What Is Love? – Street Interviews On Valentine’s Day 2013
What The Kids Are Saying: We R All One
Currently on our planet most people imagine themselves to be separate from each other, living in separate families or clans, gathered in separate neighborhoods or states, collected in separate nations or countries, further separate by race, skin color, religion, gender, political party, social class, and the list goes on. This could be called the state of the disunion because we believe that we are separate.”
As a result, we have been missing the mark in our attempts to create a world of peace, harmony, and happiness. The truth is, we are all one… we are seeing that this idea of separation is an illusion. Our belief in disunity is the cause of all dysfunction on our planet. Nothing that exists in the universe is separate from anything else.”
What we are saying is that the wisdom of oneness is not just a touchy feely, feel good, new age catchphrase anymore… it is a precise description of the nature of ultimate reality… we are deeply connected to all of life.”
We are on a magnificent journey from me to we.”
Image: “we are all one” by Jesslee Cuizon on Flickr.
The Continuing Story of The Integral Kids—1. Bobby
[This is the first story in a series of stories titled, The Continuing Story of the Integral Kids. The Integral Kids don’t know for certain if you’ll like them or not (the stories, not the Integral Kids—who wouldn’t like them?) but think that if you don’t like them you’ll definitely have a greater appreciation for why you don’t after you’ve read them, as well as for all those other things you don’t much care for, do care for, and life in general with all of its grand mysteries and wonders.]
Integral: Necessary to make complete; essential or fundamental.
Kid(s): A child or young person.
You couldn’t make out distinct noises. Everything that gave off sound, even those things you wished you could isolate, that is—you would have wished you could isolate them if you knew those sounds were there—cause if you’d been aware of their presence your ears would have sent certain signals to your brain letting it know that those were the kinds of sounds that made life, life—all jumbled together to become one big whirling, twirling kaleidoscope.
To give you more of an indication of it, it was the kind of situation that if you were to shout in a fella’s ear real close up, and that fella didn’t see you do it, then he’d probably not even notice; meaning, you could get away with a whole lot of stuff if you happened to be a particular type of person who liked getting away with particular type stuff when the situation allowed for it—or as those particular type people would say with a wink—called for it.
This one kid though, Bobby, was a different kind of person altogether.
Well, he was six year old. That’s one. I’m not exactly sure when a kid starts being a person; but if I had to wager, I’d lay odds that he already was one. Anyway, he didn’t want to get away with anything. He wanted to grow up though. I suppose that’s something most kids think about. Although the funny thing is, they maybe don’t think about it as much as their genes, parents, and social environments do for them. Mostly they just think about having fun and not getting lost or trampled in the sea of legs.
The train station was packed because his mom, Bobby’s that is, was on her way home after having spent time in the sanitarium. It was a pretty common affair. In fact, everybody at the train station was waiting for their dads, moms, grandparents, and you name it really, to return home from the sanitarium. It was the kind of thing the State decided was pretty good for you to do every three to six months, depending on the types of thoughts you reported in your thought journal. Kids didn’t get the privilege of filling out thought journals. You had to be thirteen for that.
Bobby thought the sea of legs looked a bit ornery today so he gave a couple good tugs on the pair of pants being occupied by his dad’s legs. It was code for, “Pick me up.” Sitting on his Dad’s shoulders he was one of the biggest there. In fact, it was just him and the other kids sitting on shoulders who were the big ones now. They didn’t like to be up there. It wasn’t because they were scared of heights or anything, but because they were leaving their posts. It was because each kid considered himself an explorer in the sea of legs, or the garden of dress pants, or the land of belt buckles, or, well you get the idea—each kid’s got a different take on what it is. And so just go try telling him that it’s really the sea of legs [garden of dress pants] [land of belt buckles]!
They all nodded and gave each other sympathetic looks which seemed to say, “I know, but what could we do? The sea [garden] [land] was ornery.”
Bobby shrugged it off and got caught up in something else. It was the boarding area. He saw a bunch of people running to catch the train that was slowly leaving the station. There was one certain lady wearing a big floppy hat with a tulip shooting through it that really caught his attention. She was running full bore, all her body parts jiggling with each step she took, hoofing like mad to make the train, and yet everyone was passing her by; because she was what some nice people call a full figure lady and some other not so nice people call a fat lady.
Bobby didn’t know it yet, and even if he were a real person, and not just some six year old kid your narrator thought might be a person, he probably still wouldn’t have known, that what was about to go through his head would come to change his life forever.
One by one the late boarders shot past the lady not paying her any mind. She was slowing down now, gasping for air. She touched one of them before it was over, some real lanky fella who looked like he didn’t mind much showing up late to catch a train. Their eyes met. She looked at him desperately, like he could do it, he could save her. He could take her with his slender hand and they would make the train together! He brushed her aside.
Finally she raised her arms to signal, “Wait for me!” but the train’s wheels only moved faster now, and soon it was completely gone. She was the only one who hadn’t made the train before it completely left the station. But Bobby saw something different. He didn’t see that last bit, well he did, but only later, how the runner looking guy left her behind. What he saw was how the tulip hatted lady looked at the fella and how the fella looked at her with twinkles in his eyes, and then how the fella yelled out with a surprisingly deep voice for being so lanky, “Come on everybody!”
Then some big lumberjack with a red flannel shirt peeked his head out of the still relatively slowly moving train, and pointed down the tracks and off to the side where the lady and the runner looking fella were. Then suddenly a bunch of people shot off the train and ran down to where the lady and runner fella were. Well no, one ran down to where the lady and runner fella were, but the rest spread out along the distance that led from the lady and the runner fella all the way back to the train.
The lumber jack then nodded, still on the train, and grabbed the hand of the closest person not on the train, then that person grabbed the hand of the next closest person further from the train, and on and on until eventually that runner looking fella grabbed some guy’s hand, and with his other hand, grabbed the hand of the tulip hatted lady and smiled. Then they all walked and pulled together so that everyone, even the tulip hatted lady, got on the train in the nick of time, just before the train had sped up too much for anyone to catch it.
When they got back home Bobby’s mom told his dad and him that it was really nice that she’d had to go away again, and that they think they might have fixed the problem this time. She didn’t shake nearly as bad as she did the last time either Bobby thought, although her memory seemed to be a little funny. She went on quite a bit about how it was good to be small, and that ants have it the best, cause they don’t know too much, and they’re better off for it.
Later that night she came in Bobby’s room to tuck him in. He noticed now that the treatment took off a different patch of her hair from the last time. She was twitching a little bit too he noticed. She wanted to make sure that he remembered what she’d told him earlier, that it was good to be an ant. Bobby remembered what he’d thought about the tulip hatted lady and lanky fella and agreed.
“If we were all like ants then we’d all help each other,” he said. “Cause no one’s higher in an ant village Mom. They all pull together, huh?”
But she didn’t answer like he thought she would. Actually, she didn’t answer at all. She just got up real slow from the side of his bed with a real blank stare. He couldn’t tell for certain, but it seemed like she was trying to hide something. It seemed like she might be really scared.
“Mom—What’s wrong?”
“Go to bed now,” she said.
“ Aren’t you going to tell me about the kinds of thoughts I should have?”
She shuffled towards the door and flipped the light switch off.
“Not tonight.”
She turned the light off and Bobby couldn’t help but feel that something was wrong, something was very wrong—and he was right. In the morning it would all change. The State would come. Life would now be different forever. And somewhere amidst it all, the integral kids would come calling his name.
Image: “Dusk at Farringdon – November 2010 – Lucky Shot” by mwmbwls on Flickr.
Israel & Iran: A Love Story? [TED Talk]
They want to respond. They want to say the same thing. So… now it’s communication. It’s a two-way story. It’s Israelis and Iranians sending the same message, one to each other.”
– Ronny Edry, Israeli graphic designer
Given the contentious nature of relations that exist between Israel and Iran, it is a wonder that one man, Ronny Edry, could start a whole new dialogue between the peoples, simply by creating one poster on Facebook. That poster [the image above] said:
Iranians, we will never bomb your country, We [heart] You.”
The following quotes are from Edry’s TED talk. In it he details how that poster led to many more posters, conversations, and the revelation of love between Israelis, Iranians, and many others:
On March 14, this year, I posted this poster on Facebook. This is an image of me and my daughter holding the Israeli flag. I will try to explain to you about the context of why and when I posted. A few days ago, I was sitting waiting on the line at the grocery store, and the owner and one of the clients were talking to each other, and the owner was explaining to the client that we’re going to get 10,000 missiles on Israel. And the client was saying, no, it’s 10,000 a day.
(“10,000 missiles”) This is the context. This is where we are now in Israel. We have this war with Iran coming for 10 years now, and we have people, you know, afraid. It’s like every year it’s the last minute that we can do something about the war with Iran. It’s like, if we don’t act now, it’s too late forever, for 10 years now.”
So I come to the computer and I start looking on (after posting his initial poster to Facebook), and suddenly I see many people talking to me, most of them I don’t know, and a few of them from Iran, which is — What? Because you have to understand, in Israel we don’t talk with people from Iran. We don’t know people from Iran. It’s like, on Facebook, you have friends only from — it’s like your neighbors are your friends on Facebook. And now people from Iran are talking to me.
So I start answering this girl, and she’s telling me she saw the poster and she asked her family to come, because they don’t have a computer, she asked her family to come to see the poster, and they’re all sitting in the living room crying. So I’m like, whoa. I ask my wife to come, and I tell her, you have to see that. People are crying, and she came, she read the text, and she started to cry. And everybody’s crying now.
So I don’t know what to do, so my first reflex, as a graphic designer, is, you know, to show everybody what I’d just seen, and people started to see them and to share them, and that’s how it started.”
So I went to my neighbors and friends and students and I just asked them, give me a picture, I will make you a poster. And that’s how it started. And that’s how, really, it’s unleashed, because suddenly people from Facebook, friends and others, just understand that they can be part of it. It’s not just one dude making one poster, it’s — we can be part of it, so they start sending me pictures and ask me, ‘Make me a poster. Post it. Tell the Iranians we from Israel love you too.’ It became, you know, at some point it was really, really intense. I mean, so many pictures, so I asked friends to come, graphic designers most of them, to make posters with me, because I didn’t have the time. It was a huge amount of pictures. So for a few days, that’s how my living room was.”
The day after, Iranians started to respond with their own posters. They have graphic designers. What? (Laughter) Crazy, crazy. So you can see they are still shy, they don’t want to show their faces, but they want to spread the message. They want to respond. They want to say the same thing. So. And now it’s communication. It’s a two-way story. It’s Israelis and Iranians sending the same message, one to each other.”
The Connection Revolution
The internet let’s connection multiply.”
The above and below quotes are by author Seth Godin, taken from the video, The Icarus deception, featured below.
Industrialization is fading as an engine for economic growth. We went from a trained crafting, making two or three or four things a day, to a team of people making two hundred or two thousand or twenty thousand items a day.”
Now you often here about a factory going away and ten thousand people losing their jobs. They’re being replaced by computers and robots. So the industrial revolution is being consumed by technology. The alternative, what the internet has created, is the connection revolution.”
The fact that you can put your work into the world and have it seen by a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand people is magical. All of these platforms are there, they don’t take a lot of technology. What they take is the guts to go into the world, say what you have to say, and own it.”
Image: “20110224-NodeXL-Twitter-internet archive profile photos” by Marc Smith on Flickr.
Side By Side – In Memory Of The Newtown Victims
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFKExXi-qBA
As a response to the Newtown shooting, As One Song put together this song & music video within a few days after the shooting as a collaborative effort by people from different parts of the world affected by the Connecticut shooting. In the words of As One Song:
The global network of As One Song was shocked by the recent tragedy of the Newtown shooting. It opened our eyes to just how much violence there is around us, and how persistent are the effects of this violence on our children’s minds. We feel strongly that only by changing our environment—what we see on TV, what we hear on the radio, what we consume online, what surrounds our daily route from home to school—can we hope to raise a generation that rejects violence. No laws could ever substitute a fully inclusive loving attitude to all parts of our society – the loners, the outcasts, everyone. If we can show our kids more of that, if we could all participate in this, if we see this as the most important action we can take today, then we can promise our children a better year next year, a better life.”
Remembering Henry Addleton’s New Year’s Resolution
Usually, he’d think it: “You’re your own man. You make your own destiny.” Occasionally, he’d speak it, sometimes with the addition of a final exclamation mark, or in particularly dire times, a question mark. It was his mantra, his constant psychological companion. “And why shouldn’t it be?” he’d think. “After all, it’s the kind of adage grandfathers bestow to toddlers on their knees. It’s the spiritual pronouncement of self-made men!”
But for Henry Addleton, it had yet to bring him fortune or fame. Had he done something wrong? Was there perhaps some set of instructions that certain individuals possessed, and he did not? And if so, why them and not him? Why was it always that Henry, delightful Henry, time and again suffered the cruel hand of fate? How could it be that such a lovably affable, miniature, stooped, stout, near sighted, hard of hearing, bow legged, missing the index finger on his left hand, inexplicably somehow never stricken with polio, bald man could not be asked to the table, to partake in the feast of victory, if but only for an aperitif?
And to make matters worse cherished letter writers, the good years, if they were ever really good, had now long since faded into the should-have and could-have-been’s of yesteryear. So in the quiet of his one room apartment on the outskirts of Cleveland, on one particularly rain soaked New Year’s Eve, Henry made a resolution. He wrote it in big black bold letters, so he wouldn’t forget it. He wrote it with a permanent marker, so it would always remain.
He wrote it on every door, every window, and every wall. He wrote it on his dog. It was a proclamation and reminder, that on that night, that fateful New Year’s Eve, one minute from midnight, sixty seconds from Auld Lang Syne, sixty thousand milliseconds from never getting his security deposit back, and sixty million microseconds from the irreversible consummation of Two Thousand and Thirteen, Henry Addleton and the world would never be the same again.
He reinvented it. He took what used to be called, “the only game in town,” and twisted it into a novelty. Well, he helped. He contributed his part to take ruthless-at-any-cost-competition, the predominance of statuesque looks, born into money privilege, it’s about who you know license, male centered misogyny, the taller the better heightism, xenophobia, etc. — and spun it all so hard, so fast, and for so very long—the whole alignment of the game, its way of functioning, shifted irreparably. And in that one minute [Editors Note: It was actually a series of moments, over many, many years.], when all was askew, a strange thing happened. After all the trembling, turning, and twisting had ended, something remarkable and completely inexplicable took place.
For the first time since Henry Addleton had been born into the Virgo Cluster fifty-two years ago, in one of its fifteen hundred galaxies known as the Milky Way, on that third distinguished planet from the Sun, on the continent of North America, in the country of the United States, in the Midwestern state of Ohio, many agreed with him. And if this letter writer was a philosopher and betting man, given to long-term interstellar bets, he’d stake that alien life forms baring no likely countenance to our familiar, also gathered together, lights years perchance apart, conveying their own exacting forms of expression, fins, antimatter, and what not, in raising praise for Mr. Addleton’s accomplishment.
But fellow letter writers, this is the real reason I write you today: We have forgotten. We have overlooked that this New Year’s Eve, Two Thousand and Fifty Two, rapidly approaching Two Thousand and Fifty Three, marks the fortieth anniversary of the “Colossal Shift.” And yes, we know well the modern comforts that we have been luxuriously afforded today as a consequence, the pleasant life that living with respect for our integrality has brought us. But although we have pledged to forever move forward, to persistently progress from strength to strength, to relentlessly forge a stronger and more just world, we should also remember, nay not forget, those brave ones who paved the way for this lofty future of which we are now a part.
For in every era, throughout our collective history, there have always been those brave men and women the likes of Henry Addleton. There have at all times been those who would not go silently into anonymity, those thinkers, feelers, those lovers of justice for all, and hatred for none. They are the ones in every generation, the perennial torchbearers, those that we must hold and cherish as a species, as residents of this planet, this galaxy, and this universe.
So on this New Year’s Eve, Two Thousand and Fifty Two, remember the likes of Henry Addleton, men and women who stood up with such a sound that others joined them. Remember their cries against inequality, for love to reign over tyranny, for justice to prevail, for empathy, and for selfishness to end at last. Remember their pledge to live and lead by example, a life of mutual responsibility letter writers, and be forever thankful for their sacrifice.
Author: David Prosser
Image: “Looking at the Ball in Times Squar” by joewcampbell on Flickr.
The Deeper Message Behind A Dr. Seuss Childhood Classic
http://youtu.be/_eulSbXIjzk
Christmas Day is in our grasp, as long as we have hands to clasp!
Christmas Day will always be, just as long, as we have we!
Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart, and hand in hand!”
–Dr. Seuss
Whoever grew up in North America in the mid 60’s/70’s surely remembers our favorite famous Grinch friend from the story land of Dr.Seuss. That favorite childhood classic carries even a deeper message than what we could possibly imagine and can easily be applied as a source of medication for endless social crisis issues we are experiencing today.
As in this clip suggests, that even after the Grinch managed to take away all the Whoviller’s worldy material possessions, decorations, feastly foods etc., he still was unable to destroy their festive atmosphere because they had one another. Because the Whoville residents were connected to each other through their hearts. That meant that even all of a sudden though it appeared that they had lost everything and perhaps this should have disturbed their atmosphere and caused stress and insecurities, it actually produced an even stronger connection because they had each other for support and that is something that can never be replaced or fulfilled by excessive material possessions.
The Grinch, who was an extremely unhappy lonely person because he passed a very hard life and although he appeared so extremely nasty and ugly on the surface, and did not have the tools to connect properly to others such as the Whoville residents, had to steal their possessions and try to destroy their festivities in order to feel he was of worth, because this was also motivated by emotions and so he tried to express himself the only way he knew how.
And when all of a sudden that “Butterfly Effect” atmosphere radiating out from the village with all those Whoers holding hands and singing just triggered a reaction inside of him in such a radiating positive light that it started to melt the stony walls around his heart and caused him to connect together with the circle of Whovillers.
There are deep messages in the story of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and this is something we can apply all year long and not just at Christmas time.
We too can expand our “Whoville” circles of sharing and caring outside of our family and close friends. With so much pain and separation washing over our global home, we too can “Butterfly Effect” the Whoviller’s actions and make an effort together to mutually build a safer caring and sharing “Who World”!
Who Is Responsible?
Sickening. Sickening, heart twisting news! But what is more sickening is that every channel keeps sucking ratings out of it, all the while playing commercials in between. What a culture, what an attitude, what a nation… Nobody is calling the news channel to demand recalling the ads to let the tragedy sink in, pay respect to the victims, and maybe even spend time pondering the causes of the horrendous act we just witnessed together…
The event seems grossly surreal: two weeks before Christmas, in a prosperous Connecticut town, an upscale, quiet residential neighborhood, on a street carrying a yogi’s name, the first crime unfolds, followed by even a greater one that takes lives of 28 people, 20 of whom are children attending an elementary school. A 20-year old man, after murdering his mother with the guns she kept to do sports, drives to the school where she used to work and opens fire on innocent young students, teachers and the principal, ending the massacre with a predictable act of suicide. Reporters say neighbors were “visibly upset” for they never expected such crimes happen in their town. They knew the gunman, as a “quiet kid,” who turns out to have suffered from a personality disorder. His mother though had a reputation of a “good-hearted person who was always doing something for some cause.”Authorities claim that “Americans are sick and tired of these attacks. Once again we are reminded that there is no safe harbor for our children.” (President Obama) and “Evil visited this community today.” (Gov. D. Malloy) Meanwhile, the media carry the message that schools are safe – a notion backed up by the data, they say, adding that “if the public’s confidence in schools’ safety erodes and is distorted, it can have broad, negative consequences for schools and society.”
It seems everybody is looking for rapid and comprehensive measures to prevent this kind of violence in the future. Some say there is a law about to be passed to forcefully confiscate privately owned weapons from the citizens. Others – that district leaders are advised to review their school safety plans and emergency procedures, with the goal to “remind parents and students that the school is a place to be connected, and that schools have their best interests at heart.” (R. Sprick, director of Safe and Civil Schools)
This incident is among the worst school shootings in U.S. history. Collectively, the deaths make the killings the deadliest K-12 school shooting in American history. While surfing the Net reading about and watching accounts of the tragic event, trying to find what people are saying about what really caused it, I have felt almost physical disdain for how practically every site on the web and every TV channel reports on the catastrophe between the lines of redundant merry commercials. Another one was that the nation seems to be mainly preoccupied with the confiscation of their guns. And finally, the shooter is not on the victim list. But the most crucial answer I wanted to find was to the question: Who is going to take responsibility now that the killer is dead? Not everyone will agree, but the answer is… we are. We, as society, are responsible for this entire tragedy and for all who have perished in it, including the gunman and his mother. Why? – Because:
- We are all products of the environment that formed us, with all our wants, attitudes, behavior patterns, ailments, and choices. And there is plenty of scientific evidence to that today. Killers are not born; they are made, cultivated, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not. And it’s not just the parents who form their kids; it is everybody who has ever appeared on their path. We can be molded into selfish psychopaths by our family, school, and society and have a broken psyche, mentality and spirit just as we can be shaped into altruists who live to care and give.
- We are the environment for others and hence influence their wants, attitudes, behavior, ailments, and choices. Depending how we choose to raise our children – either as individuals who have to “fight” with invisible rivals for future success, recognition, and happiness or as team players who will be gaining strength from helping each other do the same – we will receive adults who will either live in continuous agony of draining competition or joyous, fulfilling self-realization.
- We are living in a completely interconnected world, and everything that happens to one, immediately reflects on all others and vice versa. We are members of our society and are intrinsically involved in each other’s life. If somewhere life is stable and good and somewhere else it is hard and insecure, the inescapable law of balance will force us to seek how to ensure everybody’s happiness.
- There is education which delivers knowledge, but there isn’t one teaching how to be a wholesome, harmonious human being, able to connect and relate to others for mutual benefit. Today, education is aimed toward professional development whereas it should be nurturing the gift every child is carrying within, designated to give to society and the world. Education is supposed to train not only the intellect but the whole mind, building in it an awareness of interconnection between us. Moreover, we also need to educate the heart: teach it to love others and learn to get along – with parents, teachers, and the society.
- Our values have long since been switched from helping others, cooperation, and mutual caring to competing, winning, and taking advantage of one another for a personal benefit. We are living on the premise of “I”, “me”, and “mine”. The example of that is the whole industry serving “I” – ipod, iphone, ipad, etc. But this eventually destroys the connection between us and turns us against each other. Envy, greed, the need to be first and best gradually ruin a person’s integrity and tear him away from society.
- There is too little attention, compassion, and love in our society. We work to give our children “everything they need” but while doing so, we start forgetting what “need” is and switch to giving them everything they “want”, which deprives them of sense of self-worth, dignity, and desire to grow consciously.
Hence, school shootings cannot be prevented by gun control, placing security guards or, worse yet, hiring armed police to patrol the facilities where our children go to learn. We need to gather a national forum to sit down together and start to address the issue from the point of view of caring, mature, and wise caretakers, guides, parents and mentors. We must start viewing all our children and young adults as our collective, national responsibility if you will. Only then will we be able to create a safe, peaceful, and harmonious environment where violence, hate, and emotional pain will cease to exist.
If we agree to do it together, Obama’s and Malloy’s initiatives – “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this.” (Obama) and “each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that… we’re all in this together. We’ll do whatever we can to overcome this event.” (Malloy) – can bear fruit.
by Irene Rudnev
The Sandy Hook Elementary School Tragedy – Teaches Us That Yet To Be Developed New Education Is Needed Now
As the story of the tragic Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school shooting unfolds, many people are pondering: Why has there been so much violence in the U.S. lately, and what can be done to stop it?
This year saw a mass shooting of movie theater patrons in Aurora, Colorado; the sentencing of Jared Lee Loughner on 19 counts, including murder and the attempted assassination of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords; and the first overall rise in U.S. violent crime in nearly two decades.”
–CNN
Here’s What Happened
The Huffington Post reports,
A man opened fire Friday inside two classrooms at the Connecticut elementary school where his mother was a teacher, killing 26 people, including 20 children…The 20-year-old killer, carrying two handguns, committed suicide at the school, and another person was found dead at a second scene, bringing the toll to 28…The gunman was believed to suffer from a personality disorder…
The rampage, coming less than two weeks before Christmas, was the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead in 2007.”
What Can Be Done?
Why is it that violent crime is increasing in the U.S. and how do we stop it? The fairly recent research being conducted in the field of social network science gives a clue as to the “why,” and also to the “how” to prevent future violent crime. As Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, coauthors of the book, Connected: How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, And Do, write:
If we are affected by our embeddedness in social networks and influenced by others who are closely or distantly tied to us, we necessarily lose some power over our own decisions. Such a loss of control can provoke especially strong reactions when people discover that their neighbors or even strangers can influence behaviors and outcomes that have moral overtones and social repercussions.”
However, it could be argued that in the case of Adam Lanza, the 20 year old shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, that normal rules do not apply. Also, if we look at the various mass shootings that have occurred in recent years, these individuals have also not been treated as normal. In the case of mental instabilities, as has been reported again with Lanza, this is accurate.
But that being said, to discount the influence of the social environment upon a person, to simply say that nature is to blame, and disregard the aspect of nurture, is not only naïve, but also counterproductive to both understanding behavior and treating it.
In the case of social network science this is taken into consideration, as Christakis and Fowler report,
People are constrained by geography, socioeconomic status, technology, and even genes to have certain kinds of social relationships and to have a certain number of them…”
So although genes are a factor, not looking to social influence, at how we are connected, as a factor which can be changed (unlike genes), is misleading and counterproductive to society preventing violent crimes from occurring in the future.
The Need For New Education
So if society is completely interconnected as the study of social networks documents, but mostly lacks knowledge about this, then new education is needed in order for society to begin to acknowledge its interdependence. Our current education and social influence does not yet realize this, as values of competitive materialism still prevail, values that inherently detach people from each other and allow for all kinds of defects to ripen. As a result, society should see the necessity to care for others in society, that mutual responsibility between everyone is needed.
This is also the case in relation to mental instability, and in regards to the psychological development and wellbeing of individuals in society. To understand why this is so the following question should be asked:
With the form of education that exists within the U.S. now (and it is the same form throughout most of the world), is an individual being taught about what people principally deal with on a daily basis, i.e. human relationships and how to get along with others, about how to develop oneself so as to best benefit oneself and others in society?
Sadly, without this new educational direction, which takes priority not on excelling individually at the expense of others (like our education does today) but literally on how to develop a happy individual in a happy society, it appears as though the words of analytical psychology founder, Carl Jung, still hold true today:
Man cannot stand a meaningless life… We need more understanding of human nature because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. He should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil.”
Image: “Hands” by barnabywasson on Flickr.