Is positive change in the material world possible?

I think that is very true, and it is how I view promoting positive change. I feel like given what we know about the world, even if there is no hope in ultimately changing it for the better, that making moral choices is still the best way to live.

I'm just hopeful that someday there will be a tipping point, and enough people will fix themselves to start healing the rest of the world.

There was a very "gnostic"-ish quote I heard from a series I started watching recently.

"In the end, it's just a game do what you want. If you want to kill someone, kill them. If you want to steal, you steal. I've met more people who think that way then I'd want. In a way, it's true. I used to think the same way. But it's not true... There are things you have to protect especially because its a virtual world. I learned that from someone important. If you give into your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and the character are one and the same..." - Kirito, Sword Art Online

It's no illusion if you are living it; that's our grand hope.

Right now I'm working on improving my life by using less or no time to certain things such as buying books (using no time whatsoever for that now, not even discussing), not being jealous on my brothers because my parents have given them more valuable things, not sitting at the computer too long unless it's schoolwork, and working on being more gentle towards my best friend and less narrow-minded and talk less about really small things when talking to her and instead talk about what I see when we go for a walk.
She suggests that I should take courses such as cooking, do a little bit of travelling or something to broaden my views.
Unless I change she doesn't want to see me. We are not seeing each other right now. But I have own motivation to make these changes. I'm certain I will change in this direction.

    I think about this question a lot.  I'm working on my Bachelors degree in social work and I work at a homeless shelter for families with children.  This world can really suck.  The high value that's placed on power and money and the low value that's placed on other people even children is really frustrating.  Something that has always struck me about the gnostic world view is that it doesn't answer the problem of evil with empty platitudes but faces it head on.  With out a doubt the best argument against a good all powerful god is the fact that there is a logical problem with all three of the following existing simultaneously  1. God is all good 2. God is all powerful 3. Terrible things happen.  Logic dictates 2 can be true but not all three.  Like stated elsewhere, the free will argument is a good counter, in fact, if beings are given the power of free will this god would now not technically be all powerful (at least in the realm where free will exists) but could still be all good.  This also allows this god to be all powerful, thus deserving of the title of "God", since some power was freely given to others.  

    I feel like this is how Gnostic Christianity addresses this problem of evil and I have yet to find something that makes more sense or better reflects my experience in this life.  I don't think this True God just lets stuff run its course like the Diest's "clock-maker god".  I've often been inspired by the words " Evil prevails when the good fail to act".  I've seen this idea expressed in different words on this forum several times and it is certainly an idea that that is integral to the logical problem above.  Also I've seen expressed on this forum the idea that the beauty and good of this world is the light of the True God poking through into this realm controlled by darkness.  This is what Philip K Dick referred to as "The Divine Invasion" (in the book of the same name and also in VALIS).  This is how I've seen it for a long time as it is the only way for me to understand the Jesus story.  It never made a bit of sense to me for God to have to sacrifice his son to forgive his creation for making mistakes.  But for God to incarnate into a world ruled by chaos and controlled by ignorance in order to free lost children (who in fact both created and are imprisoned in this world).......well at the very least its a better story and also seems to ring true for me and inspires me to face the darkness in myself and in the world knowing that I am not alone in this struggle.  That even though there may seem to be far more darkness than light, all a light has to do is shine to defeat the darkness.  This is where the dualism of flesh and spirit is important.  The petty rulers of this world can rip our flesh to shreds, rape us physically and emotionally, and warp our minds with their counterfeit spirit but they can never touch that divine spark within (which is really what they're after).  To me that's one of the layers of what the crucifixion is about.  This is what I think the gnostics were expressing in the Apocalypse of Peter with the laughing Jesus on the cross and also what they were getting at in Hypostasis of the Archons with Eve's spirit becoming a tree while her body was raped by the archons........the tree which later offered the fruit of gnosis to wake up humanity from their Stockholm syndrome.

    It's hard to imagine a fix for this broken world that just keeps eating its own tail over and over and over.  Yet when I think of my own experience in life, years ago when I was still a hopeless suicidal drug addict/alcoholic the sum of my problems seemed like an never-ending Ouroboros.  Yet like fallen Sophia I took responsibility for my mistakes and sought help.....and help was there....the grace and love was there.....not the pointing finger of a wrathful jealous god but of a loving spiritual Father and Mother.  I also met my best friend and wife in the process of getting sober.  We've faced our demons (or as I like to call them archons) together and by the grace of the True God we've been clean and sober 5 years now and our 3 year old has never seen either of us all f----d up which is a miracle in itself.  So yes, positive change in the material world happens all the time...................but then again was it the physical world that changed or does Gnosis allow us to brake free from this world's swirling determinism?  As I sit pondering this for a bit my daughter comes in the room and in a deeper voice says "raaar I'm a monster!" and we all have a good laugh.....and then what really matters all makes sense!