I’ve been teaching at a university for the past twelve years. Hundreds of students have come and gone through my classes. The only ones that stand out in my memory are those who were alive with a thirst for knowledge and a drive to use that knowledge to change the world for the better. Several of my students this past year stand out in my mind because they embodied these qualities. They are the reason I teach – my greatest reward in the classroom.

Sadly, many of the students I teach appear to just be going through the motions to get a degree, in order to get a decent job, in order to find their place in the affluent consumer matrix they were born and raised within. Through the course of their education, many are exposed to the gross social injustices that characterize our contemporary world – such as the growing extremes of wealth and poverty within and between virtually every country on earth. But most students seem to shrug these things off somehow, as though these injustices are someone else’s concern, or as though nothing can be done about them, so why bother trying. Apathy and indifference abound.

The situation sometimes depresses me, until I remind myself that most processes of social change are driven by a small but socially active segment of any population. This small minority are the real drivers of history. And they – or we – are out there, in every country, in sufficient numbers to transform our social reality. But we face several challenges. One challenge is recognizing the power of our collective agency – believing in our collective capacity to change the world. Another challenge is mustering the commitment to engage in social action, in concert with others. A final challenge is bringing our diverse, scattered, and often incoherent actions into focus, so that we can exert a powerful collective effect – like scattered rays of light that, when focused by a lens on a single point, can ignite a fire.