I'll ignore most of your ramblings and concur with beginning with yourself.
Everything does begin with self control.
With greater control of the self, allows one to more successfully develop one's abilities and master one's surroundings. We observe that a hunter is skilled at ambushing prey, and these abilities are a combination of his physical fitness, learned experience and other intuition. With these use of those abilities, he can kill prey animals and return with meat which he can give his community with.
With the meat, too, he can barter his commodity for other commodities that he may have have had(wood, for example) or skills that he might not possess(how to build a house); as such, his commodity allows him to purchase skills and services, or more specifically, his personal abilities allow him to have greater influence over others.
In simplified and modern terms, our hero 'monetized' his skills and created items of value by which he can further influence others. With wise use this influence, he can create more influence and essentially, yes, more control over his surroundings and other people.
So yes, influence the world by starting with yourself. The rest of LC's ramblings are silly(The sun is not scheduled to become a brown dwarf for at least two billion more years; China is not interested in world hegemony when they have economic hegemony already; and the carrying capacity of Earth is approx. 10 billion humans) and essentially the sayings of someone who is resigned to powerlessness and indeed, is claiming that we are all powerless - hardly true.
And 'love' is not the basis of society; three factors are the common cause of human civilization, and have been supported by anthropology extensively - war, specialization, and the existence of trade.