What Matters

What Matters: The World's Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our Time by David Elliot Cohen

From the Barnes&Noble synopsis:

"Like Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth before it, we believe that What Matters will fundamentally alter the way we see and understand the human race and our planet. What Matters asks: What are the essential issues of our time?"

How many times have we begun a conversation with exactly that question, "What matters?" I haven't read this book, but it seems to me that it could be a great conversation starter and a catalyst for dreaming, planning, and action.

What should a couple of 20-somethings be doing with their time as they embark on making a difference, looking to leverage their education and experiences to make maximum impact?

I believe we should be looking for repeatable solutions to the world's most pressing and pervasive problems. The trick is not first to identify the solution, but to first identify the question that needs to be answered. If we can fully define the scope of the problem to be solved, the question to be answered, we can be the facilitators and agitators of the solution. If that solution is repeatable across the globe...