Everywhere I turn on the Internet, there are floods of messages about all the challenges the world faces today (clearly the algorithm tracks my online behaviors and sends signals my way). It’s dispiriting to experience the bombardment of news about climate change, poverty, inequality, wars and conflicts, and other atrocities that seem to only multiply uncontrollably in every corner of the world. At the same time, uplifting movements and solutions undertaken by individuals and citizenry seem to also propagate through the same channels, especially social media. Information is a powerful tool, and more and more people are turning to communication platforms to instigate changes. Today, change could begin with an emphatic message or call to action from an influential icon, or even a regular individual. Of course, practical and action-based solutions are far from dwindling, and there are still numerous private, quiet efforts that help fix the issues, either as a response to said call to action, or as a self-contained initiative. In fact, to combat some of the more complex challenges (sometimes termed “wicked problems”) of the world today, we often turn to a combination of both communication- and action-based solutions by calling on citizens to play an active role in civic engagement or to adjust personal lifestyles.
So that’s for how ‘helping the world’ typically manifests itself now, at least in my limited sphere of vision. I’d like to also get out of the way this question of why ‘helping the world’ is even something worth considering. ‘Helping the world’ stipulates one’s responsibility in fixing a shared problem, whether one is culpable in establishing the problem or not. It may strike us as quite irrational for someone who may appear to be blameless in a circumstance to have to bear even a fraction of the responsibility to fix it. But when looked at a little more closely, helping the world is indeed a reasonable thing to attempt. After all, considering how the world’s problems will eventually concern everyone, helping the world pretty much means helping oneself, if we’re talking pragmatically. For a lot of us, helping the world is not that far removed from our intuition, our basic instinct. As we coexist with other humans in a society and with natural elements on a shared planet, our survival is more often than not dependent on the ability to get along with other humans and our surrounding. There are exceptions (i.e., folks to live remotely away from civilizations and learning to endure the wilderness on their own), but I’d be tempted to argue that if even remotely close to half of all humankind opt to live in a way that disregards the existence of every other entity, the world would fall apart (I have no factual basis for this hypothetical scenario, but it has never been even a possibility throughout history nor is it even the point here). Furthermore, not a small number of us might have been raised to be driven to help others and neutralize the suffering of fellow beings. Whether it is due to religion, or some spiritual orientation, or simple principles of humanity, the desire to help in situations where one can has become second nature to many of us.
All these lengthy preambles above are not to distract me from the discussion of what an underrated way to help the world actually is. Going back to my outline of its current manifestation, helping the world can appear to demand quite a lot from anyone who wishes to do it. Either one needs to put in consistent efforts to transform their private lives, or ought to make a grand public gesture to influence change among the mass. Already the former of the two seems to be somewhat more accessible and attainable for most of us, but it still necessitates change, which can inflict varying levels of discomfort or inconvenience. Not that comfort is what we should go after. However, before we are ready to move further along our path of helping the world, perhaps the most natural thing to do is recognize how much harm we intentionally or inadvertently cause and seek to reduce it as much as possible.
The no-harm-done approach isn’t supposed to be a be-all-end-all paragon for each of us to strive for, and to me it only remains a good reminder for what I could do when helping the world seems to ask for a bit too much of my limited energy. It’s important to note also that doing-no-harm can mean different things to different people, and there is no expectation to standardize such variation. To some of us, a commitment to do no harm could entail the same thing as checking off every point listed on some list that spells out “52 ways to be green”, for example, because to them, harm is tied closely to each of the issues presented. On the flip side, harm can be defined as the most direct, visible suffering imposed on another being about which one comes to know. In this case, doing no harm could then mean rethinking your way of doing things after you come across a visual image of how your lifestyle choices cause direct damage to a group of people, for example. Again, no-harm-done can be a low hanging fruit for some, while for others it takes more work. In most cases, it still demands efforts in self-education and learning from one’s mistakes. The end in sight is not to target overwhelmingly large and complex challenges until they disappear while feeling like no progress is being made. No-harm-done approach seeks reduce the harm that we come to recognize, step-by-step, and in whichever way we can, without obsessing over the enormity of the problems and the impossibility of fixing them completely.
I don’t advocate complacency, neglect, or inertia, especially when faced with the influx of challenges that we collectively face. Although I pointed out above that change can be uncomfortable, succumbing to the passivity of comfort isn’t the answer. However, there are ways to reduce the friction of contributing to helping the world by starting with a commitment to no-harm-done. Committing to do no harm is not the same as treating the world’s problems with apathy. It involves being cognizant of harm, reflecting on it from one’s own perspective, and learning to assuage such harm however one can. It may eventually lead to either the grand gestures or tenacious pursuits of action that are associated with helping the world today (that’s quite likely), but as a starting point, the do-no-harm approach remains a viable yet underrated way to help the world.