âLetâs pretend, for a moment, that you are a 22-year-old college student in Kampala, Uganda. Youâre sitting in class and discreetly scrolling through Facebook on your phone. You see that there has been another mass shooting in America, this time in a place called San Bernardino. Youâve never heard of it. Youâve never been to America. But youâve certainly heard a lot about gun violence in the U.S. It seems like a new mass shooting happens every week. You wonder if you could go there and get stricter gun legislation passed. Youâd be a hero to the American people, a problem-solver, a lifesaver. How hard could it be? Maybe thereâs a fellowship for high-minded people like you to go to America after college and train as social entrepreneurs. You could start the nonprofit organization that ends mass shootings, maybe even win a humanitarian award by the time you are 30. Sound hopelessly naĂŻve? Maybe even a little deluded? It is. And yet, itâs not much different from how too many Americans think about social change in the âGlobal South.â If you asked a 22-year-old American about gun control in this country, she would probably tell you that itâs a lot more complicated than taking some workshops on social entrepreneurship and starting a non-profit. She might tell her counterpart from Kampala about the intractable nature of our legislative branch, the long history of gun culture in this country and its passionate defenders, the complexity of mental illness and its treatment. She would perhaps mention the added complication of agitating for change as an outsider. But if you ask that same 22-year-old American about some of the most pressing problems in a place like Ugandaââârural hunger or girlâs secondary education or homophobiaâââshe might see them as solvable. Maybe even easily solvable. Iâve begun to think about this trend as the reductive seduction of other peopleâs problems. Itâs not malicious. In many ways, itâs psychologically defensible; we donât know what we donât know. If youâre young, privileged, and interested in creating a life of meaning, of course youâd be attracted to solving problems that seem urgent and readily solvable. Of course youâd want to apply for prestigious fellowships that mark you as an ambitious altruist among your peers. Of course youâd want to fly on planes to exotic locations with, importantly, exotic problems. There is a whole âindustryâ set up to nurture these desires and delusionsâââmost notably, the 1.5 million nonprofit organizations registered in the U.S., many of them focused on helping people abroad. In other words, the young American ego doesnât appear in a vacuum. Its hubris is encouraged through job and internship opportunities, conferences galore, and cultural propagandaâââencompassed so fully in the patronizing, dangerously simple phrase âsave the world.ââ
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