Can we change the world by changing ourselves?
Question from the Internet:
“How do changes in the world begin with us?”
First of all, the world we see, experience is not “The World”, but it is a subjective, egocentric version we ourselves perceive and experience according to our own unique qualities, abilities, according to the mood we are in and how, with what intention we relate to others and to our surroundings.
Thus as soon as we change, our qualities, our mood, our goals and our intentions change, the world we see and experience changes with it.
Moreover, since we do not exist in isolation, but we are inevitably interconnected with others and the Natural system due to the complete mutual integration and interdependence that exist in the Natural system we live in, our relation, experience with the world is always “two-sided”, meaning how we relate to and approach others, what intentions we use when we think, decide and act, inevitably influences the reactions we will receive.
This is very difficult to comprehend and it is even more difficult to accept. But at the end of the day, I am in control of the world I exist in.
If I change my general attitude, relationship with others and to my surrounding, if I try to adopt a generally positive, selflessly caring, loving attitude towards everything outside of me — against and above my instinctively distrusting, exploitative, manipulative tendencies as I try to survive and succeed at the expense of others and Nature — I will start to experience and actually, realistically exist in a very different reality.
Of course, this is impossible to exercise and try to implement in the general society, with millions or billions of people all at once. But we can build a unique, closed, mutually supportive and mutually complementing environment with like-minded, mutually committed people who also want to achieve all the above. Then in such small cells, we can come to experience life in a very different world we ourselves create by our own self-changes.
Such small cells then can become like the new, life-giving foundations for a new human society as the general society with its negative, destructive, instinctive behaviour will continue to collapse.