The World Will Never Be Right If Our Thoughts Are All Wrong
Even if we make all energy production renewable, obliterate plastics, stop weapon production and destroy all existing guns, our world will not be healthier, cleaner, safer, or better in any other way. We will find other ways to mess up our lives, inflict suffering on all living beings, and especially on ourselves. Even if we correct everything that’s wrong with the world, we will still create new, worse wrongs until we shut down the factory that produces all our miseries: our bad thoughts about each other.
When we do everything in order to achieve dominance and control, we can’t expect any good results. Our negative thoughts about each other turn every good thing we do, every noble idea we have, and every positive word we say into deleterious activities that the world would be better off without them. To right the wrongs in the world, we first have to make our thoughts right, and then everything will be alright.
What haven’t we tried? Renewable energy? Check! Electric cars? Check! Vegan meet? Check (even though vegan meet is an oxymoron. Ban on nuclear weapons? Check! But none of these has even begun to change the world’s negative trajectory. We’re creating more pollution, killing more animals and cutting down more forests for cattle, manufacturing more weapons, and the nuclear threat is still hovering over our heads. In short, we haven’t even begun to solve anything through all our agreements and developments. It will also never happen as long as we don’t do them for the right reason: to make everyone’s lives better, and not for selfish profits.
When we do everything in order to achieve dominance and control, we can’t expect any good results. Our negative thoughts about each other turn every good thing we do, every noble idea we have, and every positive word we say into deleterious activities that the world would be better off without them. To right the wrongs in the world, we first have to make our thoughts right, and then everything will be alright.
In fact, even if we can’t control our thoughts, and certainly not our ill-will toward each other, merely knowing that they are the root of what’s bad in this world is enough to start improving things. We will learn how to change our negative thoughts and ill-will toward each along the way, but we first have to start practicing it. We know that practice makes perfect, so we needn’t worry about the results, right now, but about practicing good will, wanting to create closeness in our hearts, a familial feeling toward strangers, or at least toward people in our environment for whom we don’t wish well.
We needn’t worry about anything else. There is a saying in Kabbalah that everything is scrutinized in the thought. It means that if you have good thoughts, everything you do will turn out to be good. If we feel close to one another, we will not exploit, patronize, demean, or otherwise mistreat other people. This alone will radicalize our lives and make us feel comfortable with others, confident, and happy.
As a result, we will not need to consume needless stuff just to feel good about ourselves or to feel superior to others, and we will not need to arm or protect ourselves since we will feel close to one another. The whole of society will change as a result of our new relationships, and we will stop overconsuming, pollution will drop, arms races will cease, and the countless unsolvable problems we have today will disappear by themselves once we needn’t raise walls from the hostile world around us. Therefore, if we want to live in a good world, where life is easy and enjoyable, we need only practice changing the way we think about each other from negative to positive.