Feeling helpless
haideralmosawi • 18 Mar 2025 •
Politics can do that to people. I’m currently observing all sorts of injustices, national and international, and I feel like I can’t do much to help. Israel has ended the ceasefire and resumed with bombing Gaza. Locally, Kuwait is changing its citizenship laws and revoking citizenships from people who gained it legally (e.g. non-Kuwaiti women who married Kuwaiti men. This path to citizenship has been removed and non-Kuwaiti women who became Kuwaiti citizens this way have had their Kuwaiti citizenship revoked, dating back to 1990!).
Yesterday I saw the story of a woman who just escaped living with an abusive father. She managed to find a safe home for her, her mother, and her sister. But because her mother has had her citizenship revoked, she lost her job, and they’re now struggling to make ends meet.
Why strip the mother of her job, in addition to revoking her citizenship? But this has become a sensitive topic and criticizing it is perceived as questioning the authority of the Emir (ruler) of Kuwait.
I don’t feel like I’m in a position of power or authority to bring about positive change on the political level. I can share ideas that can help people think differently, but even this is a struggle. Humans have a bias of perceiving what we believe to be true as the truth. It’s extremely difficult to get people to recognize the difference between belief and truth, making it difficult to persuade those supporting injustice to recognize the injustice.
I feel like I should now focus on being the sort of person who has power (through connections and finances) and to be a man of influence. But this will require a great deal of time and work.
How do you handle being exposed to injustices and not being able to do anything about them?
Comments
@Winkletter I feel like I need to work more on my influence. And I should probably focus on promoting positive ideas about politics that help people change their approach to politics vs trying to tackle existing issues and conflicts where I don’t have much of a say or influence. I think I’m more suited to contributing to culture (and how people think) than political decisions.
Culture relates to decisions as beliefs relate to thought?
@Winkletter Culture is the environment that encourages the spread of certain beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. To encourage certain beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, the culture in which they are expressed needs to be favorable to them. This is difficult when a culture is emotionally charged against opposing cultures. But ways to encourage understanding and openness to new perspectives can shift a culture. A minority becoming more vocal/prominent can also help shift a culture. This is what I think I can focus on.
While national and international news might be important, it’s often irrelevant, incoherent, and creates feelings of impotence. It’s a terrible diet of information, but hard to put down because it is so important.
Maybe my influence right now is weak, but influence compounds over time. So I just keep pushing the world in the right direction.