World salvation began centuries ago. One might argue that world destruction also began centuries ago, and that the two forces have forever been competing for human hearts and minds.
Philosophers, mystics, and scholars have reflected upon the human condition and shared their insights and wisdom through teachings, stories, art, and religion from ancient times to present. Fundamental truths about human experience have been repeated, retold, rewritten, studied, modernized, and made into books, movies, courses, and quotes that are so woven into culture that many of us take them for granted. There have always been individuals who leveraged these truths for personal awakening, and some of those people have changed the world and evolved collective understanding in transformational ways.
But the darker forces of human nature are undeniable, and they have been indulged through cultural and political systems that have allowed them to grow out of control. These forces have successfully appealed to people’s natural desires for dominance and comfort. Comfort is relative, and people can grow comfortable with their circumstances even when they are not ideal. There is comfort in what is familiar.
The first key to saving the world was awakening – defined as “an arousal from what is like sleep, or a revival of interest in, or attention to, what has been neglected”. What had been neglected was now an existential threat to humanity. The earth had been neglected. Human rights had been neglected. Civility had been neglected. The problems that flowed from all of this felt insurmountable as the world faced ecological devastation, wars, and political upheaval across the globe. The world required a critical mass of awakened humans to save it.
In 2024, I was at a turning point in my decades-long quest for personal awakening. For me, a key to unlocking that awakening was when I stopped drinking alcohol. Alcohol was the way I numbed the pain of my human existence. What I realized as I awoke from my slumber was how many other people are also numbing their pain, and how many ways there are to do so. Alcohol is one, but there are infinite other ways. It is the numbing of the pain that is the problem, not the anesthetic any individual chooses. We cannot awaken when we are avoiding facing the reality of our individual and collective human condition.
The second key to saving the world was convergence – defined as “to meet, or come together from different directions, and also to tend toward or achieve union or a common conclusion or result”. Too many people had unwittingly retreated their echo chambers – where the only voices they heard reflected their own beliefs. This was easy to do with the proliferation of media options catering to specific audiences, the advent of social media, and the increasing political polarization and segregation of the early 21st century.
In 2024, I was also at a turning point in my desire to break out of the silo I had become quite comfortable in, to venture further from the comfort of my echo chamber more frequently. I recognized that the only hope for improving the tension in the world was to start with myself. I needed to get out of my comfort zone and try to understand why other humans thought the way they did. My journey toward personal awakening was rendering me less defensive, and more open. I wasn’t ready to debate politics with my family, but I was ready to apply my more awakened perspective and attempt some convergence in baby steps.
What ultimately happened is best summarized by the words of Ghandi, commonly paraphrased as the “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. What he said was this:
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Ghandi
As individuals began harnessing the power to share their personal stories for the greater good, through their social networks and in their communities, the ago-old idea of awakening as a vehicle for transforming the world made its way into popular culture. The norm became for people to face their pain instead of numbing it. A groundswell of people awakened to their desire to solve the problems facing humanity. Over the following decades, people emerged from their silos and converged to work together to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
Here we are in 2050, and while there still are and will always be problems, the existential crises the world faced just a few decades ago have been averted. Humanity has prevailed.