Make the World a Better Place

Reflection: #41

I read somewhere online that, "The world would be a better place if fewer people thought it was their mission to “make the world a better place”. And, I find myself agreeing with that sentiment. In fact, it's something I think about a lot.

Of course, most people, when asked what they want to do in life usually have some variation of "help people" as their answer. So, it makes sense that a large percentage of us would want to "make the world a better place." Of course we do! What kind of person would set out, intentionally, to make the world a worse place? It is common that even the worst despots start with the intention of leading their nations to a better future.

But, a problem appears when we allow ourselves the indulgence of our own hubris to believe that we, as one individual out of eight billion, actually know what needs to happen to make the world "better." And, more preposterous, even if we happen to be super-geniuses who actually do know what needs to happen, some of us start to think that we know what to change in “the system” to force such a change in the behavior of millions of people to achieve the goal of making the world a better place. We believe that we are right and millions of people trying to make their way in the world are wrong.

But what if we're wrong? We're all humans, and most often, when it comes to fully understanding complex humanity, we are wrong, or, at least, we’re not perfectly right. Many forms of ancient wisdom contain the message that we should learn to focus on what we can change and not worry about what we cannot.

Why, then, do so many of us focus on trying to change “the world”, to change everyone except ourselves?

Why do our leaders, our world improvers™ focus so much of their time and energy on "making the world a better place" by imposing punishing rules that many of us don't want? How does it make the world a better place to upset half of the people you are pretending to lead?

It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When I was young, I didn't quite understand that saying. But now I do. Even with the best of intentions, you can't know, nor can anyone know, what makes the world better for another person. And, if you happen to be a law maker, you can't even know if your new laws or regulations will even achieve the stated goal of the law. Laws often don't accomplish their intended goals because when the rules of the game change people learn to game the changed rules. Laws can even have the opposite of the intended outcome. I call this the Costanza principle. For example, the USA has proudly funded the “war on poverty” for six decades and the “war on drugs” for nearly five decades. The opposite.

The irony is that if we all just focused on the ancient wisdom of making ourselves better, then the world would surely follow. There's a reason, when asked about "the law and commandments," Jesus answered simply with “Love." Love your god, love your neighbor, love yourself. Most of us, myself especially included, can't even do that much of the time, yet we allow ourselves delusions of grandeur.

We struggle to make our own lives, to make even our own thoughts, something that we can live with, something that brings us peace, or something that brings us joy. Yet we, the same people that can't bring peace to our own thoughts, think we can somehow bring peace to the world. But the more I see, and the longer I live, the more convinced I become that we should all focus on bringing inner peace to ourselves, our families and perhaps our close friends. And, if we can make those few relationships "better” - if we can make our own daily lives better - if we could only all do that - then we could give the gift of "making the world a better place" without needing to make it a goal at all.

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