We are a non-profit organization Humanity Integrated that is comprised of people who find themselves in the most interesting yet trying times of human evolution – the time of global crisis, which is the first stage of a profound change.
An Internet video seeking to draw attention to fugitive African rebel leader Joseph Kony now stands as the fastest-growing viral phenomenon in Web history, thanks to informal celebrity advocates and young viewers. … The five days Invisible Children’s video took to reach 80 million views is a full day less than it took the 2009 video of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” on the show “Britain’s Got Talent” to reach 70 million, according to Visible Measures.”
Some might disagree with this call to make Kony famous, but what we’ve witnessed this week is nevertheless momentous, a demonstration of this Internet’s potential abilities to instantly inform and engage tens of millions, and a willingness of those millions of people, to engage passionately with something more meaningful.
Combined, these are promising signs of the potential energy that lies dormant and primed, ready to rise when the moment arrives, what that moment will be, we shall see in time.”
Woman: There are a lot of things I haven’t told you about our world, but we don’t use money anymore in this culture, on this planet.
Man: You don’t use money?
Woman: No
Man: So you could have anything you want?
Woman: Well, yes, but we don’t want more than we need. It works pretty much the same way as your old libraries used to work, except that we can keep whatever we want or need as long as we need it. Don’t worry. You’re going to love the future. We’re one big family on this planet now!
The above script is taken from the video below, which acts as a short film that may or may not appear in the final version of the movie Waking Up.
Waking Up is a open source film about a positive future for humanity, for a change. The film is in the making by several people, and you can contribute to the writing of it on wakingupmovie.com. Visit the site for more info on this film.
We don’t want to be all the same, but we want to respect each other and understand each other.”
Sheikha Al Mayassa is chairperson of the Qatar Museums Authority. In this TED talk she focuses on her small Middle Eastern state of Qatar—and the new emphasis the nation is placing on redesigning their culture to resemble a global village.
We are changing our culture from within but at the same time we are reconnecting with our traditions… It’s important for us to grow organically. And we continuously make the conscious decision to reach that balance.”
Global & Local
And this is what the leaders of this region are trying to do. We’re trying to be part of this global village, but at the same time we’re revising ourselves through our cultural institutions and cultural development.”
Towards A Global Village
Now over and over again, people have said, ‘Let’s build bridges,’ and frankly, I want to do more than that. I would like to break the walls of ignorance between East and West… Culture’s a very important tool to bring people together. We should not underestimate it.
This is a very interesting journey. I welcome you on board for us to engage and discuss new ideas of how to bring people together through cultural initiatives and discussions. Familiarity destroys and trumps fear. Try it.”
We Are All Connected, a song made up of sampling scientists’ quotes on the interconnectedness of the person, humanity, nature and the universe, is part of the Symphony of Science musical project of John D Boswell, a project that aims to raise awareness of scientific and philosophical knowledge in musical form.
Watch ‘We Are All Connected’
Lyrics Of ‘We Are All Connected’
[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically
[Richard Feynman]
I think nature’s imagination
Is so much greater than man’s
She’s never going to let us relax
[Carl Sagan]
We live in an in-between universe
Where things change all right
But according to patterns, rules,
Or as we call them, laws of nature
[Bill Nye]
I’m this guy standing on a planet
Really I’m just a speck
Compared with a star, the planet is just another speck
To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
There’s billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks
[Carl Sagan]
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We’re made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself
Across the sea of space
The stars are other suns
We have traveled this way before
And there is much to be learned
I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we
[Neil deGrasse Tyson]
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??
(Richard Feynman on hand drums and chanting)
[Richard Feynman]
There’s this tremendous mess
Of waves all over in space
Which is the light bouncing around the room
And going from one thing to the other
And it’s all really there
But you gotta stop and think about it
About the complexity to really get the pleasure
And it’s all really there
The inconceivable nature of nature
The Neil deGrasse Tyson ‘We Are All Connected’ Quote In Full
Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”
Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson Pumping Out The ‘We Are All Connected’ Quote
My very radical suggestion is realism where we try to figure out what is actually happening in the world, and see what we can do about those parts of it that are threatening or hurtful.”
Barbara Ehrenreich, journalist, author and political activist
began to see a pattern and found it in more and more aspects of American life: this mandatory optimism and cheerfulness.”
Ignoring Problems Doesn’t Solve Them
One area where it is strongly concentrated now and has been for some time now is the corporate world.
The biggest evidence is the financial meltdown of 2007. People who tried to raise problems would be shut up or fired:
You couldn’t be inside Countrywide Mortgage Company and say ‘I’m worried about our sub-prime mortgage exposure’ or you’d be out.
People within Lehman Brothers who tried to point out that the housing prices could not last forever were fired. It was willful ignorance.”
To Solve Problems, They Need To Be Raised & Worked On
We are hard-wired to be vigilant…and on guard, that is how our ancestors survived, not by saying everything’s probably okay.
My very radical suggestion is realism where we try to figure out what is actually happening in the world, and see what we can do about those parts of it that are threatening or hurtful.”
What we’re finding is it’s not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.”
Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, founder of Good Think Inc. and frequently on-demand speaker for a variety of audiences, discusses problems with the workplace’s current formula for happiness and success, proposes a new formula based on his research and some techniques for its implementation.
The Current Formula For Happiness & Success Is Broken
If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. And if I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.”
What’s The Problem With This Formula?
First, every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better school, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we’re going to change your sales target. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. What we’ve done is we’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. And that’s because we think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier…”
“But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order.”
If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise.
In fact, what we’ve found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You’re 37 percent better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we’re able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.
What we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of. Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you’re positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.”
The Solution – Train Your Brain By Creating New Positivity-Inducing Habits
We’ve found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully.
We’ve done these things in research now in every single company that I’ve worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they’re grateful for, for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.”
By training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we’ve found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but create a real revolution.”
Watch The Happy Secret To Better Work TEDx Talk With Shawn Achor
This isn’t just a crisis, it’s actually an opportunity, this is probably the first moment in the last couple of hundred years that we’ve had, to rebuild our society and our economy on principles that serve humanity, instead of killing life.”
We Have Become Disconnected From One Another
Douglas Rushkoff, an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, documentarian and graphic novelist, in the short film Life Inc., tells a story about what inspired him to research the American culture of disconnection:
I got mugged on Christmas eve, and I went up to my apartment and immediately posted on our local parents list the street I had gotten mugged on and when it happened, and I got two e-mails back within the hour, not from people concerned about me asking ‘Oh are you okay after you got mugged?’ but complaining that I had posted the exact spot where the mugging had taken place, because what I had done might adversely affect their property values.
It was enough of a shock that it made me want to look at the different ways we as modern Americans have become disconnected from one another, disconnected from the places we live, disconnected from the value we create, and even disconnected from our own sense of self worth.”
We’re Still Playing By The Rules Of The Past
People are accepting the ground rules of our society as given circumstances and walking around utterly unaware of the fact that these rules were written by people at a very specific moment in history with a very specific agenda in mind.”
Rushkoff tracks it all back to the Renaissance, during which monarchs decided they were going to monopolize all the value people were creating, throughout Western Europe. So instead of letting people make and create, they created charted corporations. It was a centralization of power that continued right to our own time, says Rushkoff.
He continues to the industrial age which was
really about perpetuating this dehumanizing trend … disconnecting human beings from their own labor, from their own consumption and from their own pleasure. The society that we built for the industrial age was built to mythologize the mass produced object, because we needed to create a society of consumers who thought that buying all of this stuff would somehow make them happier.”
Can You Be Happy Isolated From Others?
Rushkoff describes the process of individualization he and his family had gone through, in which the fun and spirit of community was taken away.
In America in particular we promoted the cult of the individual as the path to real happiness- that I’m going to be happy by making myself happy, when really is this whole notion of a self that’s going to be happy somehow in isolation from other selves real?
Most of us spend so much time working and consuming, that we have very little time and energy left to do anything that has to do with other people … and the more we behave as individual actors in competition with one another, the harder it is to encounter one another in a friendly way.”
Rushkoff’s Suggestion For Dealing With Disconnection: Invest In One Another
Rushkoff’s suggestion is for people to start to invest in one another and see the return in their investment in the place they actually live.
I made friends with a guy John who has a restaurant named ‘Comfort,’ and he started an expansion but couldn’t get money from the bank to finish it. So we came up with the idea for him to develop something called ‘comfort dollars,’ where for $100 you could get 120 ‘comfort dollars’ to spend at his restaurant. You get a 20% return on your investment, and he gets the money he needs to expand his restaurant cheaper than he can get it from the bank.
This is the kind of thing that people can do anywhere – to start investing in one another, with one another, and make their talents better, actually earn returns that you’re not going to get from your Smith Barney broker, I promise you that, and see the return on your investment in the place you actually live. That’s not hard to do.”
Today, in our modern world, because of the Internet, everything is connected to everything. We are now interdependent. We are now interlocked as nations, as individuals, in a way which has never been the case before.”
– Paddy Ashdown
Veteran Diplomat and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire Paddy Ashdown describes the period we live in as
one of those terrifying periods of history when power changes… And these are always periods accompanied by turbulence, and all too often by blood.”
Most notably, Ashdown points out that this global interconnection is a fact of life, but one which can be either a terrifying prospect or a cause for celebration and peace, as it means that we all share a common destiny:
Global Interconnection – Danger:
If you get Swine Flu in Mexico, it’s a problem for Charles De Gaul Airport 24 hours later.
Lehman Brothers goes down – the whole lot collapses.
There are fires in the steppes of Russia – food riots in Africa. We are all now deeply, deeply, deeply interconnected.
It used to be the case that if my tribe is more powerful than their tribe, I was safe. My country was more powerful than their country, I was safe. My alliance, like NATO, was more powerful than their alliance, I was safe. It is no longer the case.”
Global Interconnection – Hope:
If it is the case that we are now locked together in a way that has never been quite the same before, then it is also the case that we share a destiny with each other. …The advent of interconnectedness and of the weapons of mass destruction means that increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.
When I was a diplomat negotiating the disarmament treaties with the Soviet Union, in Geneva in the 1970s, we succeeded because we understood that we shared a destiny with them. Collective security is not enough.
Peace has come to Northern Ireland because both sides realized that the zero-sum game couldn’t work. they shared a destiny with their enemies.”
Global Interconnection – Hope For The Middle East?
One of the great barriers to peace in the Middle East is that both sides, both Israel, and I think the Palestinians do not understand that they share a collective destiny.”
The Most Important Thing About What You Can Do Is What You Can Do With Others
In the Modern Age, where everything is connected to everything, the most important thing about what you can do … is what you can do with others.”
In an effort to raise the voice of the silent majority,GlobalDemocracy.com has introduced a President of the World (POW) who will serve as spokesperson for the People of the World on issues ranging from economics, health, government, environment and more; in this introductory video [3 min.]:
An overview of the world’s problems & solution, according to the POW in the video:
The Problem – A Global Crisis
As a whole, we’re contributing to a system that’s broken.
Countries are competing for limited resources and economic domination,
We’re sucking up resources on our planet like there’s no tomorrow,
We’re breeding like rabbits,
We’re strangulating other species out of existence,
Plastic waste in the ocean is growing larger than most countries with nothing in place to stop it,
Industries that are harming our planet are so powerful they can prevent or slow down cleaner technology for the sake of short term profit,
Governments, justice systems, the media – are all influenced by self-interest groups whose actions often conflict with the wellbeing of humankind.”
The Solution – Create A Unified Public Opinion
The more people united in one place, the more powerful their voice becomes.
Together, through social media, we can influence world leaders and industries to start improving the world as opposed to ruining it,
We know this will work because history has repeatedly shown us that leaders and industries must follow public opinion, or they fail.”
How It Works At GlobalDemocracy.com:
User registers and creates a profile
Registered user proposes an idea
Ideas must meet the principles mentioned on the site: Equality, Freedom and Security
Members vote on ideas already proposed
Additional comments and discussions of ideas are encouraged
The most popular ideas will be presented by the President of the World through future video news conferences.
![Forced Positive Thinking Doesn't Solve Problems [RSA Video]](https://mutualresponsibility.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/smile-or-die.jpg "Forced Positive Thinking Doesn't Solve Problems [RSA Video]")
![Global Interconnection Between People And Nations – A Fact Of Life [TED Talk]](https://mutualresponsibility.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/paddy-ashdown.jpg)
