Introduction  (Continued)  


Let's start with an idea that you don't have to accept or believe. It will just make this website a little more interesting. If movies or comic books are any indication, people seem to wish for superheroes, for people or beings with superpowers. We'd love to have superheroes who fight for the good and rescue people from harm. Unfortunately, in this century when we surely could use them, there don't seem to be any people or beings who truly have superpowers.

Yet in a very real sense, a certain kind of superhero really does exist. Some of these superheroes have been "alive" for hundreds of years. Powerful methods and great ideas are superheroes. For instance, the Scientific Method has been helping humanity for over four hundred years.  And the idea of democracy has been a superhero that has improved the quality of life for many people around the world. If you prefer, you could say that the U.S. Constitution, a plan, is the superhero behind democracy. And in my opinion, one of the earliest and greatest superheroes in the world is the concept of written language--putting symbols on paper, on papyrus or on a computer screen--symbols that serve as records and vehicles for communication.  

If you think about it, these superheroes have saved millions of lives and greatly reduced suffering since the beginning of recorded history.

But you could reply, "Yes, but the Scientific Method could be blamed for some of the environmental damage in the world today. And if democracy is a superhero, it seems to be a superhero who is slowly dying from internal corruption." Well, amusingly enough, this is in perfect keeping with the trend in modern comic book superheroes: They are not perfect. They have flaws. They still face awful dilemmas.

Anyway, this website is about a plan that contains seventeen upgrades.  You could say that Mighty Plan is a team of seventeen superheroes. If I were to give them names, one might be called 500B because it can boost the pool of donations and volunteers to charities by $500 billion a year. (If all those extra volunteers and dollars were focused on hunger alone, it could end hunger on Earth year after year. That's the approximate firepower of 500B.) Another superhero can accelerate human learning and change. This is a new breed of learning programs called Superprograms. These superprograms have roughly ten times the potential power of 500B, so they can produce about $5 trillion of good a year. 

Perhaps the father of all the other Mighty Plan superheroes is an attitude that's called the Surgeon's Attitude. "He" can multiply the power of 500B and Superprograms. He also has a "daughter" called Supercharity that can also multiply the power of the other methods.  And there are other superheroes.

Unfortunately, there's a slight problem with Mighty Plan. It takes about 200 pages to explain. That's because I must back up the ideas with down-to-earth methods and resources. (No one will ever be able to say that Mighty Plan is just nice ideas.)  Anyway, the problem is that 90-95% of people--probably including you--have a gut-level belief that a hundredfold reduction in human suffering is next to impossible. It's a pipedream. So you are probably reading this, expecting some big flaw in Mighty Plan. Or, you may be so busy that you are saying to yourself, "Unless this writer comes up with something powerful and dramatic, I'm going to move on."  

So in the next section, you will get a dramatic introduction to Mighty Plan's power. I will introduce you to two of the superheroes: Doubt-Crusher and 500B. Doubt-Crusher will crush two of the greatest doubts that people have about the possibility of a peaceful stable world.  One doubt is this: "There have always been wars and great suffering, so since human nature doesn't change, there always will be wars and great suffering."  It's a compelling and reasonable doubt, but if you believe it, Doubt-Crusher will change your mind in about one page. Then Doubt-Crusher will take on another doubt that many people hold: They say or think, "If Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and those like them couldn't stabilize the world, how could anyone?--In this case, how could the creator of Mighty Plan do it?!"  

It makes sense, but in the next section, Doubt-Crusher will cut that doubt down to size, again in just one page.

It takes about three pages to fully understand 500B. But it's worth it, because in the last century or two there have only been a handful of inventions that have generated industries worth $500 billion or more. Inventions such as the telephone, the automobile, the airplane and the computer. 

Our belief is that after this introduction, you'll have to admit that Mighty Plan has a chance of having the firepower that I claim. A slim chance, but a chance you can't ignore, considering the state of the world. 

Not all of Mighty Plan is as dramatic as the start. But some parts are. For instance, Doubt-Crusher must crush 35 doubts and 8 false hopes before the plan is fully believable. (That's why most people have such a huge amount of pessimism about the world's future.)

So the organizational scheme for this website is to begin with a dramatic sample of Mighty Plan, then give you an orientation called "The Master Formula for Achieving Any Huge Goal," then proceed step-by-step to build Mighty Plan, complete with methods, incentives for participation, and comparisons with other (lesser) approaches to improving the world.  

 

Now it's time to watch Doubt-Crusher and 500B go to work!   Here.