Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
First, remember that activism is essentially about telling people what to do, and spoiler alert, they usually already know why they do what they do. In 90% of cases, the activist simply lacks the in-depth understanding of a matter, and in 9% of cases you tell them something they already are trying to do, without helping them achieve the desired state. Tbh, 1% is probably even an overestimate of "good" activism.
On the positive side, there's a few avenues for you; The easiest and simplest is to involve yourself in local nonprofits/charity/social groups that fit with your ideals. You will probably still have to put up with some inefficiencies and value-disagreement, but the advantage of locality is that the differences are in plain sight, so you can quickly update and choose accordingly. For global charity, it can take years to realize just how far their behaviour is from your ideals.
The next, higher risk and higher payoff, would be to work in a field that is intrinsically about helping people/improving the world, such as medicine, police, applied research, ... you will still have plenty of disagreements, but if you go up far enough you generally get a reasonably long leash to do what you want, with some caveats.
The highest risk option, but also the most realistic way to actually change the world, is starting a company on something you believe in. You might be surprised, but from my experience most start-up founders are what you term "disheartened idealists". People always imagine some hardcore capitalist cutthroat, but those are actually better served by staying in a big company and climb the corporate ladder, or in the government. The modal start-up founder has already successfully worked in a field for a while, got frustrated with the way things are done, possibly tried to change the system from within but realized it's a fool's errand, and then vouched to show everyone that it can be done better.
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