How Thinking Can Change the World

"Thought is not reality, but it is through thought that our realities are created."

-Sydney Banks 

The philosopher should be king, as Plato the philosopher argued, because the philosopher would be the only one who can understand the perfect form of "the good," the ideal goodness in its perfect state. This truth, in Plato's thinking, would possibly lead to the ideal society. 

In fact, most of human reality has been shaped by thought and thinking. Our governments and societies have been shaped by ideas about how to arrange our hierarchies and what policies we make with our laws. These ideas all came from the minds of people at some point, just like all ideas do. Even our empiricism and processes of inquiry that form the basis of our sciences were engineered by the thinking of philosophers. The scientific method itself was developed and pioneered by Gallileo.

Thinking, and thought, is the foundation of all our fields of knowledge to some extent.  

If you change your thinking, you can change your methods, and if you can change your methods, you can change your outcomes. That is how thought can change our world, and it already has and continues to do so. 

All of the major political and philosophical ideologies and belief systems have been developed, honed, and structured by the thinking of a few exceptional individuals, and many of these systems of ideas have completely revolutionized how we operate as a species or nation. Marxism, liberalism, conservatism, you name an ideology or belief system it was developed by thinkers and implemented by the followers of these ideas.

Our founding fathers structured our government and social hierarchies through their ideas and ingenuity, which shows you that societies are fundamentally shaped by thinkers.

How we think determines how we treat people, who we include and who we don't, and who our friends and enemies are probably more than anything else.

If you change your thinking, sometimes you can discover new ideas and new solutions that can greatly impact your life or even world for the better (or worse).

Yes, just like ideas and thoughts can be beneficial, some can also be quite detrimental, but regardless, it is still thought that shapes our world and our societies, and it is thought that leads to innovation and the development of new strategies and technologies.

Just thinking about things a little differently can blow open possibilities and access to new ideas and strategies that can more effectively solve problems. Even ideas about ideas can change how you look at things. I'm a pretty staunch Platonist. I actually think ideas exist independently of humans, and that they aren't bound by decay and entropy like physical things are. They are timeless and eternal. Not only that, I honestly believe there are countless ideas in existence, and we've only tapped into a small fraction of them. 

 If this is true, than solving highly difficult problems, discovering new aspects of reality and new innovations and strategies is only as limited as your imagination is. Ideas can solve all of our problems if there is no limit on their quantity or quality, but they can also cause a massive chunk of our problems too. 

Ideas come from thinking, so thought is still the source of these possible solutions, and if you can change your thinking, you can change your life, and sometimes, if your lucky, your ideas can possibly change the world.