Tag: Quotes

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How To Redefine Prosperity To Get Through The Crisis Unscathed

How To Redefine Prosperity To Get Through The Crisis Unscathed

“The credit and debt system … is a story about us, people, being persuaded to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.”

Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the ESRC Research Group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE), Economics Commissioner on the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and author of Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, in his TED talk Economic Reality Check explains the paradox of living in crisis times, the paradox between people’s needs to “save, save, save” and the continuation of an socio-economic influence to “spend, spend, spend,” and suggests a solution of redefining prosperity: for meaningful, altruistic values to spread throughout society in order to achieve a “we” vision of prosperity.

Graph: The dramatic rise in personal debt and the plummeting of personal savings in the U.K. the last 15 years before the 2008 financial crash [taken from the TED talk]

The Crisis’ Paradox – The Need To Save & The Social Influence To Spend
  1. “In the crisis, in the recession, what do people want to do? … They want to spend less and save more.
  2. But saving is exactly the wrong thing to do from the system point of view … saving slows down recovery. And politicians call on us continually to draw down more debt, to draw down our own savings even further, just so that we can get the show back on the road, so we can keep this growth-based economy going. It’s an anomaly, it’s a place where the system actually is at odds with who we are as people.”
The Crisis’ Solution – To Build Social Influence Of Meaningful, Altruistic Values That Allows People The Freedom To Become Fully Human

“It is about opening up. It is about allowing ourselves the freedom to become fully human, recognizing the depth and the breadth of the human psyche and building institutions to protect [the] fragile altruist within.

[It’s about] … redefining a meaningful sense of prosperity in the richer nations, a prosperity that is more meaningful and less materialistic than the growth-based model.

This is not just a Western post-materialist fantasy. In fact, an African philosopher wrote to me, when Prosperity Without Growth was published, pointing out the similarities between this view of prosperity and the traditional African concept of ubuntu. Ubuntu says, “I am because we are.” Prosperity is a shared endeavor. Its roots are long and deep – its foundations, I’ve tried to show, exist already, inside each of us.

This is not about standing in the way of development. It’s not about overthrowing capitalism. It’s not about trying to change human nature. What we’re doing here is we’re taking a few simple steps towards an economics fit for purpose. And at the heart of that economics, we’re placing a more credible, more robust, and more realistic vision of what it means to be human.”

I Am Because We Are

Watch Tim Jackson’s ‘Economic Reality Check’ TED Talk

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Your Social Network Has The Power To Influence What You Think, Want, Feel, Choose And Eventually Do

Your Social Network Has The Power To Influence What You Think, Want, Feel, Choose And Eventually Do

Your Social Network Has The Power To Influence What You Think, Want, Feel, Choose And Eventually Do

“How we feel, what we know, whom we marry, whether we fall ill, how much money we make, and whether we vote all depend on the ties that bind us. Social networks spread happiness, generosity, and love. They are always there, exerting both subtle and dramatic influence over our choices, actions, thoughts, feelings, even our desires. And our connections do not end with the people we know. Beyond our own social horizons, friends of friends of friends can start chain reactions that eventually reach us, like waves from distant lands that wash up on our shores.”

Nicholas A. Christakis, a social scientist at Harvard University and James H. Fowler, a political scientist at University of California present in their book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives how people are interconnected, interdependent, and products of their societies.

Watch Nicholas Christakis & James Fowler Discuss The Book

Their book shows many examples of how the social networks people are in profoundly impact all areas of life: health, marriage, economy, politics and more. This post contains a few examples:

Examples Of Social Networks In Health

Have you ever wondered how your social environment can affect your health?

Back Pain – A Culture-Bound Syndrome

“The rate of lower back pain among working-age people is 10 percent in the United States, 36 percent in the United Kingdom, 62 percent in Germany, 45 percent in Denmark, and 22 percent in Hong Kong. In some ways, this varying prevalence, and the culturally specific ways in which back pain is experienced, suggest that back pain can be seen as a culture-bound syndrome – a disease recognized in one society but not others, such that people can experience the disease only if they inhabit a particular social milieu.”

Eating Disorders – Also A Culture-Bound Syndrome

“Eating disorders resemble other culture-bound syndromes in that they can ripple through a social network in waves, reflecting the possibility of person-to-person transmission of (admittedly severe) weight-loss behavior. High-school girls may compete with one another to lose weight and college dormmates can copy one another’s binge eating. In fact, these behaviors may affect a person’s network location, and in one study of sororities, women who were binge eaters actually became more popular and moved to the center of the social network, just as nonsmokers did in our study.”

Example Of Social Networks In The Economy

Economists Morgan Kelly and Cormac O’Grada studied two panics that were in the 1850s at a New York Bank (Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank), in which they observed how people’s interdependence affects their actions.

“Kelly and O’Grada found that social networks were the single most important factor in explaining the closure of accounts during both panics, even more so than the size of the accounts or the length of time they had been opened. Thus, financial panics may result from the spread of emotions or information from person to person.”

Example Of Social Networks In Politics

How did Obama succeed in his election campaign? He made people feel connected.

“Obama’s campaign was described as a perfectly run operation that made few, if any, mistakes. But how did he get people on board before the public perception that things were going well? How did he persuade so many previously uninvolved people to donate money to him and to vote for him, especially those who in the past believed their vote did not count? In no small measure, Obama succeeded because these ‘working men and women’ felt connected. Obama’s campaign was a historical milestone in all kinds of ways, but the most revolutionary may not have been its fund-raising. Many have commented on Obama’s remarkable ability to connect with voters, but even more impressive was his ability to connect voters to each other.”

The book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives is full of many more examples on how people are interconnected and thus are strongly influenced by the social network they are in.

Image: Connected: Amazing Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by zone41.

 

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Study Shows Equality Benefits Everyone, Rich And Poor

“The rich developed societies have reached a turning point in human history. Politics should now be about the quality of social relations and how we can develop harmonious and sustainable societies.” 

The Equality Trust, based on the work of Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, reached this summary after analyzing data showing that societies with greater inequality between rich and poor are far more unhealthy than societies with a more equal income distribution.

More Unequal = More Problems

The study shows that:

  • More unequal societies have more problems with general health, mental illness, infant mortality, drug use, obesity, imprisonment rates, teenage pregnancies and homicides.
  • More equal societies have better education and general health, more innovation, higher social mobility and more trust.

The slides and their titles (some listed below) show in more detail how societies with bigger gaps between rich and poor are generally more unhealthy societies than more equal societies:

  • Health and social problems are worse in more unequal countries
  • Health and social problems are not related to income in rich countries
  • Health and social problems are worse in unequal US states
  • Health and social problems are only weakly related to average income in US states
  • Child well-being is better in more equal rich countries
  • Child well-being is unrelated to average incomes in rich countries
  • Levels of trust are higher in more equal rich countries
  • Levels of trust are higher in more equal US states
  • The prevalence of mental illness is higher in more unequal rich countries
  • Drug use is more common in more unequal countries
  • Life expectancy is longer in more equal rich countries
  • Infant mortality rates are higher in more unequal countries
  • More adults are obese in more unequal rich countries
  • Educational scores are higher in more equal rich countries
  • More children drop out of high school in more unequal US states
  • Teenage birth rates are higher in more unequal rich countries
  • Teen pregnancy rates are higher in more unequal US states
  • Homicide rates are higher in more unequal rich countries
  • Homicide rates are higher in more unequal US states
  • Children experience more conflict in more unequal societies
  • Rates of imprisonment are higher in more unequal countries
  • Rates of imprisonment are higher in more unequal US states
  • Social mobility is higher in more equal rich countries
  • Overdeveloped countries? High life expectancy can be achieved with low carbon dioxide emissions
  • More equal countries rank better on recycling

 

Unequal Societies = People Being More Self Interested, Less Public Spirited, Less Concerned With The Common Good

“Because inequality increases status competition, it also increases consumerism. People in more unequal societies work longer hours because money seems even more important.

Because inequality harms the quality of social relations (increasing violence, reducing trust, cohesion and involvement in community life), people become more self-interested, less public spirited, less concerned with the common good.”

Taken from the presentation to The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, p. 34

 

Equal Societies Benefit Everyone, Rich & Poor

“Almost everyone benefits from greater equality.

Usually the benefits are greatest among the poor but extend to the majority of the population.”

Taken from the presentation to The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, p. 23

 

Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett: Why Greater Equality Makes Stronger Societies

Talk discussing the above data and arguments in more detail recorded January 8, 2010 at Hogness Auditorium, University of Washington, Seattle.

 

Richard Wilkinson: How Economic Inequality Harms Societies [TED Talk]

Professor Richard Wilkinson discussing the above study with an emphasis on the UK, one of the countries ranking high in inequality.

Further Reading:

Image: People at the Museum by ancawonka on Flickr

 

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Battle Of The Century: Our Addiction To Economic Growth Vs. Our Finite Planet

Battle Of The Century: Our Addiction To Economic Growth Vs. Our Finite Planet

Battle Of The Century: Our Addiction To Economic Growth Vs. Our Finite Planet

Crisis = The Clashing Point Between An Economy Of Infinite Growth And The Limits Of Finite Resources

Economic growth is effectively over.

There are practical limits to debt, and we’re hitting them. There are practical limits to energy sources, and we’re hitting them. There are real limits to the planet’s ability to absorb our wastes and industrial accidents, and we’ve hit those too.

We’re being told that the economy is recovering. But take away new debt the government has taken on since 2008 to stimulate the economy, and there’s been no real economic growth. There is no recovery. It’s all been done with more debt. We’ve already mortgaged our grandchildren’s future, but to keep the economy from relapsing, we’ll need to borrow even more. The game is up. We’ve reached the end of economic growth as we’ve known it.”

 

Unlike Many Think, There Is No ‘They’ To Blame For This Crisis: Everybody’s Addicted To Economic Growth

We all got hooked on growth. Rising GDP numbers became our main measure of success. ‘More, bigger and faster’ meant ‘better.’

We’re all addicted to growth. We all want better jobs and higher returns on investments. But we live on a finite planet.

The end of growth is not the fault of any one politician or a political party, but some people benefited from growth more than others.”

 

 To Live Without Economic Growth, We’ll Have To Start Doing A Few Things Differently

We can live without economic growth, but we’ll have to start doing a few things differently:

  • We have to measure and aim for improvements in life that don’t require increasing our consumption of fossil fuels and other depleting resources, or piling on more debt.
  • Freedom, being with the people we love, good health and the time to enjoy it, a secure happy community.”


Video: Who Killed Economic Growth?

All the quotes in this post are by Richard Heinberg, senior fellow of the Post Carbon Institute who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion, taken from this video made by the Post Carbon Institute, Who Killed Economic Growth?

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Douglas Rushkoff On Today’s Culture Of Disconnection & The Need To Reevaluate Society’s Values

Douglas Rushkoff On Today’s Culture Of Disconnection & The Need To Reevaluate Society’s Values

Douglas Rushkoff On Today’s Culture Of Disconnection & The Need To Reevaluate Society’s Values

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.”

"The time has come to rebuild our society & our economy on principles that serve humanity." --Douglas Rushkoff

Watch The Film Life Inc. With Douglas Rushkoff

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Global Interconnection Between People And Nations – A Fact Of Life [TED Talk]

"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." --Paddy Ashdown

Global Interconnection Between People And Nations – A Fact Of Life [TED Talk]

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.”

"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." --Paddy Ashdown

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.”

Watch Paddy Ashdown’s TEDx Brussels Talk

Image: Paddy Ashdown, Why the world will never be the same & what should we do about it @paddyashdown by TEDxBrussels on Flickr ©

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What Everybody Ought To Know About Narcissism

What Everybody Ought To Know About Narcissism

What Everybody Ought To Know About Narcissism

Narcissism increased just as fast as obesity over the past 25 years, and a study today shows that it is twice that rate since 2002.”

– Psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge, author of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement

What Is Narcissism?

The main characteristic of narcissism is self-centeredness.

Narcissism is an inflated sense of self. It is thinking that you are better than you actually are. It is a complicated trait with lots of different correlates to it, but it does include things like seeking fame, attention, vanity, and so on. However, its main characteristic is its self-centeredness.

Narcissism at base is all about trying to get more: more attention, more things, to look more beautiful – it’s always ‘more’ in these rather shallow ways.”

What Is The Difference Between Self Esteem And Narcissism?

Narcissists do not consider caring for others and relationships as being important.

One of the key differences between self esteem and narcissism is that somebody who scores high” (in this psychological examination) “for self esteem but not for narcissism, has a lot of confidence in individual areas but also cares a lot about relationships. Narcissists tend to be missing that piece about caring for others and relationships.”

Signs Of Narcissism

  • Overconfidence
  • Being delusion about one’s own greatness
  • Over-optimism
  • Taking too many risks
  • An inflated, unrealistic sense of self
  • Alienation from other people
  • Entitlement, the expectation of having things handed to you without much effort
  • Not caring about others.”

Dr. Jean Twenge Talks About The Narcissism Epidemic

Causes Of Narcissism

Narcissism As An Inborn Personality Trait

Narcissism is a personality trait, so it has the same determinants as any personality trait. Other personality traits include things like being highly anxious or being outgoing, and a good amount of it comes from being born with those tendencies.”

 

Narcissism As A Result Of Social & Environmental Influence

The culture you grow up in, parenting and other parts of the environment, play a strong role in determining how narcissistic someone is.”

Narcissism In Culture – The Social Influence Of Narcissism

Parenting

No parent ever says ‘my goal is to raise a narcissistic kid.’ It’s part of this overall individualistic culture. It comes from the ‘good intentions’ of trying to develop self esteem, from the cultural pressures of uniqueness and standing out.

Emphasizing specialness, uniqueness and standing out so much does tend to create that situation where we’re focusing on that, we’re focusing on being better [than others] and standing out.”

 

Celebrity & Reality TV Culture

Over the top reality shows, such as the popular My Super Sweet 16 – rich kids planning their birthday party, who complain if they get the $50,000 car instead of the $100,000 car – have made narcissism seem normal.

A lot of this obsession with celebrities, and of course, a lot of being a celebrity is highly narcissistic in terms of vanity and seeking fame and attention.

A study published in Academic Journal showed that celebrities are more narcissistic. Drew Pinsky had 200 celebrities fill out the narcissistic personality inventory when they came onto his show, and he found that they were more narcissistic than his control group.

He also broke it down: Who were the most narcissistic celebrities? Was it musicians, movie stars, stand-up comedians? No, it was the reality TV stars.

What’s interesting about that is that these shows are supposed to be a slice of real life, and those are the shows that are very popular right now, especially among young people, but what they really are is a showcase for narcissistic behaviors.

Reality TV has taken it to the next level of showing that this is how people really behave, that people always have plastic surgery, and always get into fights with people who are supposed to be their friends, and act badly, and are obsessed with fame.

On the Web and on reality TV, the way to get the most attention, and thus to make the most money, is to be as provocative as possible. So it really pulls for that narcissistic behavior.

It is this culture that seems to encourage this attention seeking, and also encourages that not just fame, but also infamy, is just as good.”

 

Relationships/Friendships

If you’ve grown up your whole life and everything is about you then of course it’s a lot more difficult to compromise in a relationship… if you never compromise you’re not going to be married very long, among other things. Even in a friendship the same is true. You really have to make it not about you all the time.

Narcissists are horrible relationship partners in the long run. It’s really important in a relationship to have two people who are both focused on caring for the other, and not just focused on themselves.”

 

Narcissism Contributing To The Credit Crisis

Easy credit allows people to look better off than they actually are. For a narcissist, this is great. And even for somebody who isn’t particularly narcissistic, but who got sucked into this narcissistic culture of over-purchasing with intent to pay it off through credit.

One of the key outcomes of narcissism is over-confidence, which explains a lot of how we got into the” credit crisis, recession and bad mortgages “in the first place. Home buyers would think ‘I’d be able to pay for that.’ Bankers as well, not only home owners, would tell them: ‘Housing never goes down! I’m sure everything will be fine with these mortgage backed securities.’ That’s the huge downside of overconfidence, in that reality always wins in the end. This is one of the reasons why we ended up with the recession.”

Dealing With Narcissism

Remind About How Much We Have In Common As Human Beings

The key to solving some of this is reminding kids, and adults for that matter, just how much we have in common as human beings.”

– All above quotes by Dr. Jean Twenge

 

Connection With Others Holds Self Centeredness In Check

Make people feel connected and that buffers a lot of bad behaviors.

If you have compassion for others, if you feel connected to others, you’re not going to have that really toxic level of narcissism.

Communities inherently place checks on people and reign in some of that self centeredness. So the more we can have those connections with others, and that’s on a societal and community level as well as a personal level, that tends to really hold that self centeredness in check.”

– Dr. W. Keith Campbell

 

Dr. W. Keith Campbell Discusses Connection As A Means Of Dealing With Narcissism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYGmu6NYXQo

More About Narcissism With Dr. Jean Twenge & Dr. W. Keith Campbell

Image: Modified version of Narcissism by videocrab. ©

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President Of The World Offers Solution To The World’s Problems: Create A Unified Public Opinion

President Of The World Offers Solution To The World’s Problems: Create A Unified Public Opinion

President Of The World Offers Solution To The World’s Problems: Create A Unified Public Opinion

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.”

The more people united in one place, the more powerful their voice becomes

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.
Further Information:

Source for video and quotes: Youtube/President of the World

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Why Are Finnish Students Ranked #1 In The World?

Why Are Finnish Students Ranked #1 In The World?

Why Are Finnish Students Ranked #1 In The World?

Achieving Excellence By Focusing On Cooperation

Finland’s experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.”

In his book Finnish Lessons, Doctor of Educational Sciences Pasi Sahlberg outlines the differences between the machine-press of traditional industrial-age education which most of us have gone under, and the educational system of Finland, which challenges accepted Western norms with great success; Finnish students rank #1 in the world in both mathematics and sciences despite having fewer school hours and no standardized tests.

As Sahlberg writes:

All of the factors that are behind the Finnish success seem to be the opposite of what is taking place in the United States and much of the rest of the world, where competition, test-based accountability, standardization, and privatization seem to dominate.”

Instead of competition, Finland decided on cooperation and mutual help as a matter of policy. Students are rarely tested. Instead, they teach each other in class. Each student gets personal attention until he is on par with the other students. This attitude extends to the teachers and schools as well:

“One of the ways that teachers improve is by learning from other teachers. Schools improve when they learn from other schools. Isolation is the enemy of all improvement.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcC2l8zioIw

Education – A Means To Even Out Social Inequality

And the difference is not purely academic.

Finland is a small nation of 5.2 million people, with scarcely any natural resources. The Finnish government had to find a way to remain competitive within the global economy, while also minimizing social inequality. What it came up with was the education system:

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.”

 

Unique Education Emerged From Times Of Crisis

The Finnish success may also shed some new light on the global economic crisis, or as Sahlberg writes:

The Finnish story is particularly interesting because some of the key policies and changes were introduced during the worst economic crisis that Finland has experienced since World War II. It suggests that a crisis can spark the survival spirit that leads to better solutions to acute problems than a ‘normal situation’ would.”

Further Reading:
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An iPad App To Build An Epic Conversation On Humanity’s Future

What Makes Us Human?

An iPad App To Build An Epic Conversation On Humanity’s Future

We humans need a new way to look. We need to see ourselves as one species, and develop a big picture view and a grounded vision to guide us.”

–Anna Stillwell, The Human Project co-founder

That statement was reached after two and a half years of research putting together many issues facing humanity into one big picture, as part of The Human Project.

 

The Human Project – An App For Humanity

The Human Project is a free iPad app in the making, an app, as co-founder Erika Ilves states, “to build an epic conversation on the future of our species” around the big questions:

  • “What do we, as a human race, need to accomplish in the 21st century?
  • Who do we want to become as a species?
  • Where do we want to head next?”

What Makes Us Human?

The Human Project’s project proposal on Kickstarter, after only five days, reached its funding goal of $25,000, and has since expanded its goals. Here’s the project proposal video:

Also, here’s an exciting promo video for The Human Project with Jason Silva:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26jKx74Wc5M

More About The Human Project: