Power and Responsibility

In my last post, I talked about how everything is working against you when you are new to a field, but that things change once you get a lucky break. That post was about fame, by which I mean people knowing about you or at least hearing about you. But another aspect in the same vein is power. If you are famous, it means that people are watching and listening to you. It means you not only have an audience, but an audience that cares. That means you have power.

I heard once that with great power comes great responsibility. When I look at Hollywood celebrities, I see that it is not a requirement to be a responsible person (and sometimes not even a decent human being). But I do find that people really like celebrities who do humanitarian things. If you reach a point where you have an interested audience, consider using that power for something good.

One day, I was reading some of the webcomics I follow and I noticed a couple of them talking about a company called Kiva, "the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website". The aim of the website is that regular people can invest relatively small amounts of money to people around the world to alleviate poverty. These webcomic people were encouraging people to join up and really make a difference around the world.

I have also seen, many times now, webcomic creators put very nice products, like their own merchandise or specially made products, up for auction, all of the money that is made then gets donated to a local food kitchen or some other charity.

I think it is a beautiful thing to see these people helping more than themselves. They want to do good things and they are using all of the power they have to do so. I think it is great to see people at any level of power doing what they can to do good. If you are able to attain more power, try to do even more good. I can't imagine doing good would ever make you feel bad, so why not?