American Government #2 - spheres of influence

Sometimes when I study the founding fathers, I wonder what made the difference for them - what made it so that they saw a bigger picture. Was it just that they had dreams of changing the world like people today, but theirs actually came into fruition? I feel like something in their youth or childhood must have triggered some kind of awareness - a feeling of not only social responsibility, but that they could and should do more than accept their current societal structure. I know many historians suggest that they accomplished what they did because of their unique economic and societal situation - they had the time and the finances to study and think. But John Adams was a farmer, and he had a vision so radical and yet realistic that today he influences more than 300 million people.  A girl in my American government class today suggested that maybe we do have people like the founding fathers today, but there are so many of them that they don't stand out. I do think it's an interesting question, whether the sheer magnitude of our society, despite its trend towards globalization, actually limits the sphere of people's influence. If it does, and individual's actions now have smaller impacts (or at least smaller speaking relatively), than what does that mean in terms of our social responsibility? I don't know, but maybe it means that if we do want to influence more than a proportionately small circle of people, it requires us to connect - to not do it alone. Although, I guess that was true in the founding fathers' day as well. It wasn't until they got emissaries from all (or most) of the colonies together, not until they made connections outside of their local spheres, that real change occurred.