Who’s going to save us?

Recently I went back to the mothership, that is, Stanford’s house in Berlin, for a barbecue. The house sits on the edge of a park in a sleepy West Berlin neighborhood where there is no graffiti and plenty of mansions. We alums mingled with undergrads while suppressing some ancient trauma responses when we silently recalled what we went through on that campus between sips of wine and bites of burger.

There were of course speeches. One middle-aged white guy gave the quintessential Stanford speech: “One of you,” addressing the undergrads, “could change the world and save us all.”

I loathe this speech. I heard it a million times between the ages of 18 and 22, and there is nothing more dejecting than applying to jobs with the passion and hubris of someone who has been taught to think that they’re going to change the world—only to be rejected over and over because the world doesn’t give a fuck what you think. (But some people do care what I think, thanks for reading!)

There is an order of things. And life can be very hard for people who don’t like the order.

If anything, this man giving the speech, as a wealthy white man who sits at the top of our hierarchy, would have more power to change the world than any of the undergrads. But the sad thing is, even wealthy white men who have a ton of power still don't have as much as we might imagine. They also have bosses.

I don’t know anything about him, but I’m assuming that he made his money either building his own business, which of course requires borrowed capital, or investing other people’s money. Either way, he had to make money back for the people who were letting him use it.

Moving up in the order, the pot of money made for loans and investments can come from a variety of sources: wealthy individuals, university endowments, state-backed funds, and pension funds.

Moving up in the order once more, those funds have bosses as well. Collectively, regular folks who expect a certain rate of return so they can enjoy a stable retirement and Stanford students who receive financial aid (I was one of them) are the bosses of these big institutional funds.

So it’s no wonder that Mr. Stanford Speech looks to young people as saviors. He’s been so deeply entrenched in this system that he feels like he must comply.

So here we are: we are all each other’s bosses, nobody feels like they’re in control, and lots of people are unhappy with how things are going. So what can we do?

First, we gotta chill. Yes, the world has some huge problems but the world doesn’t need “saving.” Often, “saving” is more about the so-called savior’s engorged ego than doing actual good. No single person is going to “save” the world. It has to be a collective effort. "Individual responsibility" was an idea propagated by corporations so that they could shift the blame onto consumers rather than take responsibility. We have very little free will. We have varying degrees of privilege that allow us to do something with what little free will we have. So, take a breath and chill.

Second, go do something interesting with your little pebble of free will and privilege. Be a better boss. Find a better boss. Make a seat for yourself at the table even if there is no space. Get comfortable swimming upstream from time to time. Literally that is the only way anything cool has ever been done.

If you want to work together on any of this, please reach out. About me: immigrant, Stanford grad, ex-Silicon Valley, and happy expat living in Berlin. I help underrepresented go-getters define and create their own success.

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