A Realistic Approach to Saving the World

I’m lucky: I’m not struggling for survival. I’m not crying myself to sleep out of loneliness or heartbreak. My most important needs are met. That gives me time to worry about other people’s problems. As well we all should: many of them will affect us all.

You’ve probably noticed: the world is in sad shape. No one would deny it—although the debate rages on about who and what to blame. But while the filibustering drones on, the standard of living for much of the world’s population is going down, and so are people’s expectations. Peace is in jeopardy in many places; resources are ever scarcer and higher in price; the weather is going haywire…. What can a person do? It’s unconscionable not to act, but we can’t afford to act foolishly. With problems so pressing, we need to focus on what will really work.

My friends and I have looked at this very carefully. We’ve considered every approach we’ve heard of, and every approach we could think of, to improve the world’s prospects and reduce the world’s suffering. We could not escape this conclusion: apart from people just plain being unselfish, every other solution we could think of was unsatisfactory.

Most proposals for “saving the world” suggest better ways of doing things, new or improved forms of international cooperation, and the like. Such changes and systems are good—and heaven knows, they are necessary. But heaven knows, too, how much the results of everything depend on people more than systems. As powerful free will creatures, we human beings should never think a good idea or an improved structure can, in and of itself, save us. How disappointed we would be!

Consider the many cases where people have taken a wonderful system and made it unworkable. Here’s a simple but telling example: the “honor system.” Why don’t we rely on that beautiful principle more often? It’s become unreliable, because selfishness has become more popular than honor these days.

Throughout history, narrow self-interest has defeated mankind’s best-laid plans, despite their theoretical promise and merit. One by one, so many great social movements, so many hopeful structures have been brought down by selfishness, laziness, and greed.

Communism and socialism are good, idealistic systems, but they failed because, without strong self-interest incentives, selfish people won’t exert themselves for the common good. Capitalism, too, is now failing, because greed and self-interest have overshadowed the positive values that could have kept it viable: strong human values; healthy self-sacrifice; and intelligent, far-sighted resource-management. Even democracy is failing, because the people have given too much power to their leaders, and participated too little in steering the ship. The examples go on and on: selfishness routinely degrades otherwise positive opportunities.

To be realistic about helping the world, we must realize the extent to which selfishness creates the woes we wish to fix—and even sabotages all our attempts to fix them. For example: When people try to give financial aid to third world countries, selfishness interferes at every turn. Greed, bribery, stealing, and corruption block progress at all levels of government, clear down to the local level. Interpersonal bickering and lack of cooperation among the recipients of aid has undermined water projects, agricultural projects, every kind of charitable benefit project, the world round. It’s maddening… and tragic.

I still actively support many good causes and promising solutions. We need to solve the problems on all levels on which they exist. But I know every solution will eventually hit the wall until selfishness bites the dust. Until we effectively reduce self-orientation itself, both individually and collectively, selfishness will continue to undermine attempts to bring about planetary harmony, or even population stability, here on earth.

Who among us is willing to pay the real cost of a right and beautiful world? The real cost is unselfishness; real caring; true cooperation and self-sacrifice—in short, less ego. If we fool ourselves that our ideals, our values, and our visions could work without effectively reducing our selfishness, we’re cruisin’ for a bruising.

To make the needed difference, we’ve got to be more than humanitarian. It is good to give a penny at the cash register, to contribute to Save the Whales, to pray for victims of famine and war, to meditate for world peace. All these things are good and necessary. But we must know, too, that impersonal forms of giving transcend selfishness to only a very small degree. Charity, unfortunately, is like removing twenty percent of a virulent tumor. To make the needed difference, we need to personally incorporate ongoing ego-transcending practices into all parts of our daily life. For example, to cooperate smoothly instead of insisting on our own way; to listen to someone else’s exciting idea before blurting out our own; to recognize and accommodate another person’s needs. Then, we’ll be helping save the world, whether our lives look conventionally “humanitarian” or not.

Healing the world, one person at a time

Healing the world one person at a time

Just as world hunger is solved one child at a time, people are healed individually, one by one. So, just as we will end world hunger one person at a time, we will end love-starvation one person at a time. If we are to heal the humanity, we must love personally, not just universally. We must commit our love, and focus it.

People intuitively recognize the power of one-by-one. Parental commitment draws its power from that principle. Indeed, many parents recognize the world-healing power of personal love when they say that their contribution to saving the world is to raise one or two solid world citizens.

Unfortunately, the biological roulette wheel does not always deliver children who embrace their parent’s ideals. Consequently, to save the world, we must love beyond family ties, beyond belonging of any kind, beyond personal preference and convenience. We must invest deeply in what Jesus called “the fertile ground.” In this case, the fertile ground is people who are actually open to the fulfillment of relationship. Only those people will accept love deeply enough to truly be healed, and become healers in their own right. Do you see?

The chain of love

But there are so many people in the world! How can we possibly save the world unless we can love people in large batches?

Here’s how: Love someone, and heal that one. Then that one will love and heal someone else. The chain continues to infinity, because surely, anyone who is truly fulfilled in love, by love, can and will love/heal others.

As aspiring world healers, our job is to get that domino effect going. By loving personally, by committing genuine love to actual individuals, we begin to build a network of love that will extend far beyond ourselves.

This is an excerpt from an article called “Agape, Personal Love, & World Healing” from Soulprogress.com.

How to Save the World

There IS a Way, If We Have the Will

There is a truly satisfying answer to the question,
“What can I do to REALLY save this world?” Please consider it . . .

The problems of this world seem overwhelming, it’s true. Maybe you wonder, “What could I do? What could any single individual do? In fact, what could even a huge group effort accomplish in trying to address these enormous problems?” It’s all so BIG.

Many people are trying to address the various pressing problems of humanity: environmental problems, political problems, social problems, etc. Those are sincere efforts, and they’re helpful to the extent that they provide real relief. The bad news is, they don’t go far enough. It’s all just symptom management, because none of those efforts address the real cause of the problems.

It’s truly short-sighted to focus on symptoms but ignore their cause. For example, if a person has cancer and it is giving them headaches or causing their skin to peel, you might give them a painkiller to make their headaches feel better, or make-up to improve appearances. But no matter what we do to relieve the symptoms, unless we get rid of the cancer itself, the person will probably die. That, obviously, is a huge problem—and it shows the ultimate limitation of symptom management.

It is getting more obvious every year that the various efforts to fix this or that specific problem are terribly partial, and piecemeal. You have to wonder: “Which effort should I support, when each addresses only a tiny piece of a huge puzzle, and when I know that if we solve one problem, so many others remain?”

We can make lasting, far-reaching progress only if we attack a problem at its root. That way, even as we’re going along making only small increments, we have the real satisfaction of knowing that each increment has the power to affect every aspect of the overall problem, not just one tiny symptom of it.

To really save the world, we must cure the disease that causes all of its disturbing symptoms. That disease is egoism. Egoism is the root cause of virtually all of the world’s ills. It spawns troubles constantly, in ever-increasing and varying forms, on every level from the individual level to the planetary level. All human patterns of separation, conflict, and abuse are directly attributable to ego identification, and to the narrow self-interest and self-service which are ego’s hallmarks. Therefore, without any doubt, egoism really is the problem, the root of all the world’s symptomatic ills.

Friends, the notion of saving the world should be more than an idealistic dream or a hopeful, noble-sounding hobby. So please, consider the matter deeply enough to come to this obvious conclusion: We can’t expect to save the planet and the humanity unless individual humans renounce the egoism which creates problems on every level, starting from the personal and moving out to the national, international, and planetary levels. That’s the truth of the matter—the most inconvenient, most essential, undeniable truth.

If you have the interest and will to consider the problems and honestly face their causes, you will be strongly motivated to participate in the only solution that could ultimately prevent planetary destruction. You will want to help return every individual to their own heart wisdom, to their sense of real rightness, and to their natural, Divinely-created affinity for love. Love for their fellow brothers and sisters. Love for God. That’s the only thing that can save us.

Every sincere heart who recognizes the truth of this statement is called to undertake this Great Work, because even though this Great Work may seem daunting, perhaps even impossible, it is still the only work upon whose success all other efforts to save the humanity and the planet absolutely depend. Without it, no symptomatic relief efforts could save the planet and the humanity from utter destruction in time, or could even significantly delay that destruction.

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Written by David Truman, go to soulprogress.com for more articles about saving the world.