Why outer change doesn’t happen without inner change

Complex systems are not deterministic: You can’t predict the future. The same action can have various different outcomes. The earth is such a complex system. If our action in the world come from an inner state of ego-centrism, superiority and mechanistic thinking, the outcome is perpetuated by this kind of thinking. Being friendly to a person because of a free drink, leads to a different relationship than being friendly to a person because of a genuine interest. Again and again, we see interventions gone wrong. I once read a story of a foreign aid project in Nigeria, where they build a well so women didn’t have to walk 3 miles to get water. When they did, the women hated it. They loved spending that time together, leaving the village for some time. Real care might have come from actually listening to the needs of people, instead of taking a superior position of “I know what’s good for you”. Actions that come from an inner state that is not in-line with the intention of the outcome easily go wrong. Those of us working on outer change need to remember the inner first.