Thread: How could you change the world?

This is not a thread about ideology, this is a thread about tactics.

The method we are taught as children is to change the system from the inside, elect leaders or become leaders ourselves. This does not appear like a method that serves any good. Either the positions of so called leadership are impotent or the just and honest leaders are filtered out of any realistic chance at being elected.

To me the battle appears to be taking place in the mind, and it seems to be a battle between reason and propaganda, between partisanship and unity.

When I look at the people who are most positively affecting the world, the first person I think of is Thich Nhat Hanh. He runs a retreat center in France called Plum Village, referred to by some of my friends that have gone as Buddhist Boot Camp. The ripples of peace and compassion he causes are massive, though subtle and virtually unheard of on the public "stage." Chris Abani said in his TED Talk (which I highly recommend you watch if you haven't) that the world is never changed by grand, messianic gestures but in the simple accumulation of soft, gentle, nearly invisible acts of compassion. I believe Thich Nhat Hanh has a achieved the capacity of transform the world that I dream of achieving in my lifetime, but he failed to perform any heroic action such as ending the Vietnam War during the 3 months he traveled the United States on his teaching visa. In fact he may have been instrumental in causing more disunity by accidentally motivating a reactionary population into stigmatizing the soldiers drafted to fight that worthless war to begin with. This stigma partially led to the fall-out between the Hells Angels and Working Cass and the Student Pacifists. Had these two groups formed a united front the 60s revolution could have been successful in doing more than preventing the US from going to Fascism.

Getting to the point, what do you believe is a realistic method to heal and improve the world? I believe that we must work on our own minds, removing partisanship for the sake of it and striving always to find the compassionate approach, free of manipulation by the corruption that control of the public stage. Share what you believe.

Kill myself.. Apperently that would help alot.

In the 70's to early 90's, you could just become a rapper and focus on socio-political issues. Damn shame that an entire genre that was dedicate to educating people about the real world has been bastardized and devolved into what it is today. =/

Nowadays, I guess all you can do is make full use of the internet and the Anonymous movement. Linking people to WikiLeaks, posting things on forums, etc. Pushing for cannabis legalization and encouraging the use of industrial hemp would help a bunch as well.

The question is meaningless without specifying what it is that you would like to change about the world.

Satyagraha

Satyagraha, indeed.

But OP asks only for realistic methods. Satyagraha requires a level of participation that is likely impossible on a global scale -- even its phenomenal show of peaceful "truth force" under leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King influenced relatively few people or events, when considered on a global scale. Unrealistically speaking I think it'd be marvelous, and would happen globally in an instant if everybody on the planet had just a moment of true self-awareness.

Original Poster: whenever I hear this question, and whenever I ponder currently unrealistic methods for changing, improving, or healing the world (like that self-awareness bit), I have to ask this question:

Why?

Who are we to say the world needs changing? In spite of all the crap we see, who are we, really, to judge that all this stuff isn't supposed to be happening? The world has been spinning just fine without our help for four billion years now -- you'd think by now it would be more adept at healing itself than the current plague infesting the uppermost layers of its extremely old and resilient skin? For all we know the world might just need to shake off the infestation every few million years, and we're simply the latest participants in an inevitable process ... a truly crappy process for us indeed, but inevitable.

That said, I think that society has already begun to heal itself, though we may be decades or centuries from health. Even the most cursive examination of history will show that things are certainly better than they used to be -- we all actually are a lot nicer to each other than we were in centuries past. The trouble is there's just so damn many of us, and communication so efficient, that the bad people just seem to be everywhere. In other words, I think that there are as many bad people as ever, proportionally; it's just that a tiny fraction of 7 billion is still a very large number. And perhaps the bad people are supposed to be there, to maintain some sort of balance. I don't know, do you? So the state of society might actually be quite healthy; it just appears sick to the good few who want to believe, indeed must believe, that everything would be much better if only we all got along.

Maybe, then, it's not our place to change the world... maybe it's not our world to change. And maybe these millennia of mayhem humanity is enduring are simply the growing pains of a very young race as it pushes ever closer to their next step in evolution. Something to think about.

That said, I think the only thing we can do as individuals to change the world is maintain self-awareness and be good to the people around us. Satyagraha jumps back into my head, as does the example of Thich Nhat Hanh. If we all become them, the societal world may indeed improve, or rather spiritually change on an evolutionary scale.

tl;dr: Leave "the world" be, it'll work itself out eventually. Just be as good a person as you can be, keep your own personal world as healthy as you can, set a good example, and let "them" have their mess.

I'm not sure I'm making sense. I guess I wish OP had asked for unrealistic solutions -- those are much more fun!

It doesn't need to be realistic from a cynic's perspective. The idea in my mind is that trying to fight war to attain peace, elects good leaders to fill corrupt positions, etc. will never work. Ever. It may be unlikely from our narrow perspective that Satyagraha is possible but it's exactly the type of evolution we must undertake if we want to actually change the world rather than just argue about changing the world.

Originally Posted by Original Poster

It doesn't need to be realistic from a cynic's perspective. The idea in my mind is that trying to fight war to attain peace, elects good leaders to fill corrupt positions, etc. will never work. Ever. It may be unlikely from our narrow perspective that Satyagraha is possible but it's exactly the type of evolution we must undertake if we want to actually change the world rather than just argue about changing the world.

Again, note the fallacy. We are all expected to undertake to change the world without agreeing about what is to be changed.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

Again, note the fallacy. We are all expected to undertake to change the world without agreeing about what is to be changed.

Dude. Accept the fallacy and throw in what you'd like to change, and how. Even though I specifically asked "Why change?" and got no answer, I was content to push the "world-changers" I've been fantacizing about for decades ... I'll bet you can do the same?

Originally Posted by Sageous

Dude. Accept the fallacy and throw in what you'd like to change, and how. Even though I specifically asked "Why change?" and got no answer, I was content to push the "world-changers" I've been fantacizing about for decades ... I'll bet you can do the same?

The first thing that I'd like to change is for people to be able to think clearly and not base their world views on fallacies. I'm not sure how to change that. Any ideas?

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

The first thing that I'd like to change is for people to be able to think clearly and not base their world views on fallacies. I'm not sure how to change that. Any ideas?

That may be a major change, I think, given that (as I sort of noted above), it is almost human nature to base world views on dimly-lit fallacies -- such a stance provides some thin cover from reality's steady, unpleasant rain. Clear thinking can be painful at first. Though ultimately it is well worth the effort, most people are unwilling to get past the pain; hence the fallacies. To answer your question, though, I think #8 of my list above would be an excellent first step, though a good dollop of #'s 7 & 8 might be needed as well...

Or, rather than concerning yourself with fallacies in a venue like this, you could do numbers 1 & 10 on my list above, and imagine for just the length of time it takes to read this thread that the other eight fallacies/fantasies I listed could happen. Then move on, and in the process let them have their world, clouded as it is with useless faith, baseless hope, and usually dead-wrong optimism. Walk away, confident that at least your vision is clear(ish), and that maybe your time playing their fallacious games cleared up someone else's vision just a little bit.

Or, perhaps, you could not take it all so seriously, PhilosopherStoned, and play along just for yucks. Sometimes it's fun, after all, and sometimes even ideas founded on fallacies grow into thoughts worth thinking. Sometimes the process of imagining "fallacious" solutions might just reveal the things we, or even the OP, might like to see changed. Or not; but it can still be fun -- so consider lightening up!

And again, this is all moot anyway, because as I suggested earlier, there's an excellent chance the world needs no changing anyway.

Okay, here are a few unrealistic ideas, in descending order of possibility:

1. People should be nice to each other. Period.

2. Voters should pay attention, and vote responsibly rather than lazily or reactively. Information is so readily available that all voters ought to take care to research their local and national candidates before they vote, and not just believe their lies and propaganda. And then they should vote.

3. Since #2 will never happen, there should be a global law, or, better yet, a global social imperative, that all politicians and world leaders must speak the truth at all times, with no exceptions. If they lie, then they're fired, or, better yet, are forced by their own shame to resign. Thought it's sad to think that the removal of lies would cure much of the world's ills, I think that is the case.

4. Invent an airborne compound that negates the physical nature of all explosives, from gunpowder to nuclear weapons... and don't tell anyone about the nuclear weapons.

5. Invent a power source to effectively and totally replace our need for oil.

6. Create a cabal of expert shared dreamers, each tasked with injecting the word of "right-mindfulness" directly into the dreams of all people, with special focus on the folks from #3 who just won't stop lying, and on those swept up by the need for hate or violence, to possibly get them to understand that there is hope, and that their actions affect others, whether they think that or not.

7. Eliminate all nations, ethnicity, religions monetary systems, and lawyers. Imagine.

8. Create a true sense of self-awareness in all 7 billion of us, for one day at least. Once we all understand who we are, what we are, and where we are in the scheme of things, I have a feeling that the world will change instantly.

9. Discover something bigger than all of us, like ascension to a higher state of being, and share that something with everyone, free of charge, at the same time. Then that next step in evolution can be had by whoever wants it, and the world can be left to those who feel a need to cling to their bloody genetic heritage. And no, I'm not talking about Rapture, that perennial cash-cow for the evangelicals....

10. People should be nice to each other. Period.

These suggestions might be more global or even fantastic than you're looking for, OP, and all would require forces far exceeding those of individuals doing good and setting a good example for others; except of course for #'s 1 & 10. Though individual goodness and the paying forward of that goodness are huge, I feel that they simply are not huge enough to change much ... bigger things must happen.

And, again, I say offer all these suggestions with one caveat: Is it really our place to change anything?

Idk man the world's always changing.

Originally Posted by Sornaensis

Idk man the world's always changing.

Is it? if you look really closely, you'll notice that it's the same crap over and over again. Technology might change, but the folks wielding it are as flawed as ever. And those flaws remain constant.

Originally Posted by Sornaensis

Idk man the world's always changing.

That's a complete non-sequitur and doesn't address my point in the least. Thanks for trying though.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

That's a complete non-sequitur and doesn't address my point in the least. Thanks for trying though.

You're not the OP so I'm wondering why you made this post.

You could become a smart and convincing politician who makes plans that work. You could do something really cool and inspiring and influence your fans. You could start small projects or something and hope they grow.

What do you think we should change though? Probably the crap in government that makes it so difficult to change to start out with. Transparency and education as a priority could be the key for that. I don't know too much about economics, but probably that. Conservation of natural places would be a good thing. People should stop having so many children. That's all I can think of for now.

I just wanted to point out one important thing about the idea that honest people can't get elected or run government position. The problem many people have is that they only look at the really big positions, like the president but rarely look at more local positions. Honest and fair people have strong chances of winning the local offices and making bigger differences near where they live. So while it might not be the best option for all people, it is still a valid option than can work for some.

Hmmmm. Sounds to me like you're offering good advice. On the other hand it seems like 1 and 10 will result from people beginning to think clearly rather than the other way around. That is to say that people being nice to each other is the ends rather than the means.

^^ Hence their positions on the list?

Thought the list was in order of possibility rather than being a list of sequential steps. At any rate, re-reading my last post, people being nice to each other is both a means and an ends. On the other hand, it's not good to get carried away with anything. Willful stupidity should still be made fun of. Or do you disagree?

^^ The list was sequential, but "Be nice," might actually be the list (perhaps the means and ends at the same time), so bookending it around the rest seemed to make sense.

No, it isn't good to get carried away with anything; moderation and calm consideration trump wild exuberance every time, wisdom-wise. That said, I'm not sure willful stupidity is possible -- do people really choose to be stupid, or does their stupidity stem from their misguided confidence in malformed but highly attractive ideas? If someone is willfully stupid, then I guess making fun of them would be okay, since they, by the presence of their will, know that they are saying stupid things and would not be harmed or insulted.

Originally Posted by Sageous

That said, I'm not sure willful stupidity is possible -- do people really choose to be stupid, or does their stupidity stem from their misguided confidence in malformed but highly attractive ideas? If someone is willfully stupid, then I guess making fun of them would be okay, since they, by the presence of their will, know that they are saying stupid things and would not be harmed or insulted.

Willful stupidity occurs when people ignore refutations of their ideas and procede as if they haven't been refuted.

I guess I'm stupid. I thought you were responding to me. :blush:

^^ I can go with that ... Even blithering idiots can and regularly do choose to ignore the truth after it's been made clear to them. Stupidity can be willful.