Overview: Desire, Choice, Action, Change

Some believe that we are born like a tabula rasa. I believe the reality is that we are born with core tendencies that make it easier or harder for us to make right choices. Then our parents, teachers, the news, and so on, imprint us with a hodgepodge of their own tendencies and beliefs. Some of these imprints are appropriate for us and some are not. Some imprints help us make better choices than our own tendencies would normally allow, but others are faulty in one way or another. These latter imprints can confuse us or lead us to pursue our desires by choosing and acting in ways that are less appropriate than otherwise.

The result is that, by the time we reach early adulthood, we generally end up with a collection of internal understandings and misunderstandings that are hidden from our awareness, that obscure right and wrong instead of illuminating them, and that confuse us when we are faced with making a choice and taking action to attain our desire. This results in us not knowing when or whether we are doing more harm than good.

All of us have desires. We pursue these desires in our daily life. To pursue a desire, we make choices. How do we know when a choice is good or bad, a suitable choice or an unsuitable one?

We make choices every day. These choices are affected by our tendencies and by the beliefs and the controls we learn. Some people are born with a core tendency to be honest. When faced with a choice about whether to be honest about something or dishonest, they will find that the decision to be honest will be relatively easy to make. Others born with a tendency toward dishonesty, when faced with that same choice, will have more difficulty choosing to be honest.

When we make a choice, it is made only internally. Further, it is in a sense only theoretical. The evidence for and confirmation of a specific choice lies in the action taken as a result of making that choice. An action is external. The moment that an action is taken is the moment the choice becomes real instead of remaining merely theoretical.

The moment of action is also the moment when a person's underlying core tendency can be altered slightly. If we want to change for the better, say to become more honest, we can alter our core tendency to be dishonest over time by making deliberately honest choices in similar situations as we live our everyday lives. By registering our deliberately honest choice by taking an honest action, we make that choice for honesty real. In turn, this feeds back to our core tendency related to honesty, each time causing it to evolve a bit more toward a greater tendency to be honest.

In a very real sense, we are self-sculptors. As we shape our core tendencies through the choices and actions we take every day to pursue our desires, we evolve as individuals.

It is critical to note that this all happens within each of us as an individual. We all share the same basic desires, but each of us is responsible for our own choices and actions in pursuing those common desires. We also carry the sole responsibility to cultivate our core tendencies, to improve them and thus ourselves. We do not have control over this process for anyone else. We can ask that someone else change their behavior, but we cannot force them to change to be the person we want them to be.

This means that our power to change our world does not operate directly or operationally, meaning that it does not work by us telling or forcing others to change. Instead, it operates through each one of us, from our core outward, as we make choices and take actions every day to attain our desires.

The individual is the core of everything. Each of us is a sentient being fundamentally different from all other humans, indeed all other beings. We are also given a great gift and responsibility by our souls and by the Felt Presence of the Divine, as they grant us a separation from them that endows us with free will, the ability and opportunity to make our own choices.

It matters profoundly what each of us dedicates himself or herself to, what each of us thinks and feels, and what each of us chooses to do in every moment of our lives.

Everything moves outward from our core, into our own lives, and again from us outward into our world. Our world is what we make it, every minute of every day, and we are what we make ourselves, in every choice we make and every action we take each day. This is what gives each of us an intrinsic value that cannot be sacrificed arbitrarily by groups and governments.

Each of us matters.

Details: The Fundamentals of Change

Only once we have done the hard work of changing ourselves can we hope to be able to contribute to the rest of the world in a way that can generally be relied upon to help instead of harm.

The requirement for ourselves is, "Know thyself." When we seek to alter our world, the requirement is, "First, do no harm." If we don't know ourselves, we cannot know how to make correct choices or take appropriate actions. If we don't know how to choose and act in our everyday lives, then we cannot know whether our demands for others to change or for the world to change will do harm or not.

If we don't have a clear understanding of what we could choose or how we could act, we will not have the ability to choose well or act appropriately. Instead, our choices and actions will be filled with inconsistencies. This is why it is so critical to go through this process of examining choice and action before getting into the material related to redesigning our civilization.

The Fulcrum and Lever of Change

What do you see when you look around yourself? If you're like me, you see all sorts of things, from love and compassion, to conflict and abuse. Sometimes, the bad stuff seems overwhelming: polarization, arguments, hate, theft, war, threat, corruption, idealism run amok, religion run amok, abuse, terrorism, bribery, beatings, murders, selling votes, buying votes, and more fill our airwaves and our newspapers, and sometimes our own lives.

Don't you wish you could just make everyone behave correctly and treat you right?

I think it is safe to conclude, based on the evidence, that trying to make other people change in order to fix the world doesn't work. In general, people are who they are, and only they can change themselves in any significant way, particularly in the fundamental ways we may need and want them to change. When we hound them to change, we usually just raise the level of conflict.

However, if each one of us makes a personal commitment to change our own conduct, our world will change.

Your actions change your world, for good or ill. Your actions flow from your internal choices, which can be good or evil, loving or cruel, or peaceful or violent in their nature. Your choices flow from your core tendencies and are affected by what you know, what your life has given you in terms of experience, and your core beliefs, principles, thoughts, and feelings. Finally, although your tendencies are difficult to change, you can remold them over time by making better or worse choices and taking better or worse actions that confirm those choices.

From tendency through thoughts and feelings to choices made and actions taken which feed back to strengthen or weaken the tendency, this personal flow gives us the mechanism of both internal and external change.

Our choices determine the actions that we take. If we can see our actions as shining light on our choices, which in turn shines light on our tendencies, then we can see how to shape our tendencies in a different and more positive direction. We can make different choices, better choices, and as a result, we will take different actions, better actions. As time goes on, our tendencies will change in the direction we intend.

It is true that the effects of our changes in the larger world will show up only over time, as the world moves in response to our changes. However, the evidence of our change is immediate, in the quality of our actions as we take them. The feedback that remolds our tendencies occurs as we act, not as the world responds, and it is this that gives us the way to create our own change in direction.

The fulcrum of change rests in each choice we make. The moment when we register that choice by taking a specific action that flows from that choice is the lever of change. It is the act which makes the choice real and effective. Using the fulcrum and lever with conscious awareness and deliberate intent throughout every day will gradually and inevitably alter our tendencies and recreate our world.

Just Three Steps

Perhaps surprisingly, I believe that there are only three basic steps to our effort to improve our world, and we start by improving ourselves. Of course, "simple" does not mean "easy"!

First Step – Personal and Inward:

We need to understand fundamental human desires and their associated choices, and apply that knowledge to start making better personal choices ourselves. Making a choice is an internal process that is actually not affected by our external circumstances. Nobody else can know our choice unless we either explain that choice to them in words or demonstrate that choice by taking an action that flows from that choice.

This means that our external circumstances cannot justify a choice that is inappropriate, no matter what is going on "out there". Since our choices are solely our own responsibility, it is our responsibility to learn to make good ones instead of bad ones, to put the fulcrum and lever of change to work on ourselves above all, and in a positive way.

To get us started, it helps to understand a little about what motivates people. Each of us makes a choice and takes an action in order to move toward something we desire. This page is way too short to name all the possible human desires. They are as large in number as grains of sand on a wide, sandy beach.

However, when you really think about desires, you will realize that we can concentrate here on three major human desires that stand above all the rest. It turns out that each of these three major desires is essentially positive and unavoidable. They are ultimately positive aspects of Life, we all want them, and we want them all the time. That means that these desires aren't something we have control over or choice about.

Where our free will can enter into the "Desire to Choose to Act to Change" chain of events comes first in our selection of a specific choice from a range of choices that are suitable for achieving one of these desires. It is at this point (of choice) that we can take a positive path or a negative path. If we choose the positive path, we have available to us a large set of actions that will create that positive choice in our everyday world. On the other hand, if we choose the negative path, we have a different set of actions available to us to cement that negative choice into our world.

To start reading the TLoop for Step One, click   Step One: Everyday Desires and Choices. Or you can continue to read this page. For your convenience I have also placed this link at the end of this page.

Second Step – Personal and Outward:

We need to understand how our choices unfold into the world through our actions, and apply that knowledge to start taking more appropriate actions from moment to moment in our everyday life. How we act in the world depends on our choices, which in turn depend on our core tendencies as modified by our imprinting, our root assumptions and principles, and of course on the specific desire we are seeking to attain.

For example, if I am loudly complaining about the pollution created by Evil Big Companies, at the same time that I am tossing a half-eaten, fast-food burger in its wrapper out the window of my speeding SUV, what does that say about me? Indeed, we can use our actions to monitor the health of our core foundation and alter our tendencies in favorable ways over time. However, that requires knowing how choices and actions are interlinked, as well as how they are connected to our core.

To start reading the TLoop for Step Two, click   Step Two: Everyday Actions and Consequences. Or you can continue to read this page. For your convenience I have also placed this link at the end of this page.

Third Step – Into Society:

Once we are on our way in applying Steps One and Two to ourselves, we can begin to turn outward beyond our immediate circle and apply what we have learned for ourselves to the larger realms of our society, ranging from our family, through our circle of friends and colleagues, to the whole of our civilization. This Third Step actually has two basic parts.

Third Step (Part 1) – Societal and Inward: As we gain experience in applying our new knowledge to ourselves and our own lives, we can use that knowledge and experience to analyze the issues of the day that are being faced by society as a whole and register more effective choices and actions in regard to such issues. If we can develop a properly constituted, internal foundation that is well-reflected in our daily actions, we will have a greatly improved ability to evaluate any issue and choose a better way to resolve that issue. We can become more positive contributors to our family and our society.

Third Step (Part 2) – Societal and Outward: Our new understandings will inevitably show us that many of the institutions and beliefs currently "out there" in our society actually work against choosing and acting more appropriately. How could that not be the case, given how dysfunctional so much of our society is proving itself to be, every day? If we want to go further in applying our knowledge, we can take considered, fundamentally appropriate actions to help us all redesign and either fix or replace broken institutions and inappropriate beliefs.

Note the emphasis on "fundamentally appropriate" actions. Although it can be hard to remember in the heat of action, it is vital to hold always in our mind that good ends cannot be achieved by using bad means. If we cannot keep our own equilibrium and hold to our corrected root assumptions and core principles, we lose the ability to make appropriate choices in every moment. If so, then we should not, indeed must not try to change the structures of our civilization in fundamental ways.

It is tempting to do something (anything!) to fix a problem. However, if we have not done the hard work of fixing ourselves first, then it truly is better to do nothing. It pays to remember: "First, do no harm". We don't want to intrude with an inappropriate contribution that will only make the problem worse. If we can retain our equilibrium in the midst of public debate, then we have the opportunity to provide true public service.

Now let me explain why we will amalgamate the two parts of Step Three when analyzing issues on this website.

I believe that it is indeed proper to consider these two parts as separate for the purpose of elucidation of the parts themselves, as we do above. They are different, they require different decisions and different orientations on our part in daily life, and therefore they should be approached differently during the course of living our lives.

However, for the purposes of this website and the material we will be developing, keeping analysis of civilizational dysfunctions separate from ideas and suggestions for reforming or replacing what is failing makes little sense. It's simply too cumbersome.

Allow me to explain a bit more. What we will be doing in the follow-on pages related to this very large topic is to deconstruct our civilization's institutions and generally-held beliefs in light of what we know about personal desires, choices and actions. (Note how the personal always comes first.) As we did with the personal in Steps One and Two, so we will also do for our civilization in Step Three.

We will then use that knowledge to develop innovative ideas that can illustrate the kinds of improvements we could help our civilization make, and we will have a greatly improved understanding of why they could or would work.

Finally, we can design specific documents, institutions or beliefs that could actually replace the dysfunctional elements of our society, with some hope that the changes would actually "take". Further, if our recommendations do get implemented, we will have some assurance (although never certainty) that the changes will actually improve our situation and increase our level of liberation.

As you can now see, to do all of this in ways that would fully separate the analysis (Step Three, Part 1) from the recommendations for a systemic redesign (Step Three, Part 2) would not be possible or helpful for this website.

Conclusion: Links for The Three Major TLoops

Now we are ready to start our exploration.

To read the TLoop for Step One, click   Step One: Everyday Desires and Choices.

To read the TLoop for Step Two, click   Step Two: Everyday Actions and Consequences.

To read the TLoop for Step Three, click   Step Three: Redesigning Our Civilization.