Okay, so you’re just one person on a planet teeming with more than seven billion people. What can you do to make a real difference to make our world a better place on a global scale?
Well, it’s a fact that all positive change happens from the ground up. It does so through the actions of singular people making numerous individual choices every day.
One man who has made an elegant argument for this effect is the internationally recognized researcher Stephan A. Schwartz. His field is “extraordinary human functioning.” He was a pioneer in the development of such exotic technologies as remote viewing, and he engages in the anthropological study of consciousness.
Schwartz said every person on the planet should focus on what he calls “quotidian choices.” His thesis is complex, but what it boils down to is stopping to evaluate each decision you make every day – large or small – and choose the course of action that most benefits the planet as a whole.
For example, if you walk into a convenience store looking for something to drink, you can choose to buy a plastic bottle of water – or select a different way to resolve your thirst. We all know that billions of pieces of single-use plastic are clogging up the world’s oceans and littering the countrysides of every nation with ugly trash. Schwartz suggests that the proper quotidian choice is not to support the single-use plastics industry with a snap decision to purchase water in a plastic bottle.
Now multiple these kinds of quotidian choices times billions of people making dozens of different decisions every day. If billions of people decide not to cause some harm, the effect will be global transformation.
Another great figure of history, Mahatma Gandhi, also strongly urged people to make small daily decisions based on the highest moral value every time they choose. He also said that people should not be afraid to help themselves first before they attempt to help others or the planet.
Gandhi once told a young man: “Raise yourself to help mankind.” The young man had asked Gandhi if he should spend a lot of money on his own education rather than give that money to the poor.
But Gandhi said if this individual chose to “raise himself” first, he would place himself in a “position of strength” to do more good for other people later and for years to come.