The Seed of World Peace

Previously, we talked about extending compassion to animals, microbes, and the Earth. By extending compassion to everyone and everything, I believe it will naturally and effortlessly lead to world peace [wikipedia]. This is a part of the Great Leadership blog series.

In today's world, people still think of myself, my family, my company, and my country. And to preserve and prosper that "my":

1. Some people fiercely compete with others for better education, for better car / house, or for promotions to get more money or prestige.
2. Some companies ruthlessly compete with each other at the expense of people's happiness by making people work excessive/unjustified hours, underpaid, and/or in poor working conditions.
3. And last, but not least, some countries wage wars against each other to gain more natural resources, and that includes other humans -- just because they happen to live in a different country, speak a different language, have different hair or skin colors, or have different cultures.

Why do we still think and act like that, even in today's world and time? I believe all of them are rooted based on a lack of one element: compassion.

As the Dalai Lama has said it himself, we are all essentially human, no more and no less [youtube], and the same. As we are the same, why are we competing and fighting with each other? So much energy and resources are wasted in the process. If we stop competing or fighting with each other, but work with each other cooperatively, like peers working in a team and teams working with each other to accomplish a company's vision, we could get so much done as the human race team. All successful companies that followed the same principles can't be wrong.

You know what it's like working in an awesome team, right? I work with many awesome teams at Confluent and it is absolutely amazing on how much we get done working together as a team as the company emphasizes empathy, and not competing against each other -- individual or team. As a team, we come up with a list of things we want to get done, agree on the priority, and then just get shit done [gyshido]. It is that simple and effective -- and of course, we have fun along the way too [twitter]. Now, imagine that happening in every company, and every company with other companies as teams, and finally, every country working with each other as teams -- wow, the things that we can accomplish would be boundless as the human race team.

In order for us to get there, the world working as a single team, first we need world peace. If we are still waging wars with each other, without peace, we can't even talk about what we want to do, let alone forming teams to accomplish them. 

For world peace to be ubiquitous and be rooted deeply into the ground, I believe we need to spread its seed: compassion. All the ruthless competitiveness and fighting would naturally be neutralized if everyone believes in, embraces, and passes compassion to everyone else. With compassion everywhere, everyone will feel and understand each other and therefore will help each other to be happier -- and people would no longer desire to ruthlessly compete, nor fight, with each other. 

With compassion planted, it naturally grows into world peace. With world peace, comes the world working as a single team to solve all humanity's problems -- diseases, poverty, global warming. Then, people would no longer need to ruthlessly compete, nor fight, with each other as everyone will have everything they need to be happy.

The Dalai Lama agrees that compassion is the pillar of world peace [watkinspublishing]. And Albert Einstein also believed it is a necessity to the art of living. 

But how do we spread compassion, the seed of world peace, everywhere? That's easy. It starts with you -- embrace compassion and pass it onto your families, friends, colleagues, and everyone by liking/sharing this message. :)

With compassion, trust can be formed.