How could we change the world by changing ourselves?
An opinion from the Internet:
“You said that we can change the world only by changing ourselves.
I did that self-change stuff long ago. Found out it’s not a good idea. Instead, we need to do it in the good, old-fashioned way, change the damn world around us. I mean, come on, nobody likes how things are. That’s where that kind of philosophy got us.”
With all due respect, human history is about nothing else but trying to change the world around us. We constantly try to change others, the ideologies and systems we use; we try to override and change nature. There is nothing we did not try to change before.
And where did this bring us? To the threshold of self-destruction.
We are like uneducated physicians that hastily try to treat illnesses through external symptoms without establishing the right diagnosis, without actually treating the root cause.
The root of all historical and contemporary problems is within us. It is our inherently self-serving and self-justifying nature that drives us towards excessive overconsumption and ruthless competition, where we survive and succeed at each other’s expense.
Moreover, as long as we try to blame, change, correct, and destroy others, we simply ignite the endless conflicts and wars that are the hallmark of “human development.”
Nobody can or is allowed to correct another. We all have to correct ourselves.
What I mean about ‘another way” of doing it is the following:
It is very obvious that the last thing we want to do is to recognize that the problem is within us; the last thing we want to do is to change or correct ourselves. And even if we wanted to do something like that, we have no capability of changing ourselves alone; after all, nobody can lift oneself by pulling one’s own hair. Who can perform a heart and brain transplant — basically what we have to do symbolically — on oneself?!
Moreover, what is it that we actually have to correct and change? Our inherent qualities or characteristics? No.
What we have to change is how we relate to other people and the natural system around us. We have to learn and practice how to exist and be concerned for the well-being and optimal state of others as much as we exist for and are concerned for the well-being and optimal state of ourselves.
For this, we need a special method, and we also need a unique environment with like-minded people who also commit to trying to change and further develop themselves so we can build proper, mutually responsible, and mutually complementing integration between us.
And even in that environment, we are not strong or capable enough to perform the fundamental self-changes on ourselves.
This is why that special, purposeful, and practical method also gives us the tools and the ability to harness unique developing forces from nature’s system, which can help us build human relationships that are similar to the interconnections and mutual cooperation that sustain the general balance and homeostasis in nature that is the foundation for life.
Only when all of these conditions are in place, and we are truly committed to changing ourselves at any cost so we can together become more similar to nature, where we all become like healthy cells in the same, integrated living organism, then we will become successful.