Doubt-Crusher attacks the “Because there have been wars, there will always be wars” part of the argument in three ways:

First, through human history there has always been peace in some parts of the world. So, all through history, some people have been able to produce or maintain the conditions needed for peace. They had the skills, values and structures to maintain peace.

Second, the argument is predicting the future based on the past. You can’t know the future based on the past.

 But an even better argument is to think of humanity as being like a person with low self-esteem. Saying that “Because there have always been wars, there always will be wars” is very much like a person saying, “Because I have always been a failure, I always will be a failure.” For instance, imagine a guy who has failed to attract women after several years of attempts. From this history, he starts to believe he will always be a failure with women. Once he believes that, that defeatist attitude will keep him from trying. Furthermore, the self-pitying attitude itself will repel most women. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same thing is true on the level of humanity. Belief that humanity will always suffer helps keep in place a self-fulfilling prophesy of endless suffering.

Recognizing that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, however, is not enough. The guy with low self-esteem who can’t attract women has to learn skills and behaviors that will attract women, or that at least won’t repel them. In the same way, members of humanity need to learn skills and behaviors that will make a transformed world possible.

This kind of learning has always taken place. But in the future, superprograms can accelerate human learning and change even more. [Superprograms are one of the major upgrades that are introduced later.]  They are what can make our future different from our past. Individuals will have more skills and knowledge, and they will make the organizations they belong to more effective. Therefore, if superprograms become widespread, they can raise the self-esteem of humanity. Then humanity won’t be like a person with low self-esteem who fears the future because of past failures.

Raising the self-esteem of humanity is a huge concept.

Do you have low self-esteem or a lack of confidence in some area of your life? The insight here is that you can improve your self-esteem by using superprograms, and by figuring out which ingredient or ingredients of a learning environment you have been missing.

In summary, Doubt-Crusher doesn't guarantee that superprograms will change the world. Doubt-Crusher doesn't guarantee that humanity will build its self-esteem. Doubt-Crusher's job was to just remove the absolute pessimism contained in the doubt. Anyone who remembers the analogy of humanity to a person with low self-esteem will never think of that doubt as being air-tight. It never was.

2. Doubt-Crusher versus "If Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed couldn't do it, no one can."

“In the course of human history, spiritual greats like Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed have been born. If together their great wisdom has only had a small impact on humanity, and has only brought the world to the present highly imperfect situation, how could anyone be born who could diminish suffering a hundred times more? The amount of wisdom and power that would be needed seems utterly inconceivable.”

When you first hear this thought, it makes our doom seem final. But Doubt-Crusher can totally neutralize this doubt.

His approach is to clarify the distinction between spiritual and nonspiritual problems: Only a tiny percentage of all religious people reject modern medicine. These people rely on faith healing alone. Most devoutly religious people have no problem with taking antibiotics or getting an infected appendix removed. That’s because they see medical problems of the body as being distinct from spiritual problems of the soul.

So, since on a personal level you go to a doctor for medical problems and a minister or guru for spiritual problems, think of the world in the same way: It has medical-like problems in the environment, the economy, politics and the community that can be treated in environmental, economic, political, and local ways. It also has spiritual roots to some of these problems, because the individual members of humanity have spiritual problems. The world itself does not seem to have a soul or spirit. At least, no major religion has stated this.

Someone might counter that certain mental or spiritual problems cause physical problems like ulcers and high blood pressure. They might say that the spiritual and material problems are interconnected and must be addressed from the (deeper) spiritual level. My response to this is that problems can be treated on any level that works. For instance, for most of recorded history there were effective herbal cures to many health problems. The biochemistry was never known, and it didn’t need to be known.

Returning to the point in question, Doubt-Crusher will certainly grant that some of the world’s problems have spiritual roots. In these cases spiritual solutions are needed, and other solutions are only temporary fixes.

But, in general, if there are two roles on the individual level (physical healers and spiritual guides), there should be two roles allowed on the global level. Thus, the world could be said to need spiritual saviors, messengers and guides, but also could need “world surgeons.” Just as a doctor looks at an individual in terms of systems: muscular, system, neurological, and so forth, a world surgeon would look at the world in terms of its life-support systems, the environment, the economy, political systems, communication systems, etc.

So what Doubt-Crusher says is: Split up the global job into two parts, the spiritual and the “medical,” and that will eliminate this belief that a Buddha-Christ-Prophet is needed or the world’s situation is hopeless.

To those religious people who feel threatened by this idea, Doubt-Crusher has two responses:

First, a religion’s primary job is to teach a spirituality, not to heal the sick or feed the hungry. While missionaries often do help heal the sick and feed the hungry, they do it for three reasons. Two reasons are legitimate and one isn't. First, a person is not just a spirit, but the whole package: body, mind and spirit. So the missionary needs to address all three aspects. Second, you can’t easily convert a dead person to your religion. It’s much easier to dialogue with them if they are not comatose from fever or prostrate from starvation. The third reason is illegitimate: Many people will convert to the religion of whichever missionary is helping them. They really don’t believe. They are doing it for the sake of future “payments” of food or medicine, or perhaps out of gratitude. Missionaries who rely on this method of conversion may feel threatened by superprograms. But sincerely religious people should be glad of anything that would allow them to concentrate on their primary role.

Second, since some religious people might call my approach “secular and ungodly,” Doubt-Crusher will respond in advance: If a surgeon saves your life or your child’s life, you don’t call them secular and ungodly, do you? Then why attack us when my Mighty Plan is about relieving physical suffering around the world? But I will go even further: Many surgeons and nurses feel that surgery and medicine is their calling. They understand that, though only physical in nature, medicine can have a spiritual role: by healing a person’s body they are giving that person more time on Earth to pursue a spiritual path.

With the exception of the tiny percent of religious people who only go to faith healers, most truly devout people will accept this. Yes, some Christian and Muslim extremists will veto any global effort that doesn’t force into existence an exclusively Christian or Muslim world; but most devout people of these faiths see this extremism as a distortion of the founders’ visions. It’s impossible to imagine that Jesus would accept coerced faith. And the Qur’an itself states: “Let there be no compulsion in religion.” (2:256).

In summary, Doubt-Crusher has dramatically resolved a doubt that has kept many religious people from even considering that a nonreligious plan could address the world's problems. Ironically, this doubt has caused many religious people to treat people who with global plans with contempt. Now, if these people carefully avoid spiritual and religious claims, they can be considered potential world surgeons.

3. How to Increase the Resources Available to Charities by $500 Billion a Year  

Since most nonprofits and charities rely on donations and volunteers to help them accomplish their missions, I thought of a way to boost the donations and volunteer hours for charities by about $500 billion dollars a year.

        The idea: Think of all of the charities in your city or town. Most of them rely on volunteers and donations. Now think of all the people in your city or town who donate money or give time. Together they form the pool of volunteer hours and donor dollars in that city or town. For the most part, all of the charities draw from this pool for their needs. If a few charities become more successful at getting money and donations, they do better at accomplishing their missions. Unfortunately, this leaves less for the other charities. So the others have to work harder to get the same amount of volunteers or donations. In other words, money or time that you give to one organization is money or time that you can’t give to the others. So, unwittingly, the charities are competing for the same dollars and volunteers.

My idea increases the overall pool of volunteer hours and donor dollars. Since time management workshops can increase the time that volunteers have to give, and money management workshops can increase the money that donors have, charities should offer these workshops to their volunteers and donors. They should say to them: “Here’s a way that you can be more generous to us and the people we help, and have more time and money for yourselves, as well!” 

That “perk” would be better than many current volunteer perks and appreciation events.

At first, volunteers and donors may initially resist the idea of taking workshops, since they might just want to give time or money, rather than do a workshop or training. But charities need to coax their volunteers and donors by explaining how this is a way to be more generous, and also have more for themselves. Once people understand that increasing the volunteer and donation pool is one of the few real ways to increase the overall good that can be done, they will start to appreciate this idea. (Granted, many charities offer estate planning, but by money management, I mean something broader and more immediate.)

Charities themselves might resist this idea. That’s because, even if the workshop participants produce more time and money because of the workshops, they might not share it with the charity. They might keep it, or they might give it to another charity. But the workshop can be set up to make it clear to the participants that they are expected to share some of their increased time and money with the sponsoring charity. The way to prove that this idea works is to do an actual study. But how could it not work?  If people are generous enough to give time and money to a certain charity, most of them will certainly give more to a charity that helped them create more time and money. Besides the volunteers and donors they already have, charities could even attract people who always wanted to give, but never had enough time or money.

Here’s where the $500 billion figure comes from: The richest one-tenth of the world’s population would be 600 million people, mostly the middle class of the wealthier countries. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume they are all just middle class people. If 50% of these people can save just $100 more a month through money management, that would yield $360 billion a year  ($100 x 12 x 300 million). $100 a month may sound like a lot, but in an actual small group situation, I led a group of participants to trim monthly recurring expenses like insurance and utilities, producing savings of up to $1,500 a year. Now for the other part of the $500 billion:  In the United States, about half of all adults who can volunteer do volunteer. Assume that capable adults and teens make up half of the population—the rest are too young, too old or too infirm. Therefore, imagine that only one quarter of the 600 million people volunteered an extra three hours a week, using time gained through time-management. If this time were valued at only $6.75, that would yield $150 billion dollars a year. ($6.75 x 3 hours/wk x 50 weeks x 300 million.)  Thus, the total of donations and volunteer time is worth over $500 billion a year.

This idea is so simple idea that I can’t imagine that a charity somewhere in the world hasn’t done a time-management training as a perk for their volunteers or a money-management workshop for their donors. Nevertheless, there’s still a difference between their idea and mine. My idea is to make this a new standard for the nonprofit sector. To have it be known that this is a higher and better way to give, one that yields increased long-term benefits for all—the volunteers and donors themselves, the charities, and the people that the charities are trying to help.

How soon could this happen?  As soon as a charity creates a time or money management training and presents it to some of its volunteers and donors, the process has begun. A charity could ask for half of the time or money that is gained during the first year and then track the results. If charities fully embraced this idea and took a year to plan and test their trainings, it is conceivable that within five years charities could have easily trained over half of the potential candidates, yielding half of the $500 billion a year.

Because charities and nonprofits are often focused on the short-term, an additional impetus may be needed for them to embrace this paradigm. This impetus can be supplied by foundations that raise the bar by insisting that charities begin to study and integrate this new paradigm. A recent example of foundations “raising the bar” is their current emphasis on collaboration between nonprofits.

Someone might criticize this idea by saying that most of the $360 billion that people save is money that would have been spent on other things. They might worry that this will shrink the for-profit sector and cause a loss of jobs. But any job loss in the for-profit sector will be more than compensated by two things:  First, job creation in the nonprofit sector, and second, an increased safety net that will make the transition easier for those losing their jobs. In other words, because the nonprofit sector is built up, there will be more job training, counseling, and other services available to those in transition. And since the nonprofit sector is more service than product oriented, you would expect a net increase in jobs.

If you think about this idea, you may decide that the benefits aren’t that easy to come by. That’s because a one-time money or time management workshop won’t produce perpetual savings. Eventually circumstances change, and the savings will either disappear, or people will divert more of their savings to their personal desires. The answer to this is the superprogram idea, explained later. It’s an ongoing structure that is designed to maintain and increase the capacity (time, money, energy and skill) of participants. For now, you don’t need to understand superprograms to believe that an ongoing structure would maintain the savings. Just imagine that after the initial time-management training or money management training that the participants meet once a month for a check-in meeting and social time so that their continuing efforts can receive recognition and so they can encourage each other.

Once again, if charities emphasize that this is a way to increase the overall pool of time and money, and thus increase the overall good that is done, it will make an impression on their volunteers and donors. It will also have two spin-off effects. First, it may draw in new volunteers and donors—those who didn’t have quite enough time or money to give before. Second, when charities don’t have enough operating funds, they have to spend more money and staff time on fundraising. Their fundraisers are often in competition with each other (only so many events can happen on a weekend). The more the charities compete for the limited pool of donations, the more they spend in fundraising. An unproductive escalation can occur. But since this approach increases the overall pool, it eases the need for fundraising events, and so there is less likelihood of escalation.

As I said, $500 billion a year more isn’t enough to address all the world’s major problems, but I think it would improve my credibility with you if I compare that amount of money to other income streams.

$500 billion is more the total annual US foreign aid budget. It’s more than the annual UN budget. And it’s more than the total donations of the thousand most generous corporations on Earth.—And it’s more than these three sources of funds combined.

So when this upgrade is widely implemented, 500B will have a huge impact in the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Like most superheroes, he will do good on a scale that staggers the imagination.    

More:  I thought more about how the idea might be spread. I’m planning to hire a staff person soon. He or she will have multiple tasks, but one would be to present a training workshop to selected staff in a large or medium-sized nonprofit. This is a training in how to do the time/money efficiency-building workshops and ways to organize the ongoing support structure, so that people keep working at time and money savings. But, as part of the plan, after presenting the workshops for about four months, the charity then trains the staff of 2-4 other charities…and so on. Thus, we can have a geometric growth or chain-reaction spread of the know-how.   


               If this were a movie, here's where the drama begins!

In a movie, the first plot point is where the drama usually begins. I believe that most readers read the Home Page doubting that this could be a real plan. But after reading this page, I think that any fair-minded reader would be saying to themselves something the following:  "Hmmm, whoever is writing this came up with an idea with a potential value of $500 billion a year. This writer also came up with surprising ways to crush two doubts that probably most people on Earth are thinking, either consciously or unconsciously. Now, as unbelievable as it seems, I have to admit that whoever is creating this website just might have a realistic plan for the whole world. I seriously doubt it. But since they have cut down two huge doubts, he might possibly eliminate all my major doubts. And since they came up with an idea worth $500 billion and also he claims to have 16 other upgrades, I can't ignore the possibility that Mighty Plan might be real."  

In other words, we have a drama: At this point, you don't know if Mighty Plan will do something phenomenally good. -- Of course, if I were you, at this point I'd be betting against it. I mean, what are the odds?  Still, wouldn't it be mind-blowing if someone really could come up with a way to reduce suffering a hundredfold by the end of the century?!  Personally, I don't think that the greatest thing about such a plan would be to save hundreds of millions of lives. Personally, I think of it in terms of a handful of people. For me, the power of such a plan really comes into focus when you think in terms of one child, or one woman or one man whose life is saved, or is freed from a life of misery.

Now, some people may fail to see the drama. They might dismiss the 500B idea by saying, " Look, you really didn't do anything!  You didn't produce $500 billion dollars. No starving people have been fed. No sick people have been cured." But my reply would be, "Though I'm no Einstein, my role just is like Einstein's. He didn't build any nuclear reactors. He didn't build any nuclear subs. His role was to develop the theory and to convince people of the reality of nuclear power. My role is to convince you that the methods to achieve an unprecedented reduction in suffering are a reality. But, I will actually go beyond my role:  I have not only developed many new concepts and methods, I've built the actual detailed prototypes. For instance, I completely built three superprograms so that people would be able to easily picture how much good superprograms could do for them personally -- and so that people could use them."

Next:   A Short Story and Five Hints of Power