This piece was inspired by one of the posts in the Epsilon Theory series on how Things Fall Apart, where Ben talks about how the right way to view the world is “as below, so above” – that is, we can affect heaven by what we do in our own muddy backyard. It’s also written in the spirit of Patrick McKenzie’s advice to think of the things I post here as just thoughts and advice that happen to be published on the internet; I’m planning to do some light copyediting but mostly leave this as a stream of consciousness.
I believe there are two types of people in the world. The first type are those that are content with optimizing for the comfort and happiness of their family and a narrow surrounding circle, and who don’t think much beyond that. If that’s you, good luck to you and in many ways I envy you. This essay isn’t for you, though.
The second type of people are those whose definition of a fulfilling life requires them to expend some amount of energy trying to make the world a better place. Leave the campsite cleaner than you found it, as the Boy Scouts would have us do. Being this sort of person seems to be bestowed upon an individual by their teenage years, through a combination of upbringing, natural temperament, and exposure to certain stimuli. I consider myself one of these people, and it’s this part of my identity I’m writing from and for today.
The question I’m pondering is: can we truly get to a better world by all of us tending to our tiny corner of it? Or would a truly better world require all those micro actions to be complemented by some grand-scale work?
Thinking about this more concretely. There are 8 billion people on the earth today, and let’s say 0.1% of them are the type I described above who are driven to create a better world. Would it be sufficient for those 8 million people to each draw a square around their local neighborhood of 1000 people and get to work planting community gardens, building trust among neighbors, visiting the sick and elderly, etc. etc.? Or would we still largely live in the world we have today, just with a few more community gardens?
I’m in two minds about this. The idealist and sociologist in me truly believes that small actions can create big ripples – that there are non-linear effects from the sum of small actions. But the product manager in me, who has worked in plenty of big organizations, knows that grassroots efforts are often ineffective without a coordinating push from above. Individuals can do wonderful things with the levers in their control, but some levers are just not tractable to micro interventions, no matter how many micro interventions you stack up. I guess what I’m talking about are coordination problems, where everyone would like to solve them but no small subset of parties can bootstrap a solution alone – it takes a critical mass of participants to make a change, and that critical mass is difficult to build.
We have solved some of these problems in the modern world, but it was incredibly difficult, required a concentrated push at the top from some determined parties, and the solutions are still fragile. Think things like global free(ish) trade, or banning CFCs a few decades ago (ever wonder why we don’t hear about the hole in the ozone layer any more? We fixed it!), or nuclear non-proliferation. These sorts of amazingly important, incredibly valuable things won’t come about from 8 million people concentrating on their own local communities. They require people with vision, superhuman patience, and sufficient ego to want to shape ideas and solutions at a global level.
So: as below, so above? Yes, but not entirely. I think we absolutely need 8 million people making their local communities better, but we also need 80 thousand people trying to make their cities or countries better, and 8 thousand people working on the massive, important, intractable global problems.
A corollary of this, of course, is that if you’re someone who wants to improve the world but you’re not sure where to start, the no-regrets jumping in point is to roll up your sleeves and get to work in your own community. If your calling is to make a difference at a larger level, the work will find you – in the meantime, you should feel confident that you are very much doing your part by starting in your own backyard.
