I remember back in the tenth grade when I announced to my classmates that I’d signed up to volunteer in Kenya, and several of them immediately started accusing me of being overly idealistic. I was feeding into a project that was wasting millions of dollars and worsening the conditions of the people that I was trying to “help”. So I was informed, by a group of people who had had hardly bothered to research the organization I was working with or ask about what I would be doing.
Now, moderate skepticism is healthy. It’s absolutely crucial to consider the ethical implications and consequences of our actions, especially when lives are at stake. Some of those 'voluntourism' programs disgust me to the core.
But over the past few years it’s become fashionable to put quotations around “making a difference”, as if the concept was inherently superficial or problematic. Oftentimes I would scroll through the news and find these ‘air quote’-abundant pieces of cynicism—many of them written by young people. It has almost become a mark of intelligence, to rise above those naïve teenagers futilely trying to “make a difference”. It’s not uncommon to hear Duke students disparage the value of programs like DukeEngage and applaud those who speak out oh-so-refreshingly against such well-intentioned but woefully pathetic programs.
Because you know what? It feels deliciously satisfying to be above it all.
With almost every popular social project, we see people overeager to break the curve, to point out “Why I’m not taking part in the ALS campaign”. Even with the recent You Don’t Say? campaign, we see students barrage social media with derisive renditions of its marketing slogans. Sure, some of them are a bit silly, and you’re probably only joking, but all you’re doing is helping to distort the overall message.
Criticism is good, but so often it’s been exaggerated and misplaced.
It’s hardly surprising that we have as a result become desensitized to mass movements and even afraid to align ourselves with causes. Activists are often labeled as ignorant idealists, and become caricatures for mockery.
When we become too skeptical, we teeter dangerously into the realm of cynicism. And in the long run we may actually be hurting projects that help promote civic engagement and youth activism.
The thing is, it’s so easy to be cynical—to point out everything wrong with something and then go right back to watching Netflix.
We are now seeing the emergence of a revisionist rhetoric that tells us that because we’re inexperienced, relatively naïve and full-time students, we can’t create sustainable and tangible change.
This is something we desperately need to reverse.
Our over-eager embrace of cynicism has clouded over many valuable aspects of youth engagement. And it makes us forget that there is work to be done.
In honor of our love-hate relationship with DukeEngage, let’s take a look at service abroad. To say the very least, international service programs targeted at youth can create powerful, intangible change that has the potential to develop into more sustainable and effective forces of good.
You take a kid who’s been stuck in North America all his life, plop him in an Indian village for two months and inevitably his worldview will change. You take a kid who’s travelled the world, plop him in the same Indian village, and more likely than not his worldview will change as well. He may not become the next Malala but maybe when he’s 54 and running a successful venture capital firm, he’ll end up donating to that one Indian village he stayed in. That’s hardly a stretch.
We need to stop being so overly fixated on quantifying the difference we make or the costs that it’ll take us to make them. You really can’t put a price on the intangibles. And frankly, it should never just come down to a cost-benefit analysis.
We’re young, yes, and we need to be informed, but if we need to make sure we’re perfectly informed and trained before we act, we’ll be either too old or too preoccupied in our careers to care.
Cynicism breeds apathy.
What we need to realize is that not everyone will dedicate their lives to the “long-term” improvement of that one Indian village. Not everyone will want to train to be a professional educator or brick mason. Few of us will ever seriously make a dent in American foreign policy at the highest levels. Does that mean we should just back off and leave everything to the professional activists?
This is why I actually like programs like Teach for America and DukeEngage—they provide an immersive opportunity for students to give back to the community and engage with future generations before we colloquially "sell our souls" to investment banking and corporate law. We want engaged and passionate citizens at every level who feel invested in the future of their fellow human beings.
Plus, there’s a certain beauty and flexibility in youth activism that you can’t replicate in the professional world.
At the end of the day, we need to evaluate social projects for their potential harms with a critical eye, but we need to do it with a healthy, constructive attitude.
Bochen Han is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Monday.
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