Tag: Video

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Like Branches In A Tree: The New Education Of The 21st Century Is About Teaching Interconnection

Like Branches In A Tree: The New Education Of The 21st Century Is About Teaching Interconnection

We have a bounded rationality and a limited point of view that doesn’t see the interconnected web of relationships that make up the world…”

…says Simon Evetts, shortly into Developing an Interconnected Worldview: a guiding process for learning; a masters thesis presentation given at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden by Brendan Seale, Dylan Skybrook, and Evetts.

Considering the thesis is a team effort, individual distinction  for subsequent quotes will be omitted.

To not being able to see or feel interconnection, means that we unconsciously interfere with the natural and social systems that support life. These unintended consequences lead to their systematic dysfunction. And so the inability to perceive connections is the fundamental root cause of many of the worlds problems of today.

And this is a crisis of perception.

We need to think, feel, and act in terms of interconnections… allowing us to build on and broaden our thinking for a more accurate picture of reality. This can be facilitated by education that develops both our conceptual and perceptual understanding of interconnectivity.”

4 Big Questions In The Presentation

    1. What Is An Interconnected Worldview?
    2. How Can An Interconnected Worldview Be Developed?
    3. What Pedagogical Approaches Could Enable The Development Of An Interconnected Worldview?
    4. How Could A Learning Experience Be Designed To Develop An Interconnected Worldview In Support Of Strategic Sustainable Development?”

Here is the full presentation of Developing an Interconnected Worldview: a guiding process for learning:

Untitled from Converge Project on Vimeo.

The 6 Steps Of The Guiding Process To Learning

1) “Highlight the inadequacy of a reductionist worldview for meeting the needs of the learner to survive and thrive in ‘society within the ecosphere.”

  • “What are the current norms, assumptions, and beliefs; and how are they limited for dealing with the challenges of today?”

2) “Ask the learner to diagram or become aware of the closest, most approximate connections to the learner within ‘society within the ecosphere.”

  • “This step makes the notion of interconnectivity much more concrete and starts to build both a cognitive skill to make connections and the idea that what is important for the learner exists in a larger web.”

3) “Invite the learner to view ‘society within the ecosphere’ from a top or ’30,000 foot’ view.”

  • “It indicates that everything that the learner is dependent upon, which was explored in step 2, is in turn reliant on other things in the larger context.”

4)  “Invite the learner to become aware of his or her subjective experience of being/participating in “society within the ecosphere.”

  • “If we include what you and I subjectively experience; we must see that we are in the system. It is not something that can be objective to us or outside of us… this is how we can feel urgency by actually experiencing our interconnectedness with the world beyond just thinking about it.”

5)  “Invite the learner to picture ‘society within the ecosphere’ as a whole, including proximate connections, the top view, and subjective experience. Then invite the learner to consider that his or her identity must include the whole.”

  • “Step 5 combines the previous three steps to provide the learner with a sense of the whole. In other words, with an interconnected world view.”

6)  “Invite the learner to consider how he or she will care for this whole that he or she is/depends upon.”

  • “This step addresses the immediate meaning of the new information as it relates directly to the learners life and wellbeing.”
  • “Step six ultimately provides the learner with an understanding that their new knowledge can be manifested into actions that serve the whole, which include the learner.”

The full thesis text can be found here.

Image: My Late Afternoon… by Universal Pops.

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Global Destruction & Crisis Domino Effect Animation

Most people are aware that human behavior is damaging the environment. This damage has now become dangerous – In many areas we are approaching the tipping point that will lead to collapse of ecosystems. Most importantly, since humans evolved from Nature, we thus depend upon Nature for survival, as it is the source of all our food, air and water. If the natural systems that support life on earth collapse then humanity is going to collapse”

– Dr. James Lovelock

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Kony 2012 Shows Potential Energy Of Social Networks ‘Ready To Rise When The Moment Arrives’

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.”

Source: How ‘Kony’ Clip Caught Fire, The Wall Street Journal

Juice Media’s Rap News Commentary On Kony 2012

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.”

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One Tribe – Black Eyed Peas [Music]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLBV4CO7BRc

One love, one blood, one people

One heart, one beat, we equal

Connected like the Internet

United that’s how we do

Lets break walls, so we see through

Let love and peace lead you

We could overcome the complication cause we need to

Help each other, make these changes

Brother, sister, rearrange this

The way I’m thinking that we can change this bad condition

Wait, use your mind and not your greed 

Let’s connect and then proceed

This is something I believe

We are one, we’re all just people”

Image: One year on by Mrs. Logic

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Now You Can Understand Why Connecting To Other People Is Great, Thanks To This Shouting Sociologist

Now You Can Understand Why Connecting To Other People Is Great, Thanks To This Shouting Sociologist

The benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs!”

Nicholas Christakis, MD PhD, in his powerful TED Talk “The Hidden Influence of Social Networks,” lays down the omnipotent role of social networks and the benefits of connecting with other people…

Social Networks Naturally ‘Sustain & Nourish The Good’ & ‘Reject The Bad’

We form social networks because the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs. If I was always violent towards you or gave you misinformation or made you sad or infected you with deadly germs, you would cut the ties to me, and the network would disintegrate.

So the spread of good and valuable things is required to sustain and nourish social networks. Similarly, social networks are required for the spread of good and valuable things, like love, kindness, happiness, altruism and ideas.

If we realized how valuable social networks are, we’d spend a lot more time nourishing them and sustaining them, because I think social networks are fundamentally related to goodness. And what I think the world needs now is more connections.”

An Example Showing How Certain Properties Reside Not In Individual Parts, But In The Interconnections Between Them

Think about these two common objects. They’re both made of carbon, and yet one of them has carbon atoms in it that are arranged in one particular way – on the left – and you get graphite, which is soft and dark.

But if you take the same carbon atoms and interconnect them a different way, you get diamond, which is clear and hard. And those properties of softness and hardness and darkness and clearness do not reside in the carbon atoms; they reside in the interconnections between the carbon atoms, or at least arise because of the interconnections between the carbon atoms.

So, similarly, the pattern of connections among people confers upon the groups of people different properties. It is the ties between people that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And so it is not just what’s happening to these people – whether they’re losing weight or gaining weight, or becoming rich or becoming poor, or becoming happy or not becoming happy – that affects us; it’s also the actual architecture of the ties around us.”

Human Beings Are Not Reducible To The Study Of Individuals, But Must Be Understood In Reference To The Collective

Our experience of the world depends on the actual structure of the networks in which we’re residing and on all the kinds of things that ripple and flow through the network. Now, the reason, I think, that this is the case is that human beings assemble themselves and form a kind of superorganism.

Now, a superorganism is a collection of individuals which show or evince behaviors or phenomena that are not reducible to the study of individuals and that must be understood by reference to, and by studying, the collective. Like, for example, a hive of bees that’s finding a new nesting site, or a flock of birds that’s evading a predator, or a flock of birds that’s able to pool its wisdom and navigate and find a tiny speck of an island in the middle of the Pacific, or a pack of wolves that’s able to bring down larger prey.

Superorganisms have properties that cannot be understood just by studying the individuals. I think understanding social networks and how they form and operate can help us understand not just health and emotions but all kinds of other phenomena – like crime, and warfare, and economic phenomena like bank runs and market crashes and the adoption of innovation and the spread of product adoption.”

Watch Nicholas Christakis’ TED Talk ‘The Hidden Influence Of Social Networks’

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Waking Up – An Open Source Film

Waking Up – An Open Source Film

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.

Watch Waking Up Forest Scene

Waking Up forest scene from Harald Sandø on Vimeo.

About 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.

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A Cultural Goal In The 21st Century: Building A Global Village [TED Talk]

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.”

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Be Careful With What You Think, Do & Say – Biologist Rupert Sheldrake Explains Social Influence & Interdependence Through Morphic Resonance

What you do, what you say and what you think can influence other people by morphic resonance. So we’re more responsible for our actions, words and thoughts on this principle than we would otherwise be. There is no immoral filter in morphic resonance, which means that we have to be more careful about what we are thinking if we are concerned about the affect we have on others.”

British biologist Rupert Sheldrake, author of over 80 scientific papers and books, the most recent being The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry

What Is Morphic Resonance?

Morphic resonance is a memory principle in nature. Anything similar in a self-organizing system will be influenced by anything that has happened in the past, and anything in the future that happens in a similar system will be influenced by what happens now. So it is a memory in nature based on similarity, and it applies to atoms, molecules, crystals, living organisms, animals, plants, brains, societies, and indeed, planets and galaxies. So it is a principle of memory and habit in nature.”

 

Interconnectedness Of People & Nature Explained Through Morphic Resonance

An important aspect of morphic resonance is that we’re interconnected with other members of social groups. Social groups also have morphic fields, for example a flock of birds, or a school of fish, or an ant colony. The individuals within the larger social groups and the larger social groups themselves have their own morphic fields, their own organizing patterns. The same is true of humans.

People form all sorts of social groups within modern society, such as a football team, for example. Each player in the team is working as part of a larger whole — the team — and the team works together to score goals. The connections between members of social groups link them together through the morphic field. They’re interconnected through this field and the field is an invisible interconnection that links them. It continues to do so even when they’re far away.

The next time you are far away from somebody you know well, think about them and form the intention to telephone them. They may just pick up on that thought and start thinking about you. Then all of a sudden the phone rings and it’s that person. I call that telephone telepathy, and it is the most common kind of telepathy in the modern world. It’s just another way in which we are all interconnected.”

The More People That Learn Something, The Easier It Becomes

If somebody learns a new skill, say windsurfing, then the more people that learn it, the easier it becomes for everyone else because of morphic resonance. However, if you train rats to learn a new trick in one place, like Los Angeles, then rats all over the world should be able to learn the trick more quickly because the first group of rats learned it.

That’s what I’m saying morphic resonance does. It’s the kind of interconnection between all similar organisms across space and time. It works from the past and connects like a kind of collective memory, and it interconnects all the members of a species.”

Watch Dr. Rupert Sheldrake Discussing Morphic Resonance

Further Reading:

Images: [1] Drops and Ripples by Pictoscribe. [2] The Puzzle of Life by Pictoscribe. [3] Kermit by Pictoscribe. [4] The Erosion of a Log by Pictoscribe

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Big Love. Big Hearts. A Plan For The Creation Of One Global Extended Family

Big Love. Big Hearts. A Plan For The Creation Of One Global Extended Family

Big Love. Big Hearts. A Plan For The Creation Of One Global Extended Family

With the current globalization of our problems, we need to extend our circle of empathy and view humanity as a worldwide extended human family. As long as we refrain from facing that challenge, divisiveness and unsolvable conflicts will persist.”

Professor Rodrigue Tremblay is an author and Emeritus professor of economics at Université de Montréal. In addition to his writings on economics, he has also written extensively on the subject of ethics; and most recently, on the urgent need for a new level of universal ethics, morality, and empathy to be developed and maintained in the world.

The Super Golden Rule

[In a more universal civilization], first and foremost, the scope of human empathy would be more universal and more comprehensive, and would not merely apply to some chosen people, to members of a particular religion or to persons belonging to a particular civilization. In practice, this would require that we establish a higher threshold of human morality, beyond the traditional norm of the Golden Rule (‘Treat others as you would have others treat you.’)

It would require that we adopt what I call a Super Golden Rule of humanist morality that incorporates the humanist rule of empathy: ‘Not only do to others as you would have them do to you, but also, do to others what you would wish to be done to you, if you were in their place.’ — Of course, the corollary also follows: ‘Don’t do to others what you would not like to be done to you, if you were in their place.’”

 Three Interrelated Moral Imperatives

Three interrelated moral imperatives that have always been sound moral values, but which I feel will become increasingly required for humanity to go forward and survive. And I refer to:

  1. More human EMPATHY.
  2. More interpersonal TOLERANCE.
  3. More interpersonal SHARING (altruism and generosity) as a foundation for a more harmonious, for a freer and for a more prosperous world.”

 The Empathy Principle

According to the empathy principle, one must aim at treating others as if one were in their place, and not necessarily expecting reciprocity as is the case in the traditional Golden rule of morality that one finds in virtually all moral systems (‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’).

The empathy principle can thus be framed this way: “Do to others what you would wish to be done to you, if you were in their place.

That is why I say that empathy can be the solid foundation of a more civilized global society based on the solidarity of all human beings. It is the awareness that other people can suffer, be happy and flourish just as one does, and that one should treat others accordingly.”

 Ten Commandments For A Global Humanism

Lastly, here is Tremblay’s ten commandments for the creation of global humanism, a foundation for the building of a global extended family:

  1. Proclaim the natural dignity and inherent worth of all human beings.
  2. Respect the life and property of others.
  3. Practice tolerance and open-mindedness towards the choices and life styles of others.
  4.  Share with those who are less fortunate and mutually assist those who are in need of help.
  5. Use neither lies, nor spiritual doctrine, nor temporal power to dominate and exploit others.
  6. Rely on reason, logic and science to understand the Universe and to solve life’s problems.
  7. Conserve and improve the Earth’s natural environment—land, soil, water, air and space—as humankind’s common heritage.
  8. Resolve differences and conflicts cooperatively without resorting to violence or to wars.
  9. Organize public affairs according to individual freedom and responsibility, through political and economic democracy.
  10. Develop one’s intelligence and talents through education and effort.

Here is Professor Tremblay speaking further on the necessity for the development of universal global ethics:

[seeing as the video is an extended interview, many topics are covered throughout—fast-forward-to (20min. 53seconds) for content of the Professor speaking specifically on the topic of global humanism]

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4404833

Quotes of Professor Tremblay courtesy of The Code for Global Ethics, and his blog.

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Forced Positive Thinking Doesn’t Solve Problems [RSA Video]

Forced Positive Thinking Doesn't Solve Problems [RSA Video]

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.”

 

Watch ‘Smile Or Die’ With Barbara Ehrenrich