The first step of any revolutionary process is realizing the need for a revolutionary process. The first step of change if to realize that you need to change. Self-awareness, as they say, is half the issue solved. Realising that you have a problem to solve is half the problem solved.
For changing the world, you have to look at it in a way you’ve never looked at it before.
So now the main questions that arise out of this are:
- How have we been looking at it until now?
- And how are we going to look at it from now on?
How Did This World Begin?
In your culture, maybe this world began in some other way than another culture. The beginning of the world does not equal the beginning of life, but apart from that basis, we don’t have any other measure. Earth had been here since long before we humans entered the scene. In fact, the earth was present some 4.54 billion years ago too.
Humans, on the other hand, were not even in the picture.
The origin of life, mainly can be explained through a complex series of religious, philosophical and scientific studies and principles. While Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution states the concept of biological and generational transmissions and natural selection—”survival of the fittest,” different religions carry varying and sometimes even contradictory beliefs.¹
We’ll not go into their details, because there is an estimated number of 10,000 religions present worldwide, and going into detail about all of them would be toiling work, if not a little impossible. It also feels like I wouldn’t be doing them justice by speaking of these religions in an off-handed way.
So we’ll come back to where we began from.
How have you looked at this world until now?
Surely, your physiological, spiritual and psychological environment would’ve shaped it until you’d grown up to have your own views. The society you live in would be the provider of the views you believe in.
Now, on this particular day, at this particular time, I’m simply asking you to keep all those views aside—for just a little time—and accompany me towards this new, different, and very thought-provoking approach to the beginning of life.
I want my mindset to take a different turn and look at it in a manner I’ve never looked at it before. And I want you to follow.
A Different Approach
What if there is a young kid who loves architecture and who wants to build huge cities and monuments.
He sits on his desktop chair and logs into his computer.
His mother tells him that he can only play the online game for 30 minutes. He nods, and so begins the game.
He builds a galaxy, then planets, and then life into them. The has a big black solar system which he uses to visit a new planet every time he wants to. He makes it beautiful, and unknown, and really scary if you were really living it.
But he isn’t. He’s playing.
Life starts thriving in the new galaxy and time passes. 30 minutes later, or 30 millenia later for us, the boy’s mother comes back and tells him to close the game.
By now, life in this galaxy is old, it has seen good days and bad days, there have been revolutions and new laws, there have been wars and destruction. We have used up the resources we were given for free in the beginning. And everything else comes for a price now.
As the boy is begging his mother to let him play for 2 more minutes, we are begging God to let us stay for 2 more centuries.
As the boy holds on his mother’s little finger praying that she will not make him close the interesting game now, we are holding on to the last strand of hope.
The mother is stern. She tells her son to not plead hopelessly, because she knows she won’t budge. She has to take care of his screen time after all.
Here, in front of us, Mother Nature is showing her true form. She is telling us to leave it. She knows now that nothing can do it right. Existence has to leave.
The boy throws tantrums. We throw tantrums.
But who can deny their mother? The boy agrees, he pouts, but nods to his mother as he bends down and presses the computer switch.
That is the final shutdown.
The End.
What if this is it?
The new approach to the origin of life?
What if this is really it, and not some story I made up in my mind?
Doesn’t it scare you then, how the boy pleads with his mother to let him play the game for two more minutes while we are battling for life? And doesn’t it make you tremble thinking about how this might just be the condition happening to us a couple centuries later, with the way we’ve been going.
So reckless. So contaminated. And so doomed.
…but don’t worry. You really don’t have to worry about this.
The boy will come again to play the game tomorrow.
Just like life will take birth again.
Isn’t that hopeful?
So just recently I read somewhere: Question everything.
And heads up, this is a warning—I really am going to question everything.
I’m going to question every belief system, every predetermined conception, every decision, every thought, every single sentence, in every figment of reality.
That is how you reach the core of your mind and this existence.
By questioning everything.
The world is a family.
Uh, no, fun fact—it isn’t. At least I think it isn’t. And I won’t force my thoughts on you, because obviously I shouldn’t. But I really don’t think that the world is a family. We’re not even distant relatives.
But even if any of you actually thinks that it is true, that by some weird chance, we are a family, then we must know that we are doing a very bad job at it.
Questions
Now since I question everything, I also question this belief of mine—why do I think that we are not family or friends?
Now, of course, we know that every conception is backed up by an explanation (that is either present in the form of first-hand experience, or knowledge we get from someplace else).
Whatever belief we have, there is something that has given birth to it.
So what is that experience or evidence that has prompted me to believe that the world isn’t a good place and none of us could ever live together with humane behaviour?
Why am I so pessimistic in my approach towards society?
Well, to begin with, I’m sure I’m not the only one. Nah, millions of other poeple might have the same opinion, the very same surety that no one helps no one in this world without wanting something in return. I don’t think that’s true, though. I do believe that random acts of kindness without some ulterior motive exist, just rarely. But they are there.
And they can’t make a utopia.
Because no one even knows how to make a utopia, an idealistic society and yet that’s what we are after, every day, promising ourselves that tomorrow would be a better chance to bring some change into this world.
The politicians, for example, good ol’ guys, dream of an idealistic economy and then think about wanting to create it. Some of them just fail terribly.
Because that’s what always happens. We think about doing something great—changing-the-world-kind-of-great, you know—and most of us just end up failing terribly.
Because at the end of the day, the society remains the same, never changes at all, and it’s someone else who ends up changing instead.
Doesn’t hurt to try, though.
Ways of changing the world.
It’s a very important business, this one related to world and all that.
Legends come and go, sometimes people don’t even realise that they just watched a legend walk past them on the busy street, or the one ordering the coffee was meant to do something great, or that one person who’s sitting at home jobless had something else written in his destiny entirely.
Then there are the people who don’t let this destiny and all that crap get to them. They want to do great things and want to own up to them. Now you might think that these people are the ones who always end up changing the world.
They are do-or-die types, the ones who don’t hesitate to go all in, it’s the high-way-or-my-way, the doers.
You might be sure that this is a formula applicable to only those doers.
No, kinda not.
It’s not just the loud ones who change the world, I think the quiet ones do too.
There are two major, widely known ways of changing the world.
1. The bad, evil guy way, the way the huge leaders did, in history—Hitler, Marx, and all those other dictators who had a vision and were ready to go to any limit to complete that.
These people usually hold the key to all nuclear attacks and atom bombs that could destroy the world in a second—they wouldn’t even have to feel guilty because this would just end it once and for all.
They think they are changing the world, but all they do is end it.
But, on a broader level, I don’t think these people always just end the world, or are always destructive in their wishes and abilities. Sometimes they really do hope of making a change, and making it such that everyone listens.
They’re not always wrong here. They just don’t change the world, they kind of alter it, alter the systems and procedures and rules, but don’t successfully change it because it isn’t happening on a widely acceptable level.
This is the loud kind, where the people announce to the world that they are changing the world.
2. Then there is the quiet, shy kind.
Here you don’t want to be excessively vulgar or have a giant presence, you just want to do something worthwhile and hurt no one while doing it.
This method doesn’t involve the shouting matches and huge plotting.
They’re just fine as they are—they’re here to make a difference, and at the end of the day, they do just that. Make a difference.
Now both the methods are equally accepted, though the level of efficiency might vary because of course it all comes down to who is doing it. It depends on the skill of the person dreaming about this, their will, their resilience, their capabilities.
Because, after all, may dream of it, but only some come through.
Changing the world
So, uh, it’s not long ago when I had this idea and wanted to work on it. Changing the world, I mean.
I was curious to create something phenomenal.
I wanted it to go viral, I wanted to reach millions, not—honestly not—because I wanted something in return, but because I really, truly, sincerely wanted more people to get familiar with this concept.
It was me wanting more people to know that changing the world is possible, and as you think and act upon, so you become.
So here it is, my formula for changing the world.
A great man once said, either write something worth reading. Or do something worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin
And I agree all in. So I hope I don’t disappoint Benjamin Franklin, and end up accomplishing both of aforementioned things he wrote in his biography.
When I was collecting ideas and stuff to launch this blog, one evening, my mother walked by, and I quickly spoke up, “How do I change the world?”
And she laughed. I thought I was coming off as stupid, because—come on—teenagers can’t change the world. Most of the time, the teenagers can’t even change themselves.
But then my mother said, seriously, “It’s not the world that changes. It’s you who does. You change. Your vision changes. Everything else just remains the same.”
Later that night, over dinner, I asked my father the very same thing. And guess what he said—
“Things don’t change, Tanu. The way you look at them does. Your way to look at it changes.”
I think both of them were really meant to be.
The World Doesn’t Change
And so I took that advice.
And I realised with each passing second, that indeed the world couldn’t change.
We couldn’t change the world.
It was impossible, until we discovered a new Sun or something. Even then many people won’t be interested.
But we could question every single predetermined belief and system and rule and law, and behaviour and stereotype—we could question all of them—and that will still only change us, the world will remain the same.
The earth never changes. The mountains never change, nor do the monuments, the people, the oceans. None of them change. After we’ve travelled the whole earth, eager to find a starting place to implement our formula, all we have in the end is the simple and sweet realisation that the world can’t change.
It’s we who do. We are the main components of this world. This is why, when thinking about changing the world, we can’t not think about changing ourselves.
So I thought—what would I do with my formula now? You know, the formula to change the world?
What would I do with it when I’ll find it? I couldn’t apply it on the world, right? It would be trivial and fruitless because the world is predetermined not to change.
And after thinking for a whole sleepless night, I just decided that it wasn’t that big of a deal.
I had the solution, or at least I thought I had—and now I wanted a subject.
So I got the formula.
Then I apply it on myself.
Signing off
It doesn’t end here. The journey you need to encounter to actually change the world is long and tiring, but the result is sweet. Are you willing to embark with me on this adventure? Sign up for my email list and get free tickets to a whole different world in another dimension where we think and act on philosophy and life. And here, we change our mindset.
Also, coming up next: What Are You When You Are Nothing? This is the second installation of this blog series about Changing the World! Stay tuned in so you don’t miss an update.
Wanna Read More? View this: The World Isn’t A Bad Place. Maybe It’s Just You Surrounded By All The Idiots.
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