We live in an age of constant urgency. Every scroll brings a new crisis, a new villain, a new call to action. And if you’re not keeping up, you start to feel like you’re part of the problem. You should be outraged. You should be doing more. You should care harder.
But lately, I’ve started to wonder—what if that feeling isn’t helping? What if it’s actually part of the problem?
We feel it’s so important to focus on big issues—the ones that are on the news, the ones Facebook promotes and TV tells us are important. But it just makes us angrier and more anxious, with very little we can do to make the world any better. We just get angry with each other.
The philosopher Martin Heidegger had a term for this kind of drift: das Man, or “the they.” It’s the vague, anonymous pressure to do what everyone else is doing, think what everyone else is thinking, and care in the ways everyone else expects. It’s not new—but it’s gotten louder. Faster. Algorithmically optimized.
Heidegger warned that when we live this way—when we let the they dictate our thoughts and actions—we lose touch with what actually matters. We react without reflection. We express without asking whether our energy could be better spent on something tangible, something quiet, something real.
So what do we do instead?
We start smaller and closer. We get to know our neighbors. We check in on people. We listen when someone’s upset, even if we don’t have the perfect response. We show up for someone’s event, even if it’s inconvenient. We bring a meal. We lend a hand. We care—quietly, directly, without hashtags.
We take risks. We try something that might not work. We volunteer somewhere new, start a conversation we’re nervous about, speak up when we see something wrong—even if we fumble the words. Making a real difference means getting uncomfortable. You might say the wrong thing. You might mess it up. But at least you’re in the world, doing something that matters to someone.
These things feel small. They don’t come with the same rush of urgency or moral clarity as a national debate or a viral post. But this is how the world really changes: not through anger, but through kindness. Not by tearing each other down, but by showing up, consistently, for one another. That’s how you build a global community—one act of care at a time.