How To Be of Service to the World
The five most purposeful topics to work on, according to the Club of Rome
Feeling purposelessness is the new epidemic of today. It’s sickening. So much talent is wasted while striving for money and status. But most people are so distracted with earning money that they don’t even feel their lack of purpose until their 40s.
During mid-life, many realize they have a bullshit job and don’t spend much time with friends or family because they are busy. Too busy making a living that they forgot to live. Add lifestyle inflation to the mix, and most hard-earned money is gone for things that provide little value.
We buy shit we don’t need to impress people we don’t like with money we don’t have. Welcome to consumerist hell.
If you are in this hamster wheel, I don’t judge. The programming of society and a lot of marketing put these ideas into our heads. And, of course, we need to make money to survive.
But what if you have enough to survive? What is the next thing? More money? A fancier car? A bigger house?
Some philosophers say the next step is “self-transcendence.” Transcending yourself to work on something meaningful that is bigger than yourself and overcoming that ego drive to acquire more and, instead, using your skills to serve others.
But what could that be?
What Other People Do To Find Purpose
For many, that’s accomplished by having kids. Suddenly your needs a less important, and you live your life to serve them.
For some, it’s living according to values. They seek to develop a meaningful philosophy for their lives or live according to existing ones. One example is Stoicism, which values Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, and Courage.
For others, that’s solving complex problems by working in tech companies with a “grand vision” to change the world.
From the above, a life according to values that stood the test of time is most meaningful. They help you develop a sound character and make you a better person.
What’s Purposeful
You can serve the world greatly by being a loving and compassionate person that seeks wisdom and justice. But what happens when you become a caring and human person is that you start to see injustice all around you: racism, sexism, homophobia, the destruction of our planet, the climate emergency, and all the people suffering from it.
Once you see people suffer and feel for them, you can’t sleep until you muster up the courage to start doing something. And what is that “something”?
It can be different for everyone because everyone has different skills. It should be something that you can control, something that is in your circle of influence. A promising direction on what is meaningful to work on can be found in the latest publication of the Club of Rome.
The 5 Most Purposeful Topics To Work On
The Club of Rome comprises 100 diverse experts from around the world who discuss the world’s biggest problems and seek to solve them. They wrote the famous publication “The Limits to Growth” in the 1972s and pointed out that we can’t grow our economies endlessly on a finite planet (you can download the pdf for free on their website).
These are intelligent people, and when they recently published the five biggest problems to work on to create an earth for everyone, it resonated with me.
- Ending poverty through reform of the international financial system, lifting 3–4 billion people out of poverty
- Addressing gross inequality by ensuring that the wealthiest 10% take no more than 40% of national incomes
- Empowering women to achieve total gender equity by 2050
- Transforming the food system to provide healthy diets for people and the planet
- Transitioning to clean energy to reach net zero emissions by 2050
Boom. Those are five biggies. They do make sense on so many levels. Ending poverty will stop the rise of facism in the western world and provide a good life for the many, not the few. The same goes for addressing gross inequality. We can’t afford billionaires anymore.
Empowering women will mean that we will have more collaboration, participation, compassion, and peacemaking in all areas of life — especially in politics; this is needed, as we can see with various crises and wars around the world.
Transforming our food systems is having a myriad of positive effects: fewer cancer-inducing pesticides in our bodies, more nutrients in the food we eat, less suffering for animals, and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
And then transitioning to clean energy, if done right, will empower communities with decentralized energy solutions and reduce CO2 so we might have a liveable future.
How I Want To Be of Service
I have thought about how to be more of a service and sketched points for the above topics. I hope they inspire you to take action as well.
Ending poverty through reform of the international financing system
This problem is a hard one. As a privileged westerner, I have little contact with people in poverty. What can I do? I do give money to homeless people on the streets that seem genuinely in need. I sometimes buy them food, too. Then I support people on kiva.org so they can start their local businesses. Usually, it’s 20–30 bucks that can help someone in an underdeveloped country buy some wool and start making clothes. I try to live basic and give money to charity. I also support ideas like the universal basic income that would end poverty in a heartbeat.
I admit this is my weakest one, and I don’t have a proper solution. We will need intelligent politicians and economists here to make thorough reforms. By being aware of the problem and the need to end it, I’m sure it will inspire me to action once it’s in my circle of influence.
Address gross inequality by letting the top 10% not take more than 40% of the national gross income.
When you think about the top 10%, you might think about super-rich people with private yachts and huge mansions. But if you look at the data, you only need a yearly income of 25,000 USD to be in the top 10% worldwide. If you earn that much, you are part of the problem.
What can you do about it? First of all, you can live basic and minimalistic, not fall into the lifestyle inflation of endless consumerism that will put you in the trap of having to earn more money. You can give money to people that are less fortunate than you or help and teach them to learn how to get out.
One meaningful way to support this is by supporting political parties that support a wealth and inheritance tax. Isn’t it crazy that paychecks are more heavier taxed than the money you make from capital gains? This is part of the problem—the richest 1 % own 50% of the world’s wealth. Any of these rich people have unimaginable amounts they can never spend in a lifetime. Why? Are they so out of touch with reality and have no empathy?
My way of addressing this is to write about and discuss the problem within my circle of influence. I know this will get enormous amounts of backlash because many westerners have been brainwashed into thinking that this is fair and that it’s just the result of hard work.
Well, it is not because usually, people born into wealthy and privileged families are getting even richer. People from low-income families stay poor. And if you think you are a capitalist, I have bad news: “A Capitalist is defined as a person who makes the majority of their income from the ownership of assets and capital.” (Source). If that doesn’t apply to you, you are working for a capitalist, and they are exploiting you, making money off of your work.
Empowering women
Helping on this one came a bit easier to me because I am around women all the time. It starts by reading and learning about the patriarchy; the unjust power system men have built since we invented marriage.
It continues by reflecting on my privileges and myself. And by taking action in my relationship toward more equality. It also involves writing about it. For example, I wrote about how men suffer from the patriarchal system.
I also work on this by actively calling out misogyny and teaching people I know about the topic. It’s not easy sometimes, but I get better. The argument for justice is always on my side.
Transforming food systems
This one is big, but I can support it with everyday actions. I order a box of veggies from locally grown organic agriculture every week. I eat plant-based, so no animal has to suffer for me, and I don’t support the super unjust and cruel livestock system.
Then I want to switch jobs to work in regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is about recovering the soil and stop using fertilizers and pesticides. It leads to much CO2 absorbed by the soil, nutrient-dense food, and many other positive effects. I recommend the documentary “Kiss the Ground” if you want to dive deeper.
Transitioning to clean energy
Changing the energy provider to a renewable one is a significant action everyone can take. Then investing in green energy projects is another. Money is the biggest lever in the transition; we must put it in the right direction. (And by the right direction, I don’t mean the greenwashed index funds). I also think it’s an intelligent investment decision. Check out organizations like GoParity to create a real impact with your money while gaining interest at the same time.
You can also buy CO2 emission rights in the EU to offset your carbon emissions and ensure that coal plants can not work profitably anymore. If you feel inspired, you can start a community project in your neighborhood and help each other install solar panels on your roof. That’s what my dad did 25 years ago, and he has saved a lot of money (and CO2) since then. Energy efficiency is another biggie. Maybe isolating your home correctly can already reduce the energy used.
To Sum It Up
There are plenty of ways to be helpful to the world, whether it’s saving lives as a doctor, educating others, caring for loved ones, making art, and inspiring others.
On a deeper level, it always comes down to the values of love and compassion. The hippies were right: Love IS the answer.
One sure way of not being helpful to the world is by being individualistic and focusing solely on making money to pay for a consumerist lifestyle that is causing a lot of harm to the planet.
In my opinion, living according to values and putting your talent into action for organizations that want to solve the five most significant problems in the world is the most meaningful one.
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