They CAN change the world and indeed they must. That's what I call a real value for my philosophical money. Unfortunately, in our current corporate age of bigger means better, this concept can be one of the most difficult to teach. The world, after all, seems ruled by a strange emerging facelessness. Our governments seem out of reach and largely unresponsive.
Large businesses eat smaller ones for breakfast to grow bigger and less personal still.
World trade, lobalization, creeping monoculture, all of these things can make us feel more powerless as individuals by the minute. That's the single greatest threat we face as a civilization. It's not chemicals in the environment or climate change or the tragic loss of biodiversity. Although these are certainly critical issues, they're just symptoms of the disease. The disease, the core crisis, is the belief that our individual actions no longer matter, that the battle has been lost and all hope vanquished.