Thinking about the new introduction to the book:
Whether you’re still reading paper-based newspapers, watching broadcast, cable or internet news, listening to radio news, or getting your news through social media, the message is grim.
It’s hard to know what’s going on in the world. It used to be that you could read the paper or watch the evening news on one of the big three television channels and you’d have a sense of what was happening around the world. It was a system of gathering, analyzing and disseminating news that gave us a common sense of how the world worked.
Cable news changed that a bit. With so many channels possible, the news could be more niche. And then the internet made it even easier for everyone to tell their version of the news.
Okay, I feel like I’m getting off-track again. What I’m trying to get to is that individuals like you and me can help move the world toward the Great Turning.
There are ways of living your life so that your actions help create a better world and a better life for you and those you love. The opposite is also true: you can live your life such that you damage the world, yourself and those you love. Most of us end up doing a little of both, but whether you currently do more damage than good or it’s the other way around, you can decide to move toward being an increasingly positive force in the world. That’s what this book is about.
Our lives are the sum of the many small choices that we make, day after day and year after year. Those choices come from what I call our personal universe, a model or simulation we each have running in our minds to help us cope with living in the physical universe. Our personal universe is the source of our world view, built up from our personal experiences and the knowledge of the world that we get from others.
When we’re faced with a problem, large or small, our personal universe drives our response. If our response is damaging to ourselves or those around us, that’s a sign that our personal universe is not serving us properly. Start With Universe, the book’s title, is the idea that creating a better world starts with examining your personal universe and working to strengthening it. As we’ll discuss later in the book, you strengthen it by making it more accurate, comprehensive, and interconnected.
Yet, we can’t dwell just on our personal universe in isolation. It was originally created through our interactions with the world, and we have to strengthen it using the same process.
I have a hypothesis that it’s human nature to want to make the world better. How virtuous we are is directly related to who we want to make it better for. The most selfish of us are creating a better world just for ourselves. The good mother or father is a creating a better world for their family. Community leaders are creating a better world for their community.
Even the worst atrocities can be seen as having, at their source, a desire to make the world better… for the people of my country, or my tribe, or my race. Our world is finite, so when one group works to make the world better for just themselves, it’s always at the expense of others. That’s why we must work for all humanity. The only way to avoid fighting between in-groups is to work for the success of all humans. And the only way to ensure success for all humans is to work for the success of all life on the planet because we all need each other.