Changing the World in 30 minutes: A Baby Sniper's Guide

I tried my hand at this mini-essay ("pseudo-rantelligent piece" - my coinage) in response to TBWA/Concept's (Nigeria) call for applications from potential "baby-snipers".(Advertisers have all these crazy, fun-sounding nominal tags they unleash on their "people", targeted specifically at presenting them in the strongest of "creative"/"anarchistic"/"revolutionary" lights).

They asked us to tell them how we intend to change the world in 30 minutes. You can't? Well, I can.

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Every sniper aims to inflict MAXIMUM IMPACT (creative damage?) with MINIMUM ammo, and in MINIMUM time.

1)Imagine if the Sniper that killed John F. Kennedy had missed at first. Losing even a few micro-seconds would have given the Secret Service more than enough time to SAVE the President.
2)Snipers do not use machine-guns. No Sniper plans on using a whole belt-load of bullets to accomplish his or her task. The goal of a sniper is to finish his or her work with that FIRST projectile.

Snipers have changed the world in the past. The sniper who killed Kennedy changed the course of the destiny of countless people, in far less than 30 minutes. A whole Nation (the most powerful on earth) was thrown into mourning. A whole generation was disillusioned by the senseless murder of one they had come to look up to. Lyndon Johnson became President. The “Age of Camelot” came to an end. Jackie Kennedy became a Widow. Eventually she would remarry, and become the wife of one of the richest men in the world. The Kennedy Obsession started, evident for example in the conspiracy theories that have flourished, and the bestsellers that have flooded the bookstores.

The Sniper who killed Kennedy went for his head. His brain. The seat of reason, of consciousness.

To change the world in 30 minutes, I will not kill anyone. No. I will not hold a gun. No. I will not be destructively destructive. If I destroy anything in the few minutes left after I have become a Mature Sniper, it will be a Creative Destruction. A pulling down of ONE faulty paradigm in the minds of men.

But, come to think of it, instead of destroying, I’d rather build. Build a VISION within myself. And then launch forth into the world, armed with that VISION. The VISION may seem to need a lifetime to change the WORLD (see Mandela, Mother Theresa, etc), but in truth, it is the TIME IT TAKES TO EXPLODE INTO REALITY in a mind/consciousness that really matters the most.

We think it takes decades for OAK trees to mature. Wrong. It takes only the length of time needed for the OAK tree seed to realise that it IS an OAK tree. The twinkling of an eye. If it is the seed of an OAK tree, then it will surely become an OAK tree.