I quit striving to save the world and focused on changing myself

I have no patience anymore for people who believe they’re going to save the world.

Maybe I’ve seen too many would-be saviors turn into monsters. Maybe my time working in politics taught me what the system does to idealists.

Or maybe I just see too much of my younger self in these well-meaning do-gooders.

Even if you have brilliant ideas — and even if I agree with your ideas — there’s something fundamentally misguided about the notion that the world is waiting for you to come along and save everyone.

Any plan to “save the world” is necessarily going to involve imposing control from the top down. Even if we ignore the stunning arrogance and immorality of imposing control on millions or even billions of people against their will, the truth is that you will never be able to do that.

Your efforts to impose your will are doomed to be crushed by political systems that have existed since long before you were born. And recent history is littered with the corpses of would-be tyrants — and with many millions of their innocent victims.

So what should the budding idealist do — when much of the most popular advice to young people urges them to “go out and change the world”?

That’s simple. Change yourself. That’s the only thing over which you have actual control.

When I was young, I was one of those idealistic people who thought he was going to change the world.

As a teenager, I had serious plans to be president of the United States one day. I had an outline about how I was going to do it. I could tell you when I was going to be elected to Congress, then when I was going to be elected to the Senate. My goal was to beat John F. Kennedy’s record as the youngest person elected president. It seemed very realistic to me.

If someone had asked me at the time why I wanted to be president, I could have given a generic political answer. There were issues I was going to solve. There were terrible trends I was going to stop. I knew what I thought about every political concern.

But here’s the truth that I didn’t understand at the time.

I wanted to be president and I wanted to “save the world” for one simple reason. I wanted power. I wanted admiration. I wanted to be idolized in the way that we idolize political heroes.

My desire for political power was ultimately about myself, not about the world.

As I got older — and a little wiser and a lot more humble — I understood that I couldn’t have trusted myself with power any more than I now trust other politicians. I understood that any “brilliant solution” — even mine — involves controlling people against their will.

Most importantly, I understood that positive change for the world comes only from individuals transforming themselves — and becoming the sort of people who others voluntarily want to emulate.

I no longer have any desire for political power.

That’s partly because I have a principled desire to avoid any coercive power over any other person, but it’s also because I know how easily power corrupts any person. I know how easy it is to say, “Well, I said I didn’t want power, but I can accept it and just do this one good thing.”

The human ego is too easily corrupted by power. And I know that the easiest person for me to fool about what my ego wants is myself.

Today, I sincerely seek to make myself a better person. The more I learn — about myself and about life — the more I see in myself that I want to correct. I’m pleased with how far I’ve come in my understanding and wisdom about the world, but I have a long way to go.

The best I can do is to share the things I’ve learned with you.

If you think any of my ideas and insights are worth adopting for your life, I welcome that. I’d love for others to have the benefit of lessons that I’ve learned through painful experience. I’ve made a million mistakes — intellectually, emotionally and philosophically — so it would make me happy for others to have the benefit of my mistakes.

If a few of us make ourselves better people — and if others think we have something worth emulating — maybe a few thousand or a few million might join us.

Maybe.

The only certainty is that I’m not trying to change the world.

I’m just trying to change myself. And I’m hoping I can influence a few people along the way to become more decent and more loving and more peaceful.

If I can do that, I will have accomplished far more than I ever hoped to do through political control.