People live what they think -- it's impossible for us to do anything else. The thinking that drives people's actions may be articulated clearly and coherently (and sometimes at the top of their voices), but it also may not be, even in people's own minds. It's there all the same, however, nestled away in people's assumptions, forming the foundation of their basic world view. In many cases, the kind of thinking I'm referring to even contradicts the beliefs people do articulate, both to themselves and to others. It is this level of thinking -- the level which drives the way people actually live -- that's most important, far more important than the books we call sacred, the creeds and philosophies we mouth, and the political systems we pledge allegiance to. Consequently, the only way to truly change anything in human behavior, individually or collectively, is to change this fundamental level of thinking -- to change minds.

Creating change by changing minds is an approach which can be applied to most kinds of questions and conundrums that trouble us. Because I focus my own time on saving the world, though, I'll use our global ecological crisis as my example.

In previous articles, I've done my best to challenge the "environmental" movement's past and present approach. Summed up, that approach is: Discover (or suspect) that something undesirable is occurring -- air/water is being polluted, topsoil is being depleted, forests are being clear cut, and so on -- and then react to this by pressing for some sort of government legislation to address the problem, whether by regulating or banning the undesirable behavior (in most cases, the former). This doesn't cover every single thing that's been done or is being done, but I think it's fair to say it covers the vast majority.

While I'm not here to convince you that this approach is worthless, I am here to persuade you that it's completely inadequate. Not only is it inherently reactionary--waiting to act until something harmful is already happening and damage has already been done--but it also serves to institutionalize the behavior. You don't need to set up a program of regulation and management for an activity that has stopped, after all. And what about the harmful things we don't even realize are happening because we don't -- indeed, we can't -- fully understand the system being damaged?

The legislative and regulatory approach starts from the premise that people are always going to be doing something to muck up the planet, so the best we "more enlightened" folk can hope to do is chase around behind them, put out the fires we can (when we're allowed to), and try to control the countless others. It's clear to me that the fire brigade is much too small to keep up, though, and always will be. Moreover, in many cases we don't even discover a fire has been raging until years after it started, and a home that's been burned can never be restored to what it once was.

Those of us who seek to create change by changing minds start from a different premise, however. We don't assume that people are always going to be doing something to muck up the planet -- we don't believe that mucking up the planet is just what people do. Instead, we assume that people are mucking up the planet because of what they've been taught to think, and what they think can change. In short, we proceed under the assumption that, if someone's mind has changed, we won't have to go around behind them putting out the fires they start, because they will do their best to avoid starting fires in the first place, and they will rush to put out any they do accidentally start themselves.

A common objection to this suggestion is that it will just take too long -- we don't have time to convince billions of individuals to change their own lives. Our only hope is to force them to change by forbidding them to do what they're doing or limiting how much of it they can do (through laws and regulations), and by raising the cost of doing it (through fees, pollution taxes, etc.). Is that true, though?

Right now there are estimated to be about 6.2 billion people alive as part of Earth.. I'm going to make what I think is a low guess and assume that there are already 500,000 with changed minds worldwide. Let's see what they can do: If each of those 500,000 people commit themselves to changing one other person's mind over the next year (a mind a year seems reasonable to me), then there will be one million changed minds a year from now.

And if each of those one million changes one mind over the following year, there will be two million two years from now.

And if those two million do the same, there will be four million three years from now.

And if those four million follow suit, there will be eight million four years from now -- eight million out of the more than six BILLION humans that will most likely then be alive.

Pretty slow, eh? If this pattern continues, if we are only so successful as to each change one mind a year, then how long would it take to change everyone's mind? Just fourteen years. Do the math:

• Five years from now, those eight million would become sixteen.
• Six years from now, those sixteen would be thirty-two.
• Seven years from now, those thirty-two would be sixty-four.
• Eight years from now, those sixty-four would be one hundred and twenty-eight.
• Nine years from now, those one hundred and twenty-eight would be two hundred and fifty-six.
• Ten years from now, those two hundred and fifty-six would be five hundred and twelve.
• Eleven years from now, those five hundred and twelve would be one and twenty-four--one billion, twenty-four million, that is.
• Twelve years from now, those one and twenty-four would be two and forty-eight.
• Thirteen years from now, those two and forty-eight would be four and ninety-six.
• And just fourteen years from now, those four and ninety-six would be eight and one hundred and ninety-two--eight billion, one hundred and ninety-two million.

Again, the world's current human population is estimated to be a little under 6.2 billion, so even allowing for population growth of another two billion people, we could theoretically change the minds of all of them in only fourteen years if we will just commit ourselves to each changing one mind a year. Is that doable? Is that too much to ask? I think we could do more.

No, changing people's minds alone will not save the world, but people with truly changed minds will lead truly changed lives. Changing minds isn't an end in and of itself but, in my opinion, it is the foundation we must lay in order to begin saving the world. Think of the human creative potential that would be unleashed by having hundreds of millions, then billions, of people setting their minds to figuring out new, sustainable ways to live.

But don't misunderstand me here: I don't think for a moment that we have any hope of changing the mind of every single human being in the world. Some people's minds will not be changed by anything we say or do. A certain percentage are simply set in their ways, and there are no doubt others who will actively oppose us. I'm not worried about that, though. I don't think we need to set our goal at changing every single mind for two reasons: First, the tribal peoples of the world are already living well without destroying the world, near as I can tell (though I don't know how many of them there are altogether). Second, there's no one right way to live. I'm convinced that quite a few of us -- quite a few of the people of civilization -- must change if we're going to save the world, but not all.

And can any piece or package of legislation, any presidential initiative, or any armed revolutionary movement hope to save the world more quickly? The saving of the world cannot be imposed, from above, on people whose unchanged minds resist it. How many years have we been trying to do it that way so far? Are we anywhere near succeeding?

Objections have been raised to the language of "changing minds," arguing that it sounds like we're out to brainwash people. This is not at all what we mean by this short-hand description. The process of changing minds means offering people a new perspective on what they already "know" as well as bringing new information to them so that they are in a position to change their own minds. The kind of mind changing we're talking about cannot be done to someone, only with someone.

Changing minds may not save the world in time, but I don't see how any other strategy that has been proposed could possibly work more quickly.

And that's a challenge.

[While I wrote this piece, my thanks go to author/teacher Daniel Quinn for pointing out just how quickly changing minds can change the world. His books have been invaluable in helping me to change my own mind. Click here and here to read some of his thoughts on changing minds.]

ADDENDUM (September 5, 2005):

One reader's comments inspire me to add the following:

We usually think of changing one's mind as something that happens in an instant (though the thought processes that lead up to the change might last much longer than that), but most of the situations in which people change their minds are relatively superficial matters compared to the kind of mind-changing I've addressed in this essay. In this context, I'm talking about changing deeply embedded and often even partially or fully unconscious cultural assumptions.

Consequently, I think it's important to recognize that changing one's mind in this sense is not an event but a process, one that in some sense is likely not going to end before one dies. Reading mind-changing books like Daniel Quinn's Ishmael and The Story of B, or work by some other thinker might well be the initiating event, but the effects will contine to ripple indefinitely.

I hadn't thought this through before I wrote "Does Changing Minds Take Too Long to Save the World?", which could be read as arguing that, because we could theoretically change all the minds in the world in less than 15 years, we could also save the world in less than 15 years. This was not my intention. I think the central challenge I made above still stands, though, because, the sooner we get people started in the process of changing minds, the sooner it will move to fruition.

I think it's also important to understand how social change works when wondering why we haven't seen more noticeable cultural change as a result of changing minds so far. It is necessary for those leading the cultural change to reach a critical mass or tipping point before the process of change really takes off. For more on this, I highly recommend Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (for an article-length introduction to the concept, click here).

If we're to save the world, I think we need to see real change in the not-too-distant future. It's hard to say just where we are in the process of changing minds, though, how close we are to the tipping point. I still have seen no general plan for saving the world that looked more promising to me than changing minds, and I've been trying to keep my mind open. For example, I've strongly considered and (for now at least) rejected as unworkable Derrick Jensen's assertion that we must work towards a planned demolition of civilization if we're to save the world.

Changing minds remains the only plan I've seen that I think has any chance of working, not only in time but at all. I think we need to have patience and trust in the process.