Can we save others?

Question from the Internet:

“How true is the claim that no matter how many people you can save, you can’t save them all?”

am not sure we can save even one person actually. I do not think we have any historical or contemporary evidence that we can save or correct others. After all, in the last over 2000 years , for example, religions claimed to save people and were very busy converting people in the name of “saving them”. And we could and we can still see how it “worked”, how much “love and compassion” flooded the planet as a result.

Most of the destruction and wars in history has been as a result of “religions saving people”. But we can see the same in our personal lives as well. We are all busy and hellbent on “helping” others’ correcting and saving others, as if we were the bearers of some might wisdom, some impeccable moral and ethical values. Especially today, we can see many elements in society who seem to be absoluetly certain about their rights and the wrongs of others. They know exactly who is “good and evil”, who needs to be “saved, corrected, censored and destroyed” and who are allowed to say and do anything since they are “saved or pure”.

Going to the root of the problem, how could we save others, when we ourselves need “saving”? How can we claim that we have qualities and abilities to judge and “correct or save” others, when we are all born with an inherently and 100% self-serving, self-justifying, egocentric, subjective and exploitative nature?!

The way we see and judge others is already flawed and distorted, since we see everybody and everything through our inherently egocentric and subjective filters. “Saving others” is nothing else but an ego boost, proving ourselves higher, better and mightier than others.

We all need “saving”, we all need a fundamental self-correction and self-upgrade, so above and against our inherently self-destructive and exploitative nature – which the root cause of every problem we encounter in the world – we could start connecting, mutually complementing and mutually cooperating in order to save ourselves. But nobody can change and save another. We all havwe to do our own correction and self-saving willingly and consciously. The only way we can influence others is through positive example and selfless and unconditional support and service when we create smaller, mutually supportive and mutually complementing groups where each person commits to change themselves for the sake of others.

This way, through correcting and saving ourselves, we will be able to save everybody, since in a dying and collapsing world, such positive example will spread like wildfire.