How to Change the World

1. Defeatism is a Choice: Recognize Your Power

‘We are each absolutely essential, each totally irreplaceable,’ says the Native American activist Leonard Peltier.

Overcoming Powerlessness. The feeling of being unable to effect change in a world of billions is a common barrier. However, every individual action, or inaction, contributes to the current state of affairs. History isn't solely shaped by "great men," but by the collective impact of countless small actions by ordinary people.

Complicity in the Status Quo. Abstract concepts like "the system" or "the status quo" often mask our own complicity. We have the power to challenge regulations, defy expectations, and choose obedience or disobedience. The power of authority figures depends on the behavior of those around them.

Gandhi's Example. Gandhi emphasized the importance of a change of will as a prerequisite for a change in patterns of obedience and cooperation. He advocated for psychological shifts from passive submission to self-respect and courage, recognizing that individual assistance makes the regime possible, and building a determination to withdraw cooperation and obedience.

2. Meaning Trumps Happiness: Find Your "Why"

If we find a reason, we can overcome anything.

The Search for Meaning. While some may know exactly what they want to change, many struggle with uncertainty. The pursuit of meaning should precede the pursuit of happiness, as a reason to be happy is essential. Meaning isn't limited to grand purposes but is inherent in every situation.

Existentialism and Purpose. Philosophers like Sartre and Camus emphasized accepting our inevitable death and cosmic insignificance, yet deciding to live purposefully. Authentic existence involves confronting these truths and finding meaning within them. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, highlighted that those who had a "why" to live could bear almost any "how."

Intrinsic Values. Discovering your intrinsic values involves identifying what you consider a good life and what you admire. This can be achieved by listing accomplishments, answering "Who Am I?" in multiple ways, and analyzing past events that made you feel truly alive. Finding the "want behind the should" is crucial for motivation.

3. Strategy is Key: Define Your Mission

If you don’t know what you want to fix, it can’t be done.

Prioritizing Issues. While many global issues deserve attention, personal interest is a key motivator. Creating a list of priorities is a starting point, but each person's list will vary. It's essential to release the idea that one list is inherently more worthwhile than another, as long as it involves helping others.

Categorizing Problems. Issues can be divided into four types: those affecting everyone with no clear individual remedy, those affecting specific groups, those posing a threat recognized by a minority, and opportunities for improvement. Identifying your greatest concerns involves asking what you would do if success were guaranteed.

Specific Goals. Strive for specificity when defining your mission. Generalized concerns like "poverty" require deeper analysis to pinpoint the exact problem you want to address. Once the problem is defined, you can explore different approaches, such as political action, campaigning, or individual good works.

4. Bearing Witness: Spread Awareness

The importance of these voices – educated, questioning and critical – cannot be underestimated.

Sharing Information. Changing the world involves both highlighting problems and promoting solutions. These messages appeal to different personality types, with pessimists focusing on issues and optimists on solutions. Pay attention to the stories you tell and the news that grabs your attention to identify your interests.

Questioning Ideas. Enlightenment often comes from questioning ideas with others. Commentary and critical thinking can change minds more effectively than laws or initiatives. Small acts of protest, such as reading scripts in flat voices or knitting during meetings, can have a decisive cumulative effect.

Effective Communication. When spreading awareness, remember that people are more likely to be influenced by agreement and understanding. Begin by emphasizing common ground and attempting to see things from the other person's point of view. Avoid lecturing or causing distress, and focus on making hope possible.

5. Resources Within: Utilize Your Strengths

In other words, what we need is often exactly what we already have.

Personal Qualities. Consider the skills, experience, and mental and emotional capacities you possess. Create a list of your work experience, including pastimes, holiday jobs, and duties. Recognize potential in your limits and shortcomings.

Finding Potential. Richard Reynolds, who transformed a municipal planter into a garden, succeeded because he had no garden of his own. Seeing potential in shortcomings requires a fresh look at your life. Seize opportunities to transfigure them rather than shunning them.

Support Network. Map your support network by writing your name in the center of a paper and adding the names of those who support you. Draw arrows to indicate the amount of support given and received. Strengthen mutual relationships and ask for help explicitly.

6. Small Steps, Big Impact: Start Now

So: somebody has to go first, or that intentional change won't happen.

Chaos Theory. Insignificant initial circumstances can effect global events. A butterfly flapping its wings in one country can cause a tornado in another. This applies to our lives, where small movements can trigger significant changes.

The Dancing Man. A video of a solitary figure dancing at a music festival illustrates the power of going first. Despite initial indifference, others eventually join in, demonstrating that one person's actions can inspire a crowd. Don't worry about others; focus on your efforts.

Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a bus sparked the civil rights movement. By going first and providing inspiration, she threw off mental slavery and inspired others to take personal responsibility. Going first doesn't necessarily mean taking charge of everything that follows.

7. Beauty and Fun: Increase Pleasure

There are two ways to change the world: to decrease suffering or increase pleasure.

Aesthetic Side of Life. Positive change often takes the form of reducing suffering, but many are drawn to the aesthetic side of life. Engaging creatively with the world can lighten hearts, console, and give people a reason to savor life. Works of art are tools of communication and community-building.

Creative Engagement. As soon as basic needs are met, the aesthetic impulse kicks in. People want to write stories, sing of their pain, and create works of craftsmanship. These needs are at the heart of what we are and should never be sacrificed to a misplaced notion of seriousness.

Sharing Creativity. Rachael Matthews conducts "knit-ins" on the London Underground, teaching strangers to knit or crochet. Learning To Love You More, by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, invites the public to do quasi-artistic and psychological assignments. A good world is one in which people find meaning in the particular things they do, including beauty, creativity, and play.

8. Money Matters: Right Livelihood

The way we support ourselves can either allow us to live by our real values or it can distort them.

Doing Good and Making a Living. It's not necessary to choose between making a useful contribution and earning a decent living. We can do good even when we are at work. Dale Vince, a former hippy, made it his mission to generate "clean" electricity and reduce carbon emissions, making a fortune in the process.

Serving Real Needs. Consider honestly how we make our living. Are we serving people's real needs or artificial and unhelpful desires? There is no absolutely categorical way to distinguish between "good" and "bad" ways to make a living.

Personal Responsibility. Whether we work in an investment bank or an NGO, the things we do as individuals are either helpful or unhelpful. The Buddhist idea of right livelihood extends beyond our own job, because we can't be living by our real values while we depend on others to carry out jobs that distort those same values.

9. Make it Appealing: Build Community

If we want to get people to help us in our projects, we should create a movement for change that provides an opportunity for community and togetherness.

Social Benefits. When solving "problems," we may put people's backs up or bore them. To change that, we must learn to seduce our audiences into seeing the upsides of a challenge. Create a movement for change that provides an opportunity for community and togetherness.

Communal Bonds. When environmental initiatives have been life-enhancing, even fun, they have usually allowed people to confront an issue by forging communal bonds around it. The Green Belt Movement in Kenya promotes environmental conservation among lower-income rural Kenyan women.

Transition Town Movement. The Transition Town movement was launched in England in 2005. It's a grassroots organization of volunteers that spread by word of mouth to towns and villages around the country. The people involved devote themselves to preparing for a world with less oil.

10. Love Helps: Personal Connection

Sometimes what is really needed is help of a more personal kind. Sometimes what is needed is love.

Beyond Material Needs. State agencies often respond to social problems by throwing money, but not all people's needs are material. Sometimes what is really needed is help of a more personal kind. Sometimes what is needed is love.

Attachment Theory. Camila Batmanghelidjh's Kids Company helps London's most impoverished children through pioneering charity. Underlying everything Kids Company does is a belief in love. The organization is indebted to Attachment Theory, which holds that children develop as the direct result of how their first carers engage with them.

Individual Action. Fenella Rouse walked into a jobcentre near her home in north London and announced that she'd like to help some young people to find work. She transformed the prospects of several "unemployable" youngsters by finding work placements that led to real jobs.

11. Aim for Peace: Rehumanize the Enemy

If we are going to find lasting solutions to external conflict, we first need to find a way out of the internal conflicts that poison our thoughts, feelings and attitudes towards others.

Dehumanizing Language. We often categorize groups of people as The Enemy and set about trying to overcome them. To write in this way is to dehumanize the government, and the individuals within it. If we want to live in a less violent world, we could write letters to people like that newspaper writer and, in the gentlest ways, ask if she might reduce the use of bellicose metaphor a little in the interests of making positive change.

Human Connection. If you get warring parties into the same room, get them to have a meal together, shake hands, look into each other’s eyes or take a walk together, you have a much higher chance of resolving conflict than by merely holding debates in parliament or calling for UN troops. A private meeting between Ian Smith and Robert Mugabe enabled them to make terms.

Compassion. Karen Armstrong believes that compassion is the key to changing the world. Compassion does not mean "to feel sorry for somebody." It means to endure something with another person, to put ourselves in somebody else's shoes, to feel his or her pain as though it were our own, and enter generously into his or her point of view.

Last updated: February 27, 2025