Off-beat response to question on getting people to care

Last weekend I held a Q&A session for the online community I cohost with my former wife Patsy. One of the videos in particular speaks to our current moment. I’ll append the transcript, but I think the video conveys something that the the transcript does not.

How do you get people to care about making changes that don't directly benefit them? 

Transcript

You should only try to get people to make changes that do directly benefit them. People have a deluded view of what actually directly benefits them, however. 

The dominant worldview that we inhabit holds the Self to be much smaller than it is. According to its calculations, changing the rules for the next generation, planting an apple tree that people will eat from in 100 years, making changes in the world that will benefit future generations, that doesn't benefit this separate self.

But is that really who you are? See, if you carry the story that some action will not directly benefit you, if you're going to be sacrificing for something or someone else, then you will get opposition from people; you're going to be their enemy. 

If you approach things with the mindset of, “I'm going to make you have less because you have more than someone else, I’m going to take something from you,” people get defensive about that. 

But [people will respond positively]  if you carry the knowledge that this action will actually benefit you, even in direct ways that you're going to feel. You go out and spend a day planting apple trees for your great-grandchildren, who you haven't even met yet, or maybe for somebody else's great-grandchildren who you never will meet. When you finish that day of work, you're going to feel good. Even if nobody congratulates you for it, even if nobody thanks you for it, you're going to feel good. You've actually done something for yourself. You're probably going to live longer; you're going to be healthier, you're going to be happier. 

So if you come to people in a spirit of generosity, in a spirit of, “Hey, I'm going to help you do something that's going to be great for you,” and hold that knowledge (you don't necessarily have to say that out loud) — if that's the spirit you bring, you're going to invoke that part of them that knows that that's true. You're going to be speaking to their idealism and the part of them that wants to do those things, not the part of them that feels that they only qualify as a good person and get approval if they do those things. It will be a much harder battle otherwise. They're going to be defensive and you'll have to overcome those defenses.  

It's like the Gandhian land reformer, Vinoba Bhava, in the 1940s and 50s in India. He would go to the most greedy, ruthless landlords, who owned vast lands. The peasants owned nothing.

He would go to them and say, “I have an idea. Why don't you give away one-sixth of your land to the peasants?” 

And they'd be like, “Why do you think I would do that? You know, there's nothing in it for me.” 

He would hold the part of them that wants to do that. He would say, “I’m here because you're so generous.” 

No one had ever called them generous before. And it wasn't a psychological trick. That's the key. His “seeing” was so generous. He could see the beautiful part of them that would do that. And he would just love them, because he knew that they were going to do generous things. And they did; millions of hectares were redistributed to landless peasants because of this man's work. 

The reason he was so powerful is because he didn't guilt them into it. He just saw them for who they really were, or who they wanted to be, what was ready to come out in them. 

And so if you carry that spirit with you, and you find the part of yourself that knows that this is for their direct benefit, that this is how to live a good life.That this is how to be happy; it's not about duty, it's not about virtue. Only then will you be powerful.