Our actions can change the world, but unfortunately we cannot anticipate how. Every intended change leads to a cascade of unintended changes. The world is a vast uncomprehended hydraulic system: push something in and something unexpectedly pops out on the other side.
Industrializing to lift ourselves from the poverty of agrarian life, we unintentionally opened the spigots of pollution now drowning us. Punishing the Germans for starting World War I, the Allies made them desperate enough to elect Hitler. Helping Afghanistan defeat the Soviets in the 1980s, the United States armed turbaned zealots with the weapons they now attack us with.
Neither the ancient pessimists who saw humans as pawns of destiny, nor modern picketers who think all problems are problems of willpower, are correct. We possess the power of gods but we administer it with the ignorance of mortals. Electing politicians is like electing which passenger should take the controls of a plummeting airplane. Everything depends on who is chosen and which buttons he pushes, but which buttons he pushes depends more on luck than skill.
The self-importance of politicians is therefore comical. For an accurate idea of political power, we should picture a peace summit where one of the leaders, grandly gesturing while discussing his peace plan, accidentally knocks down his foreign counterpart and kills him, thereby starting a war.
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This reminds me of a statement by then VP-candidate John Edwards, who in October of 2004 in the heat of the campaign made this scandalously cringe-worthy statement about candidate John Kerry's position on federal funding for stem cell research:
"If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."
Apparently, Christopher Reeve was prevented from getting out of his wheelchair by the Bush stem cell policies.