Ploy’s Blog

When Gandhi was still alive and active, he was a great philosopher, leader, and politician. He believed in absolute non-violence, showed in his significant contributions towards India’s independence from Britain. He influenced the world in a big way and thought of many inspiring ideas and concepts, such as the Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World.

One of the rules was “Change yourself.” I think this one is very significant. You need to change yourself before you can change other people, because how can you change the world, if you can’t even change yourself? We need to start with ourselves before moving on to other people. Because if we change others before changing yourself, it would be hypocritical. Other people would look at us and say, “She/He’s still doing that, so how come I need to change when he/she hasn’t?” We could do that by finding our own faults, instead of others, and tweaking our actions, personality, and so on to make ourselves into a better person. If everybody started with themselves, then the whole world could change without a lot of effort.

But, of course, getting 6,800,000,000 people to change themselves would be a bit hard, as there are some who don’t care or don’t know and so on. So this is where the “changing others” comes in. I suppose we are having sort of like a technology revolution right now, what with iPhones, Facebook, etc. and all those apps, groups, and organizations. In my opinion, the internet is the most useful and effective means of communication and human interaction ever invented. In Facebook and all over the internet, there are hundreds of organizations and action groups posting videos, news, and photos of their activities. And the thousands of individuals out there doing the same thing on their blogs, like what I’m doing right now. So, if we all start with ourselves and setting good examples first, then move on to using technology to change others, then maybe we could really change the world.

During the last quarter of the school year, we focused on global issues such as the rich/poor gap, environment, and world conflict and peace. We researched and created PowerPoint presentations about specific issues in small groups for educating other people. This means that we had also contributed to changing the world by educating other people and creating an awareness.

If I keep doing what I’m doing right now, which is posting on my blog about news and global issues, maybe someone will come by and read my posts and write a post or be inspired to do something about it. Then maybe someone else noticing whatever he did would take action himself or something, like the butterfly wing effect. I could follow the 10 rules of Gandhi. And, of course, do my best to change myself.