Living a Dream

There's a popular phrase when people talk about improving themselves: "Be the change you want to see in the world." It's attributed to Gandhi, although that's pretty suspect ( source ) and there's no proof of him ever saying it (welcome to the internet!), and it appears on bumper stickers, motivational screenshots, and Facebook posts of girls aged 17-22. Since it's not Gandhi, and there's no really telling who popularized the phrase in the first place, you might think that I'm in the process of making fun of it and our culture for making "something" out of things that are really nothing. But that's not what I'm gonna do. Instead of being my normal angry-old-man self, I'm going to actually support this quotation and give an example. Everyone seems to think the world is trending in the wrong direction: gun deaths are up, religious insanity is *way* up, intolerance of LGBT/women/minority rights is somehow both up and down at ...