To be aware but not to care

View of Jerusalem from the Haas Promenade – Courtesy of the Author

Awareness is not meant to be trendy, but it is needed.

Awareness, at its core, is the state of being conscious or informed about a particular issue. It’s the first step in a chain reaction that ideally leads to deeper understanding, empathy, critical thinking, and ultimately, action. Without awareness, ignorance reigns. But awareness is not the end—it’s only the start. Awareness is meant to be serious.

When it comes to activism in this day and age, nobody seems to care to move past awareness nor take it up a notch deeper into education, service, and discussion. This is incredibly dangerous and harmful, and most posts come from the progressive-liberal agenda and are mostly one-sided. Without some form of nuance, marginalized voices will be ignored and stereotypes will become more prevalent. We have seen this happening frequently throughout the past couple of years.

Most performative activism posts that claim to care are not done in a professional manner, nor do they use professional basic color schemes. Adding trendy bright colors into the mix ruins the serious image.

To further make an impact, awareness must extend beyond posting a bright colored infographic on Instagram or reading an article’s headline and sharing it. If you actually don’t know about the topic, then do not talk about it. Instead, do research and educate yourself on the facts, and identify what stands out.

If your awareness campaign is more about your image than the issue, it’s performative. Amplify voices, don’t drown them out. As someone in this field, you can only call me an “influencer” for these reasons.

To have influence, you need to be educated, raw, and authentic in what you say, there is no one like you. I’m all about commitment to using my real voice on the issues that matter, and not being afraid to speak up. I also care deeply about amplifying other voices and do so all the time.

Embed from Getty Images

If you want to engage with activism and community service, you must be fully aware of what is happening in society, be informed on it, and listen to the voices that matter most. If you truly care, you should be celebrating the good things that matter most. If we want change, we need more than voices—we need vision. Less performance, more principle. Less branding, more bravery.

Let’s move beyond awareness that merely looks good, and strive for awareness that does good.