Tag: Quotes

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Every Man Is A Piece Of The Continent, A Part Of The Main

Nowadays we fly around like individual bees exulting in our freedom. But sometimes we wonder: Is this all there is? What should I do with my life? What’s missing? What’s missing is that we are Homo duplex, but modern, secular society was built to satisfy our lower, profane selves. It’s really comfortable down here on the lower level. Come, have a seat in my home entertainment center.

One great challenge of modern life is to find the staircase amid all the clutter and then to do something good and noble once you climb to the top. …

Most people long to overcome pettiness and become part of something larger. And this explains the extraordinary resonance of this simple metaphor conjured up nearly 400 years ago. ‘No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.'”

–Jonathan Haidt

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Globalize Yourself

Globalize Yourself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp4znWHvsjU

This era of globalization is not characterized by countries globalizing, it is not spearheaded by companies globalizing. Now what is really new, really unique, really exciting and really terrifying, is that this era of globalization is built around individuals. What is new, unique, terrifying and exciting about this era of globalization is the degree to which it empowers and enjoins, the degree to which it enables and requires individuals to globalize themselves and to think of themselves as potential connectors, collaborators and competitors with other individuals anywhere in the world.”

–Thomas Friedman, in the above video, The 3 Eras of Globalization

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Interconnected Networks – The Modern Day Norm For Understanding The Organization Of Information And Social Interactions

Manuel Lima, senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing, shows how interconnected networks are increasingly becoming the modern day norm for understanding the organization of information and social interactions, and as a result, visualized networks are increasing in popularity as cultural memes.

In An Interconnected Network, If One Element Changes, The Whole Network Changes

As shown in the above video, a defining factor of an interconnected network is that if one of its elements changes, that change affects the whole network and thus the whole network changes. Accordingly, a collapse in one part of the network clearly causes all the other parts to be affected by it, as is most painfully and obviously exemplified by the global financial crisis.

Thus, this interconnected network perspective of understanding the organization of social interactions clearly shows the need for mutual responsibility as a leading social value.

When Will Commonly Accepted Social Values Grow To Harness The Interconnected Network Perspective In Human Relationships?

As knowledge advances to harness the interconnected network outlook on every area of life, the  social values that characterize “the world of the past” – individualism, maximizing profits and self-interest – and their methods of stratification and protectionism still prevail in human society.

  • What will it take for society at large to realize how living to satisfy one’s individual interests is an outdated way of living, which leads to increasing crisis?
  • Moreover, is it possible that the flourishing knowledge of interconnected networks could start penetrating and reformatting the way human beings relate to each other, before facing another crisis tipping point?
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Are We Destined To Pay The High Price Of Materialism Until We Die, Or Is There Another Way?

The Grip Of Materialism

  • Every day Americans are bombarded with hundreds of messages suggesting that ‘the good life’ is attainable through ‘the goods life,’ by making lots of money and spending it on products that claim to make us happy, loved and esteemed.
  • On the news shows we hear a near constant refrain from economists and politicians about the importance of consumer spending and economic growth.
  • Around 150 billion dollars are spent most years to embed consumer messages in every conceivable space.
  • Commercialization and consumerism also reach deeper, warming their way into people’s psyches and encouraging them to organize their lives around higher salaries and owning more stuff.”

The Problem Of Materialism

  • Research consistently shows that the more that people value materialistic aspirations and goals, the lower their happiness and life satisfaction, and the fewer pleasant emotions they experience day to day.
  • Depression, anxiety and substance abuse also tend to be higher among the people who value the aims encouraged by consumer society.”

The Stronger The Grip Of Materialism, The Lower The Care For Others And Nature

  • Scientists have found that materialistic values and pro-social values are like a see-saw; as materialistic values go up, pro-social values tend to go down. This helps explain why people act in less empathic, generous and cooperative ways when money is on their minds.
  • When people are under the sway of materialism, they also focus less on caring for the earth. The same type of see-saw is at work here: as materialistic values go up, concern for nature tends to go down. Studies show that when people endorse money, image and status, they’re less likely to engage in ecologically beneficial activities like riding bikes, recycling, and re-using things in new ways.”

The Hope For Happiness = A Shift From Materialistic Values To Intrinsic Values

  • If we hope to have a happier, most socially just, and more sustainable world, then we need to develop ways to diminish materialistic values in our personal lives and in society … and promote intrinsic values for growing as a person, being close to one’s family and friends and improving the broader world.
  • The grip and consumerism and commercialism have on our world can seem inescapable, and there are certainly powerful forces that push materialistic values on us, but by making changes in our personal lives and by working for broader societal changes, we can break the hold of materialism and be freer to live our intrinsic values. That, in turn, would help us to take important steps to our greater personal well-being, a more humane society, and a more sustainable world.”

What Are Intrinsic Values To You?

In other words, what do you consider as being the most important values for you and for society?

Also, if you were given the task to plan how society as a whole would come to treat intrinsic values with more importance than materialistic values, what would you include in that plan?

Quotes in this post were taken from the above video “The High Price of Materialism” by the Center for a New American Dream, which are the words of psychologist Tim Kasser.

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What Is Systems Thinking? – Peter Senge Explains Systems Thinking Approach And Principles

http://youtu.be/HOPfVVMCwYg

What Is Systems Thinking?

Whenever I’m trying to help people understand what this word ‘system’ means, I usually start by asking: ‘Are you a part of a family?’ Everybody is a part of a family. ‘Have you ever seen in a family, people producing consequences in the family, how people act, how people feel, that aren’t what anybody intends?’ Yes. ‘How does that happen?’ Well… then people tell their stories and think about it. But that then grounds people in not the jargon of ‘system’ or ‘systems thinking’ but the reality – that we live in webs of interdependence.”

What Is The Fundamental Rationale Of Systems Thinking?

[The fundamental rationale of systems thinking] is to understand how it is that the problems that we all deal with, which are the most vexing, difficult and intransigent, come about, and to give us some perspective on those problems [in order to] give us some leverage and insight as to what we might do differently.”

3 Characteristics Of A Systems Thinking Approach

  1. A very deep and persistent commitment to ‘real learning.’
  2. I have to be prepared to be wrong. If it was pretty obvious what we ought to be doing, then we’d be already doing it. So I’m part of the problem, my own way of seeing things, my own sense of where there’s leverage, is probably part of the problem. This is the domain we’ve always called ‘mental models.’ If I’m not prepared to challenge my own mental models, then the likelihood of finding non-obvious areas of leverage are very low.
  3. The need to triangulate. You need to get different people, from different points of view, who are seeing different parts of the system to come together and collectively start to see something that individually none of them see.”

A Fundamental Principle Of Systems Thinking: Smart Individuals Are No Longer Needed, Collective Intelligence Is

We all have probably spent too much time thinking about ‘smart individuals.’ That’s one of the problems with schools. They are very individualistic, very much about ‘the smart kids and the dumb kids.’ That’s not the kind of smartness we need.

The smartness we need is collective. We need cities that work differently. We need industrial sectors that work differently. We need value change and supply change that are managed from the beginning until the end to purely produce social, ecological and economic well-being. That is the concept of intelligence we need, and it will never be achieved by a handful of smart individuals.

It’s not about ‘the smartest guys in the room.’ It’s about what we can do collectively. So the intelligence that matters is collective intelligence, and that’s the concept of ‘smart’ that I think will really tell the tale.”

All quotes in this post are by Peter Senge, scientist and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management, taken from the video “Navigating Webs of Interdependence.”

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Children See, Children Do

Children See, Children Do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d4gmdl3zNQ

This video illustrates what our future may look like, depending on the examples we give to others.

Children learn by example, and so do adults.

This knowledge is true power, but have we been using it for good or bad?

Children See, Children Do

“Children learn by trying to do something, by failing, and by being told about or by copying some new behavior that has better results. This perspective is founded on the simple but central insight that children are trying to do something rather than to know something. In other words, they are learning by doing.” – Dr. Roger Schank, from Engines for Education

“The idea of public education depends absolutely on the existence of shared narratives and the exclusion of narratives that lead to alienation and divisiveness. What makes public schools public is not so much that the schools have common goals but that the students have common gods. The reason for this is that public education does not serve a public. It creates a public.” – Dr. Neil Postman, from The End Of Education

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” – H.G Wells

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Social Networks And The Need To Recognize Human Connection

Human Connection, Social Networks And The Need To Recognise Human Connection

The great project of the twenty first century – understanding how the whole of humanity comes to be greater than the sum of its parts – is just beginning. Like an awakening child, the human super organism is becoming self-aware, and this will surely help us to achieve our goals. But the greatest gift of this awareness will be the sheer joy of self discovery and the realization that to truly know ourselves we must first understand how and why we are all connected.”

In their widely acclaimed book, Connected: The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, Nicholas Christakis MD, PhD & James Fowler, PhD examine human connection through social networks. The book reveals some startling insights about human interrelation. Understanding the degree of human connectivity is of primary importance if we are going to change our world.

Working Together Generates A Higher Form Of Life

Working together, cells, generate a higher form of life that is entirely different from the internal workings of a single cell. For example, our digestion is not a function of any one cell or even one type of cells. Likewise, our thoughts are not located in a given neuron; they arise from the pattern of connections between neurons. Whether cells, ants, or humans, new properties of a group can emerge from the interactions of individuals. And co-operative interactions are hallmarks of most most major evolutionary leaps that have occurred since the origin of life – consider the agglomeration of single cell organisms into multi-cellular organisms, and the assembly of individuals into super organisms.”

Social Networks Reflect Our Inter-Connectivity

The networks we create have lives of their own. They grow, change, reproduce, survive and die. Things flow and move within them. A social network is a kind of human super organism, with an autonomy and a physiology – a structure and a function – of its own. From what no person could do alone. Our local contributions to the human social network have global consequences that touch the lives of thousands every day and help us to achieve much more than the building of towers or the destruction of the walls. A colony of ants is the prototypic super organism, with properties not apparent in the ants themselves, properties that arise from the interactions and cooperation of the ants. By joining together, ants create something that transcends the individual: complex ant hills spring up like miniature towers of Babylon, tempting wanton children to action. The single ant that find its way to a sugar bowl both of achievements are made possible by the co-ordinated efforts and communication of many individuals. Yet, in a way, these solitary individuals – ant and astronaut, both parts of a super organism – are no different from the tentacle of an octopus sent out to probe a hidden crevice. In fact, cells within multi-celluar organisms can be understood in much the same way.

Like a world wide nervous system, our networks allow us to send and receive messages to nearly every other person on the planet. As we become more hyper connected, information circulates more efficiently, we interact more easily, and we manage more and different kinds of social connections everyday. All of these changes make us, Homo dictyous (Network Man), even more like a super organism that acts with a common purpose. The ability of networks to create and sustain our collective goals continues to strengthen. And everything that now spreads from person to person will soon spread further and faster, prompting new features to emerge as the scale of interactions increases.”

The Necessity To Understand Human Connection

Individualism and holism shed light on the human condition, but they miss something essential. In contrast to these two traditions, they miss something essential. In contrast to these two conditions, the science of social networks offers an entirely new way of understanding human society because it is about individuals and groups and, indeed, about how the former become the latter. Interconnections between people give rise to phenomena that are not present in individuals or reducible to their solitary desires and actions. Indeed, culture itself is one such phenomenon. When we lose our connections, we lose everything.

Scientists are also increasingly seeing events like earthquakes, forest fires, species extinctions, climate change, heartbeats, revolutions and market crashes as bursts of activity in a larger system, intelligible only when studied in the context of many examples of the same phenomenon. They are turning their attention to how and why the parts fit together and to the rules that govern interconnection and coherence. Understanding the structure and function of social networks and understanding the phenomenon of emergence (that is the origin of collective properties of the whole not found in the parts) are thus elements of this larger scientific movement.

The great project of the twenty first century-understanding how the whole of humanity comes to be greater than the sum of its part-is just beginning. Like an awakening child, the human super organism is becoming self-aware, and this will surely help us to achieve our goals. But the greatest gift of this awareness will be the sheer joy of self discovery and the realization that to truly know ourselves we must first understand how and why we are all connected.”

Image: Team Spirit, December 2006 by JF Schmitz

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Uprising 2012: The Message Of The Freedom Informant Network

Uprising 2012: The Message Of The Freedom Informant Network

Is this what it’s come to, a price tag on life, a world coursing with greed, intoxicated on monetary gain, and material conquest? Why have we allowed this? Ladies and gentlemen these are the questions you should be asking yourselves.

The world around us has been manipulated, coerced in a direction where human life is outweighed by profit.”

The quotes in this post are taken from the video at the bottom of this post: Uprising 2012: The Freedom Informant Network

Wake From The Dream

All the while you chase the dream life they’ve created for you, waving it in front of your face like a carrot on a stick. Stop it, stop being guided through life. We need to quit letting the decisions of a few control the lives of the many. We need to take our future, our children’s future, back into our hands.”

Reestablish Connection

When did we lose our connection with others, with community, and family? Stop focusing on the differences and start acknowledging and building upon our common grounds. Start sharing, connecting, teaching one another, and learning from each other as well.

Build our bond as human beings. Find your strength in unity. Find your voice, and then let it be heard.”

Be The Change You Want To See

What you have to say does matter. We just need to get off our knees, stand on our own two feet, and remind them just how much we do matter. Become the change you want to see.

Build the future together, a decent future, a future where life is cherished, rather than spent worshiping money.”

Value Education

Rid yourself of your cynicism, your ego, your fear. Instead open your hearts, your minds, and your eyes. Broaden your horizons… It’s time to change our ways, to evolve and break free of this viscous cycle. It’s time to educate ourselves on the issues affecting us and work together to create progressive affective solutions.

Welcome to the future. Welcome to the freedom informant network.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZwqQo4_B2E

Image: 12M 15M Global Revolution Revolución Global Zaragoza by gaudiramone’s photostream.

The Freedom Informant Network.

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The World We’ve Made: Every 5 Seconds A Child Dies From Malnutrition And Hunger

The World We’ve Made: Every 5 Seconds A Child Dies From Malnutrition And Hunger

Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.”

– Norman Borlaug, agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate.

In a previous post, Agriculture In The 21st Century, the amount of food produced in the world that is wasted (1/3 of food produced) was brought up. In that post, a number of experts were quoted, stating that malnutrition and hunger could be ended if unused food were properly distributed.

Malnutrition and Hunger

The following statistics from the World Food Programme show the severity of the lack of food distribution in the world, chiefly highlighting its affect on the children of the world:

Every five seconds a child dies because of hunger.

  • 854 million people worldwide do not have enough to eat, more than the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Hunger is the world’s no.1 health risk. It kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

  • One in seven people in the world will go to bed hungry tonight.

Asia and the Pacific region is home to over half the world’s population and nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people.

  • 65 percent  of the world’s hungry live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

Undernutrition contributes to five million deaths of children under five each year in developing countries.

  • One out of four children – roughly 146 million – in developing countries is underweight.

More than 70 percent of the world’s underweight children (aged five or less) live in just 10 countries, with more than 50 per cent located in South Asia alone.

  • 10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths.

Iron deficiency is the most prevalent form of malnutrition worldwide, affecting an estimated 2 billion people. Eradicating iron deficiency can improve national productivity levels by as much as 20 percent.

  • Iodine deficiency is the greatest single cause of mental retardation and brain damage, affecting 1.9 billion people worldwide. It can easily be prevented by adding iodine to salt.”

The Need For Empathy

In famine, a focus on women and children highlights biology: here is a mother who cannot feed her child, a breakdown in the natural order of life. This focus obscures who and what is to blame for the famine, politically and economically, and can lead to the belief that a biological response, more food, will solve the problem.”

– Sherman Apt Russell, Nature and science writer

The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

– Charles Trevelyan, British civil servant and colonial administrator

What Do You Think?

In the post before this one, Redefining Prosperity, the issue of prosperity was raised in relation to economics and growth. The same question can easily be posed here as well:

What is the responsibility of those who live in the world in relation to malnutrition and famine?” 

What do you think? Write your answer in the comment section below…

Image: Zoriah_kenya_famine_kakuma_refugee_camp_irc_international_rescue_committee_aid_hunger_starvation_shortage_20090128_9672 by Zoriah.

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Redefining Prosperity

Redefining Prosperity

Prosperity – at least in economic terms – has always been defined within the remit of very narrow boundaries.> Typically it has always meant growth, a six letter word that obsesses politicians and economists. But when attempts to create growth prove counter-productive then it’s time for a rethink. The ultimate aim of growth is prosperity, yet – for the vast majority at least – it remains an elusive dream. The question that needs to be asked is: What is prosperity? And if our previous attempts to attain it have proved unsuccessful then how can it be achieved?

The following excerpts are from the book Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a finite planet, by Tim Jackson. The excerpts are quotes from Zia Sardar, a London-based scholar, writer and cultural-critic who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futures studies and science and cultural relations.

Prosperity Depends On The Society You’re In & Your Responsibility To It

The good life of the good person can only be fully realised in the good society. Prosperity can only be conceived as a condition that includes obligations and responsibilities to others.”

The prevailing vision of prosperity as a continually expanding economic paradise has come unravelled. Perhaps it worked better when economies were smaller and the world was less populated. But if it ever was fully fit for the purpose, it certainly isn’t now. Climate change, ecological degradation and the spectre of resource scarcity compound the problems of failing financial markets and economic recession. Short term fixes to prop up a bankrupt system aren’t good enough. Something more is needed. An essential starting point is to set out a coherent notion of prosperity that doesn’t rely on default assumptions about consumption growth.”

It is perverse to talk about things going well if you lack the basic material resources required to sustain yourself: food and water to be adequately nourished or materials for clothing and shelter. Security in achieving these aims is also important. But from at least the time of Aristotle, it has been clear that something more than material security is needed for human  beings to flourish. Prosperity has vital social and psychological dimensions. To do well is in part about your ability to give and receive love, to enjoy the respect of your peers, to contribute useful work and to have a sense of belonging and trust in the community. In short, an important component of prosperity is the ability to participate freely in the life of society.”

Prosperity can only be conceived as a condition that includes obligations and responsibilities to others.”

Image: Responsibility by Marco Buonvino