Changing the world for the better

[FearlessGhost]

Changing the world for the better sounds tremendous.

When changing the world for the better, who's better would the change be for?

If someone did not want the world changed, or not changed in accordance with your view and/or the majority's view, what would you do?

Would the world be better free?

[AndyMartin]

I think there's a fallacy in postmodernism of universal subjectivity; that one cannot judge one thing to be
better than another for fear of violating some other's equally valid opinion. That only goes so far; at some point it must be acknowledged that some things are universal. It is better to have a perspective of world compassion than egocentricity, and civil structures based on egocentricity or ethnocentricity are simply not tenable in a global age. At some point you have to make those judgements; and at some point we may be fortunate enough to be faced with resistance against moving from fear-based structures to compassion-based structures.
I say fortunate because that would indicate there's enough force behind the movement to provoke a reaction.

Krishnamurti said that in order to change the world, we need to experience a simultaneous revolution of the individual and of the world. If the external revolution occurs without the internal -- which it has before -- it will only result in chaos and tyranny. I tend to agree with that idea, and my position is it will take nothing less than a complete revolution to change the world.

But the nature of revolution does not require violence; it just so happens that all recent revolution has. Christ was the ultimate revolutionary -- he said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." He defied institution and taught compassion over stricture of law. We still haven't learned that part of the lesson.

I don't think we can evolve out of our problems; for two thousand years we've been trying to fix the problems inherent to flawed systems and we still haven't succeeded. At some point we have to be willing to accept fundamentalist and pluralist thinking as stages in human growth that we're ready to move beyond.