STOP TRYING to CHANGE the WORLD
I appreciate that people can be closed to alternative points of view that deny their perspective on reality. I face that all the time.
So this is a place for me to share MY perspective.
Stop trying to change the world!!! Instead, change yourself.
This will probably be longwinded, so I apologize ahead of time. But let us start with addressing the most basic of questions:
Who is it that you feel right about hating?
You might have an answer that pops into your head immediately. And while this answer may roll off your tongue quickly, I would guess that you immediately would then try to qualify the answer, or defend your position.
In the most basic of cases, we might answer as a child, and simply say, “I hate bad people. I hate people who want to hurt other people, or do bad things.”
Now, here you will insert your definition of bad people – racists, supremacists, terrorists, people who disagree with your religious views, thieves, hypocrites – the list of potential descriptions is endless, when considering what anyone and everyone might say.
But to illustrate simply the fallacy of this type of thinking, let me use this simple example: “I hate people who hate.”
There it is, right on the tip of your nose: by hating anyone, you become that which you hate.
Of course, the more intellectual you are, the more you will deny this simple fact. The more you trust in your mind, the more you will absolutely, without a doubt, be convinced that you have constructed a set of moral and intellectual definitions by which you have created a proper framework to qualify your hate as justified, and necessary, and righteous.
Let me lay out some more simple groundwork for this claim of mine. All hate is fear based. All fear is the fear of not being completely loved.
It is so easy to get caught up in symptoms of any illness, and forget that something basic is causing those symptoms. American medicine does it all the time. But I would propose for your consideration that hate is an illness, and that illness is fear based, and that fear’s basic cause is that somehow that you are not completely loved.
Is this too psychological for you? Do you maintain that it would make a nice bumper sticker, but does nothing to effect actual suffering in the world?
Be assured, when I say “stop trying to change the world, instead change yourself” – I am not speaking to just you. I am speaking to every individual on the planet, in general theory, although realistically how many people will actually read this? Most certainly, I am speaking to myself.
Let us say that racism is the subject, as it was in a blog that I was nudged out of recently. because I did not promote some sort of social activism, or intellectual solution.
How do you stop racism? Stop being a racist!
Seriously, you can analyze this until you are blue in the face, but this is truly the only solution. What force can you exert over someone else that will cause them to stop a pattern of thinking that they have chosen to exercise? Every effort on earth, in all of history, has failed. Isn’t it the rebels that we remember best? The people who said, “I will not give in to your pressure to think the way you want me to?”
Do we remove tyranny through more enlightened tyranny? Do we remove racism by applying the force that we despise when the racists apply it? Do we end killing by killing all the killers?
Ah, the perfect solution!!(sarcasm intended) Of course then afterwards, we would have to kill ourselves, because we have become what we hated.
You only have a hope of changing yourself – no one else. You also have a supreme responsibility to change yourself, because no one else can. So why are you wasting time trying to change someone else, and wasting the time you have been given to work on yourself?
Let me ask you again: who is it that you still feel right about hating?
Only by each individual person working on these issues inside of themselves – without control by others – will the world ever change.
If you stop hating, and I stop hating, and this message is the one we focus on – “change yourself” – and others hear it and believe, in effect, perhaps the world can be changed.
But if we lived in a perfect world (by your definition, whatever that is) – and you were still filled with hate, or fear – what would you gain?
Now let me take that one step further. What if WE ARE LIVING IN A PERFECT WORLD – but you and I are still filled with fear and pain, and so we can’t see it?
Let me use an everyday example to illustrate this. You have a favorite restaurant, don’t you? The food is great, the ambience is wonderful, and the service people know you, and are genuinely happy to see you. And so you go to this restaurant. But somewhere else, perhaps at a table close by, is someone that bothers you. Is it a noisy child or two with a young couple that do not know how to be a parent, in your opinion? Is it a loud drunk or two, who have no consideration for the volume of their inane conversation? Is it an arguing couple that has forgotten that they are airing their personal life to strangers who are not at all interested?
These people may well ruin the perfection, in your view! But how do you change them so that your perfection may be reclaimed?
You can’t. You cannot silence the children, or the drunks, or the arguing couple. You have no power to completely change the actions of others. But you do have the power to change your own reaction.
If you remove your reaction from this equation, you will see your perfect restaurant has not changed at all. The only thing that has changed is the introduction of others who are causing you to react in a way that you focus on your negative reaction, instead of the perfection that you came here for, in the first place.
They are not the problem! You are!
Oh, how ridiculous that statement may seem – I know, too well!
But how do you define a perfect world? If other people inhabit it, then the definition must be agreed upon. Otherwise, other people causing you to have negative reactions ruins your ‘perfect restaurant’ – or your theoretical ‘perfect world’.
The common definition that is required for perfection cannot be imposed on others, by your will, or anyone else’s. Any set of rules will be rebelled against, or the actions used to enforce the rules will be rebelled against. Temporarily, on a surface level, certain world rulers think they have done this imposing successfully – but have always been undone, in the end. The common definition must be agreed upon – not forced, or enforced, or coerced.
And what can we possibly get a planet of billions to agree upon? Not the time of day. Or a language. Or a money system.
It has to be something much more basic than that.
“I want to be happy. I want to avoid suffering. I want to be loved.”
That’s about it, I think. But even with that possibly being the single set of conditions that we might possibly agree upon to establish perfection, we still have one stumbling block:
PERCEPTION.
And with perception, in the undisciplined mind and spirit, comes:
REACTION.
We have the crucial matters of Perception and Reaction to consider in creating a ‘perfect world’, or resolving any social problem whatsoever.
Regarding perception – is it not obvious that most of the people you may think are wrong (racists, terrorists, killers, thieves, hypocrites, religious zealots – whoever) – actually believe that they are right?
And that people on sides of every issue will try to invoke God, country, popular opinion, logic, history, intellectual arguments or brute force to prove that they have the truly righteous stance?
And isn’t it obvious that these methods never truly work? They might temporarily drive other opinions underground, or inhibit their expression – but we all know that these opinions surface again.
Look at the resurgence in Europe, and pockets of the US, of Nazi and White Supremacist organizations. If ever there were a socially overwhelming vote on something being wrong, this would apply. And yet there are people who preach that this form of hatred is not only right, but also God-ordained!
World opinion did not change their minds. Death at war did not stop this way of thinking. Making the Nazi Party illegal did not work.
To me, this is absolute proof that society, or government, or even individual activists cannot solve the perceived ills of society. The only true action that changes this is the act of the individual to throw hate out of their state of being.
It is the example of living in kindness and love, which only comes from individual searching, mental discipline and spiritual contemplation, that actually convinces someone else to discard a way of thinking that they previously exercised.
I could list historical figures here, but the real change that is needed is in you, and me.
I doubt that many people reading this really relate to historical or world figures – and the varying perception of each would limit my point, so I won’t list any.
It is the chance moments when you choose to be kind instead of react in anger that truly affects the people around you. It is the random act of kindness that truly can change a moment in the world from bad to good. It is the combined actions of individuals who choose to change the way they think and act, and throw out hate from their inner state, which is the only hope of changing the world.
When you rely on your perception – the instantaneous interpretation of your brain to a sensory signal- the channeling of that sensory signal through the synapses of your brain, which are arranged in whatever recognition patterns you have trained them to, or your environment has trained them to – and then react with the preprogrammed responses to that stimulation that you have always exercised, that you believe in, that you do even if you don’t totally believe in them – this is where your reality is formed.
This is where you create your world, and only here can you change your world.
And by sharing this knowledge with you, this is my only hope of having a real influence in changing the world. I can express my views, and ask you to share in them. But the decision is yours, and yours alone.
Just as it is with the racist, and the terrorist, and the killer, and the thief, and the hypocrite, and every other person in the world that you believe needs to change their opinion, or the way they act, or the reality they create.
So ask yourself – do you care about changing yourself as much as you want to change other people?
Do you spend as much time talking about changing yourself, doing things to change yourself, working on the real hard honest work of self analysis, and removing negative thought patterns, preprogrammed response patterns, and actual deep rooted issues of fear and hatred, from yourself – as you do about other people, or society, or your government?
Or do you really believe the illusion that all of the rest of reality is going to conform to your personal vision of perfection, thereby removing you of the responsibility to deal with the only thing you can ever have a hope of success in – changing yourself?
Speaking of perspectives, consider this statement:
Someone else’s hate is your opportunity.
In case you are wondering, I am not intentionally trying to create paradoxical statements. It just so happens that most of us have been raised with concepts so backwards, that when statements of truth come out, they seem to be just about the most stupid thing that anyone could ever say.
But it’s true – someone else’s hate is your opportunity. This is one perception that will take some explaining, I know.
Ask any experienced sales person, and they will tell you – negative emotion is an opportunity to make a sale. In the sales process, one of the stages in making a sale to someone who does not want to buy is called “isolating the objection”. The following stage is called “overcoming the objection”.
When a person presents you with hate – guess what? The objection they have is right on the surface, just waiting for you to overcome it!
Now, it’s is understandable that most people do not greet expressions of hate with the mental or emotional reaction of “Oh Happy Day!” But in reality, you are being given not just one, but several extremely important opportunities at this time.
1) You have an opportunity to change your preprogrammed reactions.
You already know how you react to something that is negative, and in your face. But as I pointed out in chapter 2, it is your reaction that ruins your perfection, not the action of someone else. Sure, we can all play the mental game of possible actions, until we get to one that seems impossible to react to in peace and calm. But how far down that list are you – really?
You don’t have to list possibilities like “what if someone was killing a beloved family member in front of your eyes?” when, in actuality, you go off the deep end when the person in the car in front of you drives badly, and you honk the horn so fast that your conscious mind didn’t even have to form the thought. Or whatever the situation that causes you to react in anger is.
(A little hint here – if you can’t form an honest list of what makes you react in anger – just ask the people around you. I think they could probably give you a few examples faster that you can honk a car horn.)
So don’t sit there, reading this, and think that what I am saying is unreasonable, or impossible. You know that you can change at least a few ways you react to the actions of others – don’t you? And lo and behold, once you begin to practice patience, instead of emotional displays of anger, you will begin to surprise yourself. Soon, actions of others will have less control over you – instead of making you look like you need a prescription.
I know this to be true because I have spent many years either looking like I needed a prescription, or asking a doctor for a new one, because the last one still didn’t rein me in enough.
But it was always in my power to change myself. I was either untrained in the proper methods, or too lazy, or too stubborn. I wanted to feel righteous indignation. I wanted to think I deserved better treatment.
But all the while, the person who was mistreating me the most was….. ME.
I was the one making myself feel powerless, because I was not changing myself, and empowering myself with the ability to control my own reactions. And by not changing myself, and controlling my reactions, I was the one making myself angry.
No one else truly can make you feel any emotion. Your emotions are the product of a brain chemical that is produced by an organ inside of you. And part of you determines for that organ to produce the chemical – as your preprogrammed reaction to sensory stimulus of some sort.
Part of you says “when this happens, I produce this chemical, which I interpret as an emotional feeling, which helps me act out the emotional display that I have determined is appropriate to this other person’s action.”
No one sneaks up on you and injects you with these brain chemicals. You make them. And it is not an involuntary function. It is unconscious, but only in the sense that we do it automatically – just like honking the car horn. It can be changed with conscious thought.
You can change this reaction process!
Now, let us look at another opportunity that is presented to you, when someone confronts you with hate.
2) You have the opportunity to give someone a reason to decide to change his or her mind.
Perhaps it has happened to you, on the other side of the equation. Perhaps you have been all steamed up, and someone has presented you with a surprising reaction of pace, or kindness, or understanding. Do you remember how your anger melted away?
Or perhaps it didn’t, and you just grew more angry, because they wouldn’t get mad. Even then, didn’t a part of you laugh at yourself for doing so? Didn’t you realize that it wasn’t the action of the other person that really interested you – you just wanted a good fight?
Anger and hate produce adrenaline, which many people are addicted to – much more that cigarettes, or heroin, or pain pills. In fact, all brain chemicals can be addicting! Depression, anger, love, self pity, inadequacy, pride – all these emotional states have a brain chemical that corresponds to them.
Which one is your favorite? Imagine yourself stabbing a needle into your arm, and injecting that brain chemical, while you shiver in a slum apartment with no furniture and no heat.
It’s not far from reality. When you allow other people’s actions to cause reactions, just so you can get your brain chemical fix, you are no more than a crack whore walking the streets. You are not empowered. You are not in charge of your life.
Guess what? The person who is expressing hate, in your face, is not in charge of their life, either. They have a preprogrammed response to situations and actions, which is feeding their addiction to brain chemicals that they associate with anger and hate.
And you are just another opportunity for them to get their fix.
But what if you refuse to react in the way they expect? What if you give them a reaction that does not fit their programming? They expect fear, or anger, as a response. But what if you give them a response that they are programmed to react to in a way other than anger and hate?
When you do this, you stop the automatic functions of their brain – for just long enough for them to be surprised, because now the brain chemical factory has been asked to stop production of the anger and hate chemicals, and fill a new order instead.
And now, that part of the brain has to reconsider. When you react the way a person anticipates, they know they are right. But when this automatic sequence of action-reaction-brain chemical production-emotional response is interrupted…
… a person has the chance to decide to change their mind.
It is at this exact moment that the hater can think, “that person that I want to hate does not act like I expected them to!”, and this gives them pause.
In this moment, they are actually questioning the process of their hate. In this moment, they can decide to re-program their brain.
And so, you see, the only hope of changing the world that you, or I, or anyone has, is to actually change ourselves. Only then can we break the automatic preprogrammed sequences of action-reaction-brain chemical production-emotional response.
And since you need other people to be in agreement to change the world, you will need to change yourself to the point that you can react differently to expressions of hate – because that is the only hope for the people who are addicted to the brain chemicals that produce the emotional displays we interpret as hate. You have to cause a break in the preprogrammed responses in their brain. You have to cause a disruption in the brain chemical production.
You have to give them a reason to decide to change their mind.
It is still their choice. But when you give a junkie the chance to actually decide for themselves, instead of automatically seeking their addiction – you have given them hope.
And this only happens when you, yourself, decide first to change yourself, and stop being a preprogrammed junkie to your own brain chemicals.
So, please – stop trying to change the world with your social activism, or political protests, or even worse, with terrorism. It will never work. What is needed is a world of changed individuals. And you have all the work you can handle, already cut out for you – just in yourself.
