On Changing the World
The coffee was unusually bitter at the café the other day. I surmised that the new trainee barista had messed something up. I told the manager, who apologized and made sure I got another coffee (which was good), reassuring me it would not happen again.
It was the third day that there was a long line at the neighborhood supermarket’s checkout counters. It was obvious they were short-staffed. I asked for the manager and complained. The next day, everything was fixed.
When they didn’t allow me into a Hindu temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, holding the heavy door shut because the gatekeepers told me only Hindus were allowed in – despite my insistence that I too “was a Hindu” (and a Christian and a Buddhist, for that matter, since I study and learn from all religions) – I went to the police to report it. They came with me to help me get in, but the temple caretakers still declined even with police escort! Returning to the police station, a very annoyed and apologetic chief of police, with whom I had finally become friends, helped me file a complaint to send to the higher authorities to change the temple’s anti-tourist policy.
When, after entering a Zen monastery with a famous garden outside Tokyo, I discovered there was construction and scaffolding all around the temple, I complained that they should not let in visitors because the whole place was a construction site and I asked for my money back. When the monk in charge declined, I found his superior, who consented. After receiving my refund, I gave it back to the monastery as a donation, emphasizing that I had “made a scene” not for the money but as a matter of principle: The temple ought to have been closed during renovations.
When the Perplexity AI app I was using recently upgraded, I noticed that it became much worse. I sent an email to the company listing my gripes. Soon after, the technical team managers started corresponding with me, and I, in some sense, became their “free advisor,” checking their various updates and giving them feedback.
In airports, train and bus stations, restaurants, construction sites, national parks, and everywhere I travel to, whenever I see something wrong, I spend a few minutes to try to put it right. Sometimes I offer a friendly suggestion or make a simple complaint; more rarely, I file an official written one. At other times, I send an email to the manager or post an online comment with suggestions for improvement. When I see a wrong description or a wrong date on a museum placard, I tell the curator to fix it. When a hotel lobby has dirty trash cans or tables, I inform the receptionist; when the restaurant music is out of place, I point it out; when the peaches I bought from the grocer turn out to be hard and tasteless, I take them back the next day (and they usually remove the whole display crate); and when a friend tells me he plans to “see Spain” in seven days, I advise him to just go to Madrid or Seville for a week and forget the rest of the country!
This is how I change the world.
With small but steady contributions that improve the things that cross my daily path.
Nothing grand, nothing pompous, nothing large in scope.
A complaint and a suggestion here, an observation and a proposal there – my actions arise spontaneously out of a sense of duty.
When I was in my teens, I, like many of my classmates, had a vision of changing the world. I may not have joined the Communist Party as some of my friends did, but I had other grand plans like them. Later, in my twenties, while working in the media, I tried to fix a thing here and there (my ambition to change the whole world having already been replaced by the much less ambitious one … of changing my small country!) through op-eds or direct calls to ministers, mayors, and other officials – with occasional success. Of course, one may claim that through my books and essays that reach a large international audience, I am still somehow covertly trying to “change the world”: the way we think and act, the way we interact with others, the way we travel, and more. But even if these efforts do have some effect, I rarely if ever see or experience any change I may thus achieve. I sometimes receive the odd email from someone who thanks me for a piece of mine that helped him in his life in some way, which is quite pleasing. But this is something anybody can do by giving some good advice to a friend. Helping others, I guess, may also be considered a form of “changing the world.” For don’t all efforts of changing the world, in the end, aim at improving people’s quality of life?
For some bigger issues, I still occasionally try to have a larger effect: suggesting ways to improve the visa application process in a country, trying to change some procedures in the municipalities, or calling a mayor or a minister through intermediaries I know. Yet even these “grander efforts” at changing the world usually spring forth from the same aforementioned small things that I observe. For example, after complaining about a museum’s weird opening hours and then discovering that all museums in that country suffer from the same flaw, I kind of “escalate” my efforts by sending an email to the ministry itself. Surprisingly, as a rule, most people respond, and because I usually make a good case for what I request, my suggestions are often heeded and changes do follow. So, from the little things, often bigger follow, and sometimes even grand ones – no need to name them here. These grander successes may occasionally give me some pride, yet I receive most of my satisfaction from my small and steady daily contributions that help improve my living environment – knowing that I have improved, through my complaint, the coffee experience of a few hundred locals feels like a real palpable success and makes me smile.
Despite watering down my grand youthful ambitions of changing the world, I consider my small and seemingly insignificant daily acts to be doing exactly that. Such a spontaneous and effortless striving for a gentle seep of progress, a quiet trickle of success in diverse fields of life, seems to be more natural and harmonious with my life’s philosophy. By changing the little things that I can truly affect, not only do I immediately see the results of my actions, but I also end up achieving hundreds of positive changes all around me.
In a sense, I see myself as Khalil Gibran’s wayfarer from the following excerpt that made a huge impression on me when I first read it 40 years ago:
You are the way and the wayfarers.
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone.
Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.
I see what I do as “removing the stumbling stone” – which may sometimes even be an actual one: I get out of my car to remove a big stone in the street that caused my car to bump; I collect the plastic bottles and trash from a dirty beach; I confront the roaring motorcyclist who drives through our neighborhood at midnight waking everybody up. In other words, I do not passively observe the world. I engage with it on a most personal level. Or should I say impersonal? For Gibran’s whole idea is to remove the stumbling stone not just for yourself, but for “those behind you.”
This behavior of mine developed over decades as I gradually came to understand, from my lifelong study of history, that almost all revolutions aimed at radically and abruptly transforming society have failed. From the Yellow Turban Rebellion in China in AD 184 to Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, most revolutions have led to disaster if not to the exact opposite outcome they had set out to achieve. Zhang Jue and his brothers, the leaders of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, were probably the first group of revolutionaries in world history to attempt an explicitly ideological utopian social revolution that was meant to replace the political-economic order with a Daoist-inspired egalitarian society. Preaching the coming of the “Great Peace,” a utopian age of equality upending Confucian hierarchy, their rebellion spread across several provinces and contributed to widespread chaos. However, imperial Han armies responded quickly, besieging rebel strongholds and killing Zhang and his brothers.
Over a millennium later, in 1381, a popular uprising across southern England similarly tried to change the world. The rebels – mainly peasants, artisans, and rural workers –sought to abolish serfdom, poll taxes, and feudal labor dues in favor of greater freedom and economic justice. This Peasant’s Revolt also failed.
And of course, in more recent times, we know how badly the French Revolution of 1789 ended: first with Robespierre and the Reign of Terror, executing thousands in the name of virtue and equality, then with Napoleon Bonaparte, who became an authoritarian ruler, even crowning himself emperor in 1804. After unleashing wars all over Europe, Napoleon’s empire fell, only for the French Bourbon monarchy to be restored.
As for the Russian Revolution of 1917, led by Vladimir Lenin, the only thing it achieved was to keep the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in a backward state and economic stagnation for over 70 years. The revolution’s immediate aim was a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would socialize property, eliminate exploitation, and herald worldwide revolution. However, the communist utopia never materialized in practice. Instead, the Soviet state developed into a repressive authoritarian regime, especially under Stalin, who imposed forced collectivization and rapid industrialization at the cost of millions of lives. Although the Soviet Union became a superpower (in weapons and space rockets!), it fell far short of the classless paradise Lenin had envisioned. In 1991, after years of reform attempts, the Soviet Union collapsed and was formally dissolved. Unfortunately, the authoritarianism it engendered lingers today in Putin’s Russia and is felt daily in the brutal war of conquest he has waged against Ukraine.
As you can see, such social violent attempts to change the world rarely succeed in doing so. One could even claim they lead the societies they set out to improve into a dark forest from which it can take decades to emerge. For at the end of the day, “the world” is none other than the sum of us – the people it comprises. Which means that to change the world, we must change ourselves. Or rather ourself – each of us doing our own work.
This simple yet monumental idea that to change the world you must start by changing yourself is encountered in various forms throughout history. Socrates said that “he who would move the world must first move himself,” and Seneca expressed the same insight with stoic clarity: “We desire to reform others but refuse to reform ourselves.” The ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu, who was more preoccupied with spirituality, expressed the same idea a bit differently: “If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” Leo Tolstoy was the first to formulate it in its modern form: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Carl Jung expressed it more succinctly: “If you change yourself, you change the world.” And Nelson Mandela, one of the few men in history who did manage to change the world by changing his country, said: “One of the most difficult things is not to change society, but to change yourself.” All affirm the same idea.
But “changing yourself” may not necessarily mean doing something to yourself! Or becoming “a better person” in an ethical or religious way. It may simply mean improving your own work – what you do in life – raising it to the highest level of which you are capable. In other words, doing your duty as best as you can.
I was recently watching some of Sir David Attenborough’s natural history documentaries. This great man, who will be turning 100 years old next year and who is still active (he has just narrated and presented the documentary film Ocean released this summer!), has changed the world more than any other person still alive I know of. And he has done it through a lifetime of work that has reshaped how humanity understands and values nature. Over more than seven decades, he has written, presented, and narrated documentaries that reveal the awesome beauty, endless diversity, and hidden mysteries of life on Earth. His pioneering use of film and storytelling has brought the natural world into millions of homes, making us aware of the magnificence of all Life that surrounds us. His work has inspired generations of scientists, filmmakers, and environmentalists, and his advocacy for sustainability has influenced global policy and public conscience. Attenborough’s greatness lies not only in what he has shown us but in what he has awakened within us: a sense of kinship with all life and a responsibility to protect it.
But Attenborough is just one of many exemplars throughout history whom we admire. From Socrates to Newton and Beethoven to Tesla, all great men, simply by having done their job well – each in their field of endeavor – have changed the world in grand ways that only became fully apparent years and decades after their passing. That’s why we say there is a way of thinking before and after Socrates, an understanding of physics before and after Newton, music before and after Beethoven. Just as there is an understanding of our natural world before and after Attenborough. These great men, by excelling in their field of endeavor, changed the world profoundly.
But let me pause a bit on Socrates: Apart from redirecting philosophy from the natural world to an examination of human life, ethics, and reasoning itself, he actually saw his job as being that of an annoying gadfly – rousing, reproaching, and criticizing what was wrong with people’s way of thinking and with life in Athens in general. He castigated intellectual arrogance, moral complacency, the gap between words and deeds. And as he moved about the city and commented on what he saw, his scolding yet wise remarks became maxims, such as saying upon visiting the market one day: “How many things are there that I do not need!”
I too feel like a gadfly sometimes, especially when I wage my Quixotic battles, such as the aforementioned ones to enter the temple in Kathmandu or ask for my money back at the monastery. Or when I repeatedly urge a public servant or mayor to fix something. Or, most importantly, when I egg on my friends … to reach their highest potential. Like a gadfly that incessantly disturbs cows and horses, I’m often persistent, unpleasant, impossible to ignore. I know that what I do often makes me irritating, just as Socrates was (in the end, they killed him because they couldn’t stand him)! But I can live with this, knowing that through these small acts I improve my nearby world.
What Attenborough and all other great men have shown us by their life’s work is that lasting change does not come about through grand manifestos and revolutions but by the quiet perseverance of individuals who do their work with dedication, love, and integrity. Yet achieving greatness is not a necessary condition for changing the world. The great men are but the brightest lights showing us the way and what is possible. Each one of us can do it on a smaller yet sufficient scale: The craftsman who masters his art, the dedicated scientist who never gives up, the farmer who tries to perfect his mangoes, all contribute to a better world, whether or not they set out to do so. They do not try to change humanity; they simply do their work well, and the world is quietly improved because of it.
Ultimately, there is not “the world” and “us.” “The world” is not something out there that we must make an effort to reach in order to change. It is the entity in which we are, by default, permanently immersed. It is our Larger Home that Attenborough has been revealing to us for decades. A world where we are each placed to do our own part well. It is also our familiar and intimate neighborhood that we can easily improve with minimal effort – the supermarket with the long line and the café where we have just had a bitter coffee.
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