply growing a beard and bashing Microsoft at their speeches, they simply founded a great company which used open source sotfware and contributed to the open sofware community which immensely helped open source philosophy to spread better than anyone.

I believe that instead of only acting as a regular activist, taking a step further and holding power is the real way to empower your vision. If you kick ass at work, if you work hard, beat and dominate people around you and in the end making yourself valuable, you will win and have a real chance of making those noble feelings come true.

A related quote: "The Best Way to Complain is to Make Things." by James Muphy.