I thought it was interesting that there was a common piece of thought which was shared between Dr. Melissa Inouye and Dr. Joseph Bulbulia’s respective lectures – that change starts at a personal level.
Both lectures were seemingly quite different. Melissa’s talk was about Chinese philosopher Confucius’s age-old work called the ‘Great Learning’, whereas Joseph talked about changing attitudes towards Muslims in New Zealand. Within both lectures, they talked about how change starts at the individual. Confucius’s ‘Great Learning’ followed eight steps to achieve world peace. The first five were dedicated to firstly improving the individual before world peace could be reached. Similarly, Joseph argued that individuals must make changes/improve themselves to see true progress in attitudes towards minority groups.
For me, this finding was conflicting – it is inspiring to know I as a person can make a change by developing my own self, but I also feel a sense of helplessness as I cannot make everyone else revaluate their attitudes too. We can only hold ourselves accountable. Therefore, by this standpoint, if everyone is not attempting to improve themselves, world peace cannot be found. How do we then deal with this? I believe the advocation of diversity and acceptance can help create more tolerance in people. It is easy to feel like we cannot make an impactful change because we are only one individual amongst millions. However, as long as we continue to do everything we can by keeping ourselves in check and promoting others to do the same, we should feel fulfilled we are contributing to a more peaceful society.
