Adam Jones Journal

Thousands of websites and blogs will tell you what's wrong with the world and what needs to be changed. Much of the time they are right. There's no shortage of problems in the world.

There's no shortage of talk - just a shortage of effective action.

We all know the problems, but as individuals we feel that we have no way to make a difference. So we look for leaders and we look for representatives who will use the power of government to find solutions.

We write our congressman, and after being ignored, we go back to sleep until a new blog or a different news story wakes us up again - for a while.

For many of us the only answer is to back a politician or a political party. Write a law - change a law - change the judges - and everything will be better.

We've been doing this for quite a while. In case you haven't noticed, things rarely get better.

Some problems do get solved. But after a while the solution becomes too hard - or the solution creates a new set of problems - or the solution is turned over to underpaid bureaucrats who are never given the resources to do the job right.

Some of the time, a problem actually can't be solved - at least not in a way that satisfies the people yelling for a solution. Politicians are usually pretty good at coming up with a fake solution - one that seems to solve the problem.

It can take years before it becomes obvious that the “solution” did not work and never could work.

Politicians take their bows once the supposed solution has been legislated. Then they move on to the next hot issue and forget about the one that was supposedly "solved".

The one thing that rarely happens is direct action to solve the problems. There is a direct approach: Decide what kind of world you want to live in and do the things that you can personally do to make things better.

Sounds a little too easy, doesn't it? Actually, it isn't at all easy. It requires some hard choices. It means saying no when 'no' means giving up something you really want.

Think of it as a vote. We have elections every two years, but each day of your life, you vote for the world you live in. Are you happy with what you voted for?