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.
The truth is usually simple –
Why is it difficult to live?
If love is infinite to give,
Then why is unity unreal?
Why can’t we move beyond the words
And sharing on Facebook pages?
Why does this finite round world
Get packed in shopping square cages?
Hate, finger-pointing and spite
Rule over every good intention
Instead of change and self-correction,
We look for being “good” and right.
Is there sapience in us,
Or are we fear-driven primates?
We sing of peace, dream happy days,
While driving somebody bananas…
We’ve come a very lengthy way,
We’ve walked the round world TOGETHER,
We’ve played and learned from every game,
We outgrew our furs and feathers.
Now we are due to calculate
And draw some sapient conclusions:
To be recycled as primates
Or drop the “you ain’t me” illusion…
We suspect — or at least we hope — that there are more and more things… where people have the opportunity to discover their commonality. These are things that can change the world, even if it’s by one person at a time.”
– Gregory Stebbins, President of Insight University
The Power Of Connection
In Stebbins’ article for the Huffington Post, “Connection: The Heart of Our Humanity,” he writes about the power of connection, how it has the ability to bridge social, cultural, and economic gaps:
I made friends and shared extremely touching experiences with them, [even though some] I barely talked to. I know not their personalities and everyday lives, but I know their core being. I also learned my core being; I saw myself in a way I have never seen before; full of love, laughter and beautiful qualities that I can appreciate in myself. Now I see myself as a person, someone to be loved and cared for, who deserves the respect I give everyone else. … Life … is an ebb and flow. [This program] taught me how to grow from the ebbs, remember the flows and to always continue to love myself, others and life.”
– A young woman, “who had just completed a 4-day program for teens from diverse social, cultural, and economic backgrounds.”
How Can You Know If You Are Placing Value In Connecting With Others?
To test out whether there is value for you in connecting with others… here’s a simple suggestion. Try it and see if you notice a difference.
Once a day, when you’re getting ready to text or email someone, call them and talk instead. Better yet, if it’s someone at work or someone close to where you are, go over and deliver your message in person. See if there’s a natural opening to make physical contact with them — a handshake or just a touch on the arm. See what it’s like to actually make a human connection.”
What Do You Think?
What are some ways to test your connection with others?
… when a person becomes happy, next door neighbors have a 34% increased chance of becoming happy. A friend living within one mile? A 25% increased chance. Siblings? 14%. And a spouse? An 8% chance.”
We studied a full social network and found that happiness spreads through it like a contagion. And so we really do think that happiness is contagious.”
Well, we know something very basic: we all share common desires for food, shelter, sex, family, honor, power, knowledge, and wealth.
And yet… we fundamentally lack the ability to, “Truly inhabit the shoes of another.”
But what if we could, somehow, “See life through another’s eyes?”
How would our world, and everyone’s world, change?
A World Where Each Sees & Feels What Others Feel
Imagine, for a moment, a world where:
Each sees themselves tied to everyone else.
A world where each realizes their common ambitions, together, seeing that the greatest profit can only be achieved through valuing the connection that they share.
A world where equality isn’t just a “word,” and hatred is something which everyone seeks to overcome, in order to arrive at that next, new, superior state.
Imagine a world of mutual responsibility.
‘
What Do You Think?
How is a world, where everyone truly values what others see, think, and feel, formed?
In an election year, people might disagree about who makes the best candidate. But you don’t hear much argument on the merits of democracy: that millions of average people can together make a wise decision.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist.
What Is The Wisdom Of The Crowd?
According to Wikipedia, [which is itself an excellent example of the wisdom of the crowd]:
The wisdom of the crowd is the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question. A large group’s aggregated answers to questions involving quantity estimation, general world knowledge, and spatial reasoning has generally been found to be as good as, and often better than, the answer given by any of the individuals within the group. An intuitive and often-cited explanation for this phenomenon is that there is idiosyncratic noise associated with each individual judgment, and taking the average over a large number of responses will go some way toward canceling the effect of this noise.”
The following video shows how the wisdom of the crowds hasbeen implemented:
Can The Wisdom Of The Crowds Be Extended Past The Definition Provided Above?
I’ve been studying nature recently… starlings in the area around Edinburgh, in the moors of England… at night they come together and they create one of the most spectacular things in all of nature, and it’s called a murmuration… this thing has a function; it protects the birds. You can see on the right here, there is a predator being chased away by the collective power of the birds. Apparently this is a frightening thing if you are a predator of starlings. And, there’s leadership, but there’s no one leader.
Now is this some kind of fanciful analogy, or can we actually learn something from this?
.. this is a huge collaboration, it’s an openness, it’s a sharing of all kinds of information, not just about location and trajectory and danger and so on, but about food sources. And, there’s a real sense of interdependence, [that] the individual birds somehow understand that their interests are in the interest of the collective. Perhaps like we should understand that business can’t succeed in a world that’s failing.
Well, I look at this thing and I get a lot of hope. I think about the kids today in the Arab Spring and you see something like this that’s underway. And imagine, just consider this idea if you would, what if we could connect ourselves in this world through a vast network of air and glass? Could we go beyond just sharing information and knowledge, could we start to share our intelligence?
Could we create some kind of collective intelligence that goes beyond an individual or a group or a team, to create perhaps some kind of consciousness on a global basis? Well, if we could do this, we could attack some big problems in the world.
And I look at this thing and I, I don’t know, I get a lot of hope that maybe this smaller networked, open world that our kids inherit, might be a better one. And that this new age of networked intelligence can be an age of promise fulfilled and of peril unrequited. Let’s do this. Thank you.”
– Don Tapscott, business executive, author, consultant, and speaker specializing in business strategy.
Do we have the courage to face the realities of our time, and allow ourselves to feel deeply enough that it transforms us, and our future? Come with me on a journey through the eye of beauty, across an ocean of grief and beyond.”
– Chris Jordan, filmmaker of Midway
The currently-in-production film, Midway, according to its site,
… explores the plight of Laysan albatross plagued by the ingestion of our plastic trash. Both elegy and warning, the film explores the interconnectedness of species, with the albatross on Midway as a mirror of our humanity.”
Midway is scheduled to premiere in late 2013. Here is the trailer:
Did you & your friends learn about this at school today?
Did you learn that all kids have feelings just like you and that it is destructive to individually compete against one another because you learn through that how to use everyone and thing throughout your life for the sake of your own benefit?
Did you learn and discuss that a third of the world’s population is dying from starvation, and that they don’t even have a glass of water to drink?
Did you learn & see examples of how to respect others’ opinions that are different from your own even if you don’t always agree on the same topic?
Did you learn that each and every one of you was born with a special talent?
Did you learn you how to perceive yourself & others objectively?
Did you learn about collective group creativity together?
Did you learn that there is more than one correct answer to a question?
Did you learn that your amazing capabilities cannot be defined by a percentage rating on a piece of paper?
Did you learn that each and everyone of you has something special that only you can contribute in order to complete a balanced society?
Did you & your friends learn about this at school today?
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.”
Our results raise the possibility that these birds may be capable of ascribing desire to their mates—acknowledging an ‘internal life’ in others like that of their own.”
A group of researchers at Cambridge University have discovered that a male bird, the Eurasian jay, can apparently cater to the current desire of its mate if it is in a committed relationship. Science Daily recently reported the details of the study:
Researchers tested mated jays and separated males from females. The females were fed one particular larvae, either wax moth or mealworm — a treat for the birds, like chocolates — allowing the males to observe from an adjacent compartment through a transparent window.
Once the pairs were reintroduced and the option of both larvae was presented, the males would choose to feed their partner the other type of larvae, to which she hadn’t previously had access — a change in diet welcomed by the female.
Through different tests using variations on food and visual access to the females during feeding, the researchers show that the males needed to actually see the females eating enough of and become sated by one type of larvae — called ‘specific satiety’ — to know to offer them the other type once reunited.
This demonstrates that the males’ sharing pattern was not a response to their partner’s behaviour indicating her preference but a response to the change in her internal state.
… The researchers believe that this ability to respond to another’s internal state in a cooperative situation might be important for species living in long-term relationships. Food-sharing is an important courtship behaviour for the Jays — so the ability to determine which food is currently desired by his partner might increase the male’s value as a mate.”
Similarly, With Humans…
While this information is all well and good for female birds, female women might wish to know if there is a correlation between male birds and men. Ostojic says,
A comparison might be a man giving his wife chocolates. The giving and receiving of chocolates is an important ‘pair-bonding’ ritual — but, a man that makes sure he gives his wife the chocolates she currently really wants will improve his bond with her much more effectively — getting in the good books, and proving himself a better life partner.”
