I am not a revolutionary. I am far too introverted, too much inside my own head most of the time. I went to a march once, back in 2017, and found it both inspiring and ineffective. But I look at the world around me, and I see so much that I’m unhappy with.

I see an economic system that rewards some people way out of proportion to what they actually contribute. I see a healthcare system that is not available to all, and does not focus on keeping us healthy. I see an educational system that is far too expensive, while the teachers who work within it struggle to make ends meet. An environment that is in serious trouble, governments that are playing political games rather than trying to solve problems, technology used to replace rather than help us . . . You probably see the same things, if you look around.

The question I asked myself is, what can I do about this? I am not a politician, and not by nature an agitator. I also have a constitutional bent toward ambiguity, which is perhaps why I’m a writer. What do I mean by those rather complicated words? That I tend to see history as complicated. The Soviet army helped defeat the Germans (good) and then imposed itself on Central Europe for the next forty years or so, half of my mother’s lifetime (not so good). The history of Hungary, where I’m writing this, and the history of the United States, where I was a week ago, both contain contradictions. The US has supported dictators in the name of freedom. But among the contradictions and complications, there are things which are, I believe, absolutely clear: the clear evils of slavery, of taking away people’s rights to self-expression, self-determination. Creating income and educational inequality. Destroying the environment on which we all depend.

This post has already become more serious and convoluted than I intended. What I wanted to say, very simply, is that if you’re not by nature a revolutionary, there is still an option. There is a way to wage a quiet revolution in your own life, which is by opting out.

What do I mean by that? I mean at a minimum, not accepting a system you don’t believe in. If you hate how the development of AI is funneling money into the pockets of powerful people who don’t seem to have the interests of humanity at heart, don’t use it. That’s an easy example, but I want to provide a few more. What I’m talking about is, in a sense, going on strike: on an individual strike in which you don’t accept that the way things are is the way they have to be. Without necessarily waving a placard (although you can, of course, if you want to), living your life in such a way that you are in quiet rebellion against the things you dislike about our modern world.

I’ll give you some examples, some action items. Pick and choose as you wish.

1. Know the difference between the real and our imagined reality. The term “imagined reality” comes from Noah Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind. I don’t agree with everything in Harari’s book, but I think this central concept is both useful and accurate. Harari argues that human beings live in real reality (the world of apples, trees, gravity), but also a reality we have created through language (money, corporations, our legal system). When I teach this concept in my class on rhetoric, I give my students the example of our university. What about it is really real? The people in it, the land it was built on, the buildings themselves. But what about the university itself? The very idea of a university, the idea that they are students, that they will finish a course of studies and earn a diploma that will get them jobs in which they earn money — all those things are part of our imagined reality. We human beings have quite simply made them up. They are real in that they really do affect our lives — the money my students will earn at jobs will buy them food. But if we all suddenly developed amnesia, we would find ourselves sitting on desks in the middle of a bunch of buildings. The university itself would have disappeared. The imagined reality exists because many people believe in it — it is, as Harari says, intersubjective. But unlike gravity, it’s not inevitable. It can be changed. As Ursula K. Le Guin mentioned, there was a time when many people believed in the divine right of kings. Until they didn’t.

2. Try to spend time with what is real — with apples, not just stock reports. Try to stay close to the world of real reality: of gardens and animals, of cooking dinner, going for walks outside, looking at the stars. I think this sort of thing keeps you sane and grounded. Take an interest in birds. Play musical instruments or listen to a concert with human performers sitting on a stage in front of you. Keeping in touch with what is really real, with what would not disappear if we all forgot about it, also keeps us sane. It keeps us from spiraling into the world of illusion that our twenty-first century culture spins for us — an online culture that is controlled by people we don’t know and who don’t have our interests at heart.

3. Try go do something real in your profession. This is probably a controversial statement, but I would urge young people to do real, valuable work — be a doctor, a teacher, a plumber, a garbage collector (which is probably the most valuable work of all, since it underpins all of human society), someone who makes coffee in a coffee shop, an artist, a scientist, a farmer . . . There are many jobs that involve touching real reality, whether that is a human body or mind, a piece of plumbing, a canvas, a cup of coffee. And then there are jobs that involve manipulating our imagined reality. Recently, I’ve had students whose ambition in life is to be a “private equity asset manager.” I’m not going to criticize them, but I was a corporate lawyer. I put words on a page to create or merge companies. It was an empty, unsatisfying way of making a lot of money. And was that money worth the twelve-hour days I put into my job as a corporate lawyer? Was it worth that portion of my life? Not to me.

3. Try to buy what you need, or what you find beautiful, rather than what advertisers tell you to want. Fashion is part of our imagined reality. Do you need to be “on trend”? No, of course you don’t. This is one of my personal downfalls. It’s not that I’m particularly fashionable, but that I have a bad habit of buying clothes I don’t actually need. I’m working on that. On the other hand, I am very good at buying beautiful books! This summer, I went to Vienna with my daughter, who is interested in museum studies, and we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. There is one part of the museum, an entire corner, dedicated to the knickknacks that the Hapsburgs collected. Room after room of gold and ceramic tchotchkes. By the time we got out of that section, we had headaches. Don’t be like the Hapsburgs. One ostrich egg on a golden pedestal is enough.

4. Try to create things as well as consuming them. Our society values us as consumers. Our economy is judged by what we buy, not the songs we sing, the paintings we paint. But as individuals, we usually value what we create more than what we buy, and the act of creating gives us a joy that no amount of putting things on credit cards ever well. The ultimate creator is Nature herself, and we are evidently created in her image, because the greatest power we have as human beings is our creativity. It does not separate us from the animals — birds create nests, octopuses create gardens using shells and colorful rocks. Rather, it allows us to join a great ongoing work of creation, in which whatever we create has one small part.

5. Develop a sense of yourself. Who are you, in the midst of all the messages you receive from the society we live in? I believe that as we grow up, we are inevitably formed by our societies, but underneath we also have an essential core — that essential core is what decides which cultural messages it will receive and how it will respond to them. The more you can be aware of that deciding self, the more you can decide. It’s like finding a ground to stand on, in the swirl of influence and information that surrounds us. Find your ground. Decide how you want to stand on it.

The most fundamental ground we all stand on, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, is that we are all on this earth for a little while. We will pass away, and we won’t be able to take anything with us. “Shrouds have no pockets,” as the Irish saying goes. So how will we live our lives? What will make them feel meaningful? I would argue that living a meaningful life is itself a revolutionary act, and if we all do that — all of us individually, which would also mean together, it would change the world.

That’s my idea for a quiet revolution. It’s a way of seeing what is real and holding on to it, seeing what is imagined and choosing how you want to relate to it, which parts of our imagined reality are worthwhile. Democracy, for example. Human rights, animal rights, the rights of rivers and trees and the sky.

I have a pink sticky note beside me as I write this. It says, “Live as though you are in constant rebellion against human cruelty, stupidity, and greed.” I should put that up somewhere, as a reminder.

(The image is Julie Daydreaming by Berthe Morisot. I chose it because Julie looks very thoughtful — as I think we should all be.)