Aware Beware

This article is about being aware of being aware. In a sense, it’s a joke of some sorts. However, with all the awareness around today you think that people would aware of being aware. Nevertheless, with all the awareness campaigns; rain or shine, it would seem otherwise.

You could know everything in the universe but be powerless to do anything. Awareness is the hope that if people knew, if they just knew the plight of things, something, just something would happen. Nevertheless, awareness is not the ability to do something, since it is just having some knowledge.

With awareness, it does not always bring the desired affect. A couple years ago, a man was trying to bring awareness to the plight of workers who regularly fell into the beef patty machines in a factory. Writing a book, he tried to tell the population of the horrid deaths. However, instead of having the desired affect, the public sentiment was that it was “gross”.

The problem with all this awareness, is that it doesn’t really engage people, and if it does, it doesn’t necessarily engage them in the right area. If someone had a broken finger, and you told them that they had one, besides panicking, they wouldn’t know how to fix it. The person would know of the problem, but not necessarily know how to fix it; Show the problem, but don’t fix it or tell how.

Despite awareness being unhelpful, it is also can be dangerous. With all these awareness campaigns, they just say do something. It’s a call to arms without a proper plan, and without a plan, a group of people can quickly turn into a mob.

Even if someone was trying to do the right thing, if they aren't directed they could make things inadvertently worse. For example, giving clothes to children in Africa. Nice ideal. However, if the region that you gave needed something else or maybe they have local dealers trying to sell clothes; you could have just given a useless gift or ruined the economy of the local businesses.

Awareness is commendable, and sometimes very constructive. However, there comes a point when it is just information overload. Being aware of something will not always bring the desired affect. However, sometimes quietly doing something and trying the best to help, is better than fifty awareness campaigns. Awareness is not action and action is not necessarily helpful action. If people really want to help, thinking things through is a start.