Black and white with shades of grey

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
― Desmond Tutu

The question for today is:
Can we make a better world for everyone?

The answer is:
Yes. And i will give you not one, but two examples to prove it.

First hint is from a research called “Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks”, made by James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis. The discovered that random acts of kindness have a ripple effect, spreading not by one degree, as it was expected, but by three degrees, in a social network — from a person to person to person to person. Each person in a network can influence dozens or even hundreds of people, some of whom he or she does not know and has not meet. Conclusion is: Be good, become the change you want in the world and the our world will become your world you want to live in.

Second example treat the feeling known as elevation, that warm uplifting feeling we get when we witness someone else good deed. Jonathan Haidt at first, and Simone Schnall later, both researched and found that elevation leads to altruistic behavior. The more will witness your good deed, the better world will become. Witnessing another person’s altruistic behavior elicits elevation, a discrete emotion that , in turn, leads to tangible increases in altruism.

You can think about at least few occasions when you witnessed or feel it, and maybe this will make you more prepared to be kind with others. We can bring magic in our life, and other’s, we only need to act. That’s it!

From a different perspective, we should also stand up in front of wrongdoing.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
(Edmund Burke)

According to the research of Phil Zimbardo (Stanford Prison experiment ring a bell?), 5% of the people act as evil doers, 5% of the people transform in heroes, and the remaining 90% are just passive bystanders. They are the ones that can change the world, if we can tip the balance towards a heroic attitude. And the difference is done by one thing only, action. We can all be sympathetic, we can all feel empathy when someone is in pain, or is not treated right, but empathy plus action equals compassion. And sustaining compassion actions with every occasion, even if you got something to loose, this is heroism. Let’s change the world together.

Want to know how?
You can begin here, on this website. Learn. Act. Surpass your yesterday Self.