If you ask people this question you get a lot of answers.
“Stop AI!” “Fund education!” “Remove the current people in power from their positions and start all over!“
Okay, sure. But how would that happen, exactly? The answer is not so simple.
Let’s roll with that idea – even if we could take all the people making bad decisions and pluck them from their current situations (and, in my personal fantasy, force them to choose from the full gamut of possible practices: Vipassana, domination, arts and crafts, etc to venture into the deepest depths of their darkest wounds and come out the other side healthy and connected with the rest of the world) – would that really solve the problem?
Probably not.
Because if we simply “remove the problem” – whatever problem it is we perceive – we will find that the problem, like everything else in the universe, is hitched, connected, interwoven, and so on and so on, etc to everything else.
So in the example of abducting the world leaders and forcing them to meet their inner demons, what happens in the meantime? A vacuum opens up and the other people that are around them supporting the system that is already in place rush to fill that void. And then we’re still here, fighting the same system that made us mad in the first place.
Being in relationship with “the problem”
Energy is neither created nor destroyed; there is no such thing as “removing” a problem – you can “root out” the “root cause” of an issue but through that process you build relationship with the problem to understand its intricacies. And in that understanding you transform your relationship to said “problem.” Therefore there is only the transformation of a “problem” into something else.
So whatever you perceive to be the “root cause” of whatever grander systemic issue is currently sentencing the planet and everything living here to irrevocable destruction, doom, and gloom, I would ask: how can we use this perceived problem to our advantage? And better yet, how can we shift our energy from trying desperately to solve the big, bad, unsolvable problems out there to acting powerfully to become the solution we want to see in our own, small little worlds?
Big things are made of small things
The big movements we see in the human world are built on millions of smaller movements. Every big scary thing you see taking shape is made up of teeny, tiny actions, steps, relationships, particles!!! So if you want to shift big things, you have to build something that is as powerful as the big thing, and it therefore must also be made of tons and tons of little things working together. Knocking the tip off the iceberg does nothing to dissolve the enormous, glacial mass bobbing up and down underneath it.
And that means starting small. If you want to change the world, do the smallest thing in your little world. Let the little things grow together, and get stronger together.
Because no big bad overlord can ever squash the grassroots, no matter how hard they try. Grassroot connections are the fabric of life, they are what the “overlord” is made up of anyways.
And!!! Let these “small” things be meaningful. Because in many cases the voice inside you that says “your/the impact should be BIGGER” is the same voice talking very loudly to all the overlords and that is exactly what is making them act very messy. Let’s let things be as small or as big as they need to be and know them for what they are. Anything that is alive will grow naturally.
Putting the power back where it belongs
It’s also worth noting that approaching “changing the world” from this perspective feels vastly different than running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to “fight the good fight” “out there.” It puts the power back inside each of us, which is where it truly resides. There is nothing to fix outside, there is only what is right here, right now, in front of you. And how we relate with the problems in our own lives is a mirror for how we relate with the big bad problems we see in the world.
Transforming our relationship to our problems in the micro inherently transforms our relationship to our problems in the macro – and it is only through that transformation we will see meaningful, lasting change as a species. Creating this true resilience means finding a place and a role for everything that exists under the sun (and the moon, and the ocean, and so on). And that feels grounded, rooted, connected, real, slow. Fighting fire with fire just feels hot. Growing baby threads of connections into fully self-regulating ecosystems feels like life expanding.
This is not news, just a reminder
What I am writing here is absolutely not an original concept. But if you ask people this question, you may be amazed to witness how quickly they direct their attention outside themselves into the external world, and especially to things beyond their own reach… and that’s an easy way to get trapped in a cycle of nothing actually changing.
Humans are adorable: we care so much, we think so much, we get so busy and worked up, thinking that yelling and hammering on about the things we see as problems is going to help solve them somehow. Except that, as a single individual alone, and even as many individuals who haven’t thought to organize ourselves strategically, we actually don’t have any direct control over most any of these big things. And that’s because we are not actually in relationship with it – we’re just mad. And spending all the time yelling and hammering can tucker out even the most ambitious of individuals with the best of intentions.
Externalizing the problem doesn’t help us relate to it, and it doesn’t help us grow anything that might provide a better, healthier, more resilient alternative.
I would like to offer that this tendency is a habit and it’s not one that serves us, or truly puts us in service of building the “better world” we envision. If every single person took all of that beautiful energy, desire and life force and directed it into simply making their little corner of the world a better place, what kind of world would we live in?
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