Can you change the world Video 1cf5df33

Can you change the world?

Is it possible to change the world?

Can you make it a better place?

Is this an overly utopian idea?

This is a trailer for the film Pay It Forward, starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment. In the motion picture, social studies teacher Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey) gives his class an assignment: look at the world around you and fix what you don’t like. Mr. Simonet’s student, Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) comes up with a concept for changing the world: “Pay It Forward.” But can you fix people?

You can see more about the film here.

Before it was a hit movie, Pay it Forward was a novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde. Challenged by a teacher to "think of an idea for world change and put it into action," 12-year-old Trevor McKinney decides to do a good deed for three people. Instead of paying him back, Trevor asks them to "pay it forward." The idea catches on and his initial acts of kindness have global consequences. It's a hopeful book for our cynical times.

The concept isn't new, as science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, used the phrase in Between Planets, a book published in 1951, almost fifty years before C. Ryan Hyde's novel. Heinlein both preached and practiced this philosophy, and now the Heinlein Society, a humanitarian organization founded in his name, does so.

Making a Difference

The premise is fairly simple: you do a big favor for three people. When they ask how to repay you, you tell them to pay it forward to three more people. Each person is then impelled to pay it forward to three more. Nine becomes 27, which becomes 81, which becomes 243. Do the math: in 14 levels we reach a group about the size of the population of Australia.

So, is "Pay It Forward" realistic? And what if your idea doesn't work?

Want to know more? Maybe these links will help:

• Pay It Forward Foundation

• Pay It Forward Movement

• Heinlein Society

• Catherine Ryan Hyde

Pay It Forward bumper stickers are available to readers on request. There is no charge. The author asks only that you put them to use where they will be seen.

Picked as a Buzznet Featured Video on 10/26/2007.

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Comments (5)

	heartsapocolypse: 10/25/2007 7:28 PM This has provoked deep, serious thoughts. Kept me awake at night thinking about this whole concept. So glad you shared this with us... and I will be trying to Pay it Forward... s/b
	jenda: 10/28/2007 2:32 PM "Is this an overly utopian idea?" -I'm afraid so. Just like the idea of peace and anarchy. The theory is excellent, but theres always someone, who doesn't stick to it. Love the movie, though.
	Virtual Tourist: 10/31/2007 1:17 PM That is one of my all time favorite movies. I have experienced the theory, it works and works well. Awesome post.
	mahayani: 11/04/2007 2:12 AM This is one of my fave movie actually.... And for me it's totally realistic. Remember, history's changed by just 1 man, like Gandhi & Martin Luther King
	bluesbro: 11/28/2007 10:56 PM I love that movie and I do my best to live to some degree by it. Next to my monitor is a jar that I have been filling with coins during the year to spend on a family that needs a hand. I was going to buy them something special with it and then I thought, rather than buy them something like food or something they don't really need, I'll buy paint and we'll organise a working bee to paint their deck which looks like i was last painted 100 years ago. Then more people can help me pay it forward.