My articles | It is amazing how many people want to bring awareness to a given cause. The other day I was having a conversation about this after a gentleman contacted me and told me that his number one reason for starting a group was to bring awareness. In explaining this story to my acquaintance, she told me that it's getting rather silly out there with everyone trying to bring awareness to causes that everyone is already aware about. In many cases it's not about bringing awareness, it is about bringing sympathy, attracting funding, and an excuse to play victimhood rather than joining a support group which has already been formed.
Consider if you will how many national organizations there are for every type of disease, disorder, virus, or human health challenge. And not even human health, but the health of animals, trees, the rain forest, the planet's atmosphere, and you name it. It's nice to see people doing something about an issue, and everyone hooting and hollering trying to bring awareness but is all this really necessary. I mean, yes, often the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but that negates the point that often those wheels are already turning, and they are already getting oil (made from vegetable oil I presume these days).
What I find amazing is that everyone claims they want to solve problems collectively, and yet individuals wish to bring awareness, and they want to be in charge of fixing the problem, with the help of anyone who will listen, and hopefully donate money to their cause. Still, if they really wanted to do something in a collective way, they would join the collective which has already been started, such as the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, etc., rather than starting their own from scratch.
Of course, everyone wishes to be heard, misery loves company, and perhaps that's one reason we have Facebook besides self-validation. You see, it's not that I don't believe in individual smaller groups, what I'm pointing out here is the hypocrisy of those who claim that they want a larger group to fix the problem, when the problem is already being worked on by other people, and they're actually diverting attention from a larger group that is actually accomplished, perhaps has been around for decades, and is doing something. Are you beginning to see my point?
If you want to start a group, one to bring about awareness, perhaps you should get involved with a larger group, and focus on your local community, rather than getting online trying to attract money, and degrading what is already been done by so many people who have given their lives to that cause. At some point each one of these individuals who wishes to bring awareness has to ask themselves if they are really doing it for the group, or if they are doing it for self-aggrandizing reasons.
You see my point here? The reality is we may not need any more breast-cancer awareness groups, everyone knows it's a serious problem, so perhaps everyone who wants to bring awareness should get with the group that is already out there fighting the good fight. Please consider all this and think on it.
By Lance Winslow
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
