Building a better world, to me, means using your past experiences and personal skillset with the intention of helping others while following a certain set of ideals. Anything from assisting an acquaintance with math homework to calling for help in an emergency to putting together birthday boxes for children if you didn’t have a god family growing up can contribute to making the world a better place, and it’s often the small actions that make a difference.
Improving the world requires one to have a certain set of ideals to follow in order to gauge their success. Aside from generally “striving to do good,” one must try their best to understand all kinds of people and be accepting of anything or anyone not deemed inherently toxic or harmful. One should prioritize their personal needs, but with the idea in mind that being a strong, healthy individual makes one better equipped for helping others. My personal philosophy requires that one go above and beyond by assisting others even when it doesn’t have personal consequences. If this philosophy is followed to a T, there should be a limited sense of personal regret in one’s life, and everyone else should prosper as well.
In addition to following a philosophy that promotes making the world a better place, in order to make a difference, ideals must be backed up by actions. I make sure to go out of my way to help people whenever needed. For example, when I was walking home from work in West campus, there was a girl who was so drunk she couldn’t walk and her friends claimed she was okay, but she didn’t look like it (and couldn’t say so for herself), so I called the police and she ended up in an ambulance. I could have walked away and left them to handle it, since they were complete strangers, but my ideals told me that was a bad idea, especially because I had a situation in which I needed bystander intervention and I was totally ignored. To me, when you have personally experienced something negative, you have a higher responsibility to help other people not go through the same thing. Since everyone has a negative experience or two in life, if everyone helps out with the issues they’re most passionate about, most issues can be solved. It is up to everyone to make the decision to take the negative and turn it into something positive rather than bring themselves or others down because of it.
In addition to this philosophy working on an individual level, it also works on a community level. Within the art community I am a part of, my friends and I make an effort to comment on everyone’s posts, especially the younger and less experienced members, encouraging them and providing positive feedback with what they’ve done well. We regularly make opportunities for members to win/sign-up for free art, despite that we could be taking more commissions instead, because it makes them happy. When artists open emergency commissions, we all chip in to make sure they have enough money to get out of the situation they’re in. While this may not fix global warming or any of society’s bigger issues, the small things help people keep going and motivate them to help make a difference in other aspects of life.
Overall, building a better world doesn’t have to be something specific or tangible. There is no one “correct” path that must be taken to get there. To me, the best means of improvement is through approaching life with kindness and allowing all of the little things to add up. If everyone were to follow the above philosophy, the world might not be perfect, but it would be a lot closer to perfection than it was before.