Changing the world is not quite as hard as you might think. Right now there are only a handful of people that make all of the major decisions about nearly everything that impacts a majority of the population of our planet. In order to be an agent of change you must know and leverage the following.
Know the importance of proximity
Understand cause and effect
Discover the power of influence
Okay, these three rules may seem to be easy enough but it is important to see how they interact when you want to make changes in any area that you are interested in.
Know the importance of proximity
Proximity in my mind is one of two things. Firstly there is a physical proximity and secondly there is a belief system proximity, I will seal with the first physical proximity first.
Physical proximity means that the closer a person is to you at most times then the greater the chance to make a difference. If you were to decide to make a dramatic change like ending hanger then the people in your family would not be able to do a lot, you could as a family give money to a group that could feed people in third world countries but as I have just stated proximity is very important. You could make a much larger change by giving food directly to those in your community. I am sure many people will rail against this as it seem you can feed many more people in third world country but between giving money and the final foodstuffs going to those people there will be a lot of intermediaries and a few greased palms that will take a percentage of those dollars. So let’s all try to agree that your greatest change comes closest to your physical residence.
The second kind of proximity if belief proximity, if you want to make a great change it is easier to make that change if you can find a few like minded people that can all direct their attention on making that change that you as well as them want to make. If we take the world hunger example you have to marvel how some of the big groups such as http://www.foodrelief.org/ or http://www.thehungersite.com are almost always in reality a very small group of people that have worked together across national boundaries but with a very similar belief system to concentrate on only that change that they are interested in.
Understand Cause and Effect
Cause and effect is a simple but thought provoking concept that works for you or against you. Every time that you do something that action will have some kind of an effect on many things, many of which you can not even see. The best example of this is this article itself. I am hoping that this article by being seen by enough people will cause people to make changes around them that will better the world, remember though that if you do things that have negative effects then as some will tell you karma’s a bitch. If you were to steal from someone the effect is that the person that was wronged would be bitter and that bitterness would be rubbed off on many other people.
Also as I am sure you have seen in the past bad things will happen right back at you quite often without you understanding why. The universe is a very interlocked relationship between everything and anytime you upset that balance there has to be a give and take that will affect you directly.
The Power of Influence
What is the power of influence? Influence is the fact that your reputation allows your word to be worth something to a group of people. If you are the only one in your family that knows about fitness issues then everyone in your family will come to you with exercise questions. Expanding on this concept, if you have a political weblog that is focused only on immigration issues and you have both sides represented and also add your own editorials then all of your regular readers will look at you as being “The Authority” on this issue. Of course the internet is not yet as personal as speaking to someone in person but the power is stronger because of the sheer numbers involved.
I always look at influence in real life as the distance between you and the audience. You have absolute influence over yourself; you have a lot but of course slightly less influence on the people in your family and then you of course have some influence but less with your friends and coworkers who will pick and choose what issues that they look at you as an authority on.
How to finally change the world
OK, here is the sum up. If you want to change the world you really need a network of like minded people with a focus on what you want to change. Within this group of people distributed hopefully by gender, race and location and will come from various walks of life. What you need to do is create a common area to meet and with the internet that would probably be a message board. Once you have this centralized location you can use weblogs and websites to spread your message and to widen your influence you will need to spread word of mouth through unrelated areas. And spread your message there.
Here is an example using the classic “End world hunger”. You surf around various websites about hunger and ending it, in the process getting to know the webmasters and finding as many like minded people as you can. Once there are a few of you, lets say a couple of hundred then you start a message board and dedicate all of your time making it popular within your new group as well as adding enough content to bring in new people. Now all that you need is a solution. I am no expert on this but let’s say you and your group decide that the best way to end hunger is to have proper irrigation set up in dry areas and using this will leverage crops and food.
Setting up the message
The best way to set up the message about your irrigation plan would be to set up a one page website that is totally focused on the concept. This page would have to things, a concise and simple description of the irrigation solution and a way to put this solution in place. Let’s say that you can use an existing network of individuals and technology that will build out these irrigation systems and all you need is to collect the bucks and move it to these people. All you will need then is a way to track the donations on the site, the number of wells that have been set up and how many people have been saved because of these wells. This gives a really great way for people to track the change that they are making with a small donation.
Spreading the word
Now all you will have to do is create a virus of this information. There are several ways to do this but it is all based on influence. Take your message about irrigation systems and write a series of articles and submit these articles through all of the popular article submission sites as well as press release sites. Coordinate at the same time to have all of the people in your group to write a small two paragraph or so post in their other interests. So lets say you have a couple people in your group that are scrapbookers (this example is because my wife is one) Have them post on the same or successive days short posts on their favorite weblogs and message boards about this with a link back to your great one page site. Another important distribution for your story and site is to submit it to Digg, Reddit and some of the other popular online new services which will have a smooth transition from their site to your site.
All of this needs to be coordinated in a very small period of time as by having the launch orchestrated and tight like this you will have created a news story and as we know stories like this can easily be picked up by the major networks as well as the news services such as the Associated Press and the United Press. If these services as well as some TV networks pick up your story than it will hit the mainstream and become something whose momentum can not be stopped.
If you do have a pet project that you would like to really get rolling try and follow all of the principles and rules that I have set out and hopefully we can all play a part in making the changes that we would like to see to make a difference the way that we live.
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