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.
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?
This isn’t just a crisis, it’s actually an opportunity, this is probably the first moment in the last couple of hundred years that we’ve had, to rebuild our society and our economy on principles that serve humanity, instead of killing life.”
We Have Become Disconnected From One Another
Douglas Rushkoff, an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, documentarian and graphic novelist, in the short film Life Inc., tells a story about what inspired him to research the American culture of disconnection:
I got mugged on Christmas eve, and I went up to my apartment and immediately posted on our local parents list the street I had gotten mugged on and when it happened, and I got two e-mails back within the hour, not from people concerned about me asking ‘Oh are you okay after you got mugged?’ but complaining that I had posted the exact spot where the mugging had taken place, because what I had done might adversely affect their property values.
It was enough of a shock that it made me want to look at the different ways we as modern Americans have become disconnected from one another, disconnected from the places we live, disconnected from the value we create, and even disconnected from our own sense of self worth.”
We’re Still Playing By The Rules Of The Past
People are accepting the ground rules of our society as given circumstances and walking around utterly unaware of the fact that these rules were written by people at a very specific moment in history with a very specific agenda in mind.”
Rushkoff tracks it all back to the Renaissance, during which monarchs decided they were going to monopolize all the value people were creating, throughout Western Europe. So instead of letting people make and create, they created charted corporations. It was a centralization of power that continued right to our own time, says Rushkoff.
He continues to the industrial age which was
really about perpetuating this dehumanizing trend … disconnecting human beings from their own labor, from their own consumption and from their own pleasure. The society that we built for the industrial age was built to mythologize the mass produced object, because we needed to create a society of consumers who thought that buying all of this stuff would somehow make them happier.”
Can You Be Happy Isolated From Others?
Rushkoff describes the process of individualization he and his family had gone through, in which the fun and spirit of community was taken away.
In America in particular we promoted the cult of the individual as the path to real happiness- that I’m going to be happy by making myself happy, when really is this whole notion of a self that’s going to be happy somehow in isolation from other selves real?
Most of us spend so much time working and consuming, that we have very little time and energy left to do anything that has to do with other people … and the more we behave as individual actors in competition with one another, the harder it is to encounter one another in a friendly way.”
Rushkoff’s Suggestion For Dealing With Disconnection: Invest In One Another
Rushkoff’s suggestion is for people to start to invest in one another and see the return in their investment in the place they actually live.
I made friends with a guy John who has a restaurant named ‘Comfort,’ and he started an expansion but couldn’t get money from the bank to finish it. So we came up with the idea for him to develop something called ‘comfort dollars,’ where for $100 you could get 120 ‘comfort dollars’ to spend at his restaurant. You get a 20% return on your investment, and he gets the money he needs to expand his restaurant cheaper than he can get it from the bank.
This is the kind of thing that people can do anywhere – to start investing in one another, with one another, and make their talents better, actually earn returns that you’re not going to get from your Smith Barney broker, I promise you that, and see the return on your investment in the place you actually live. That’s not hard to do.”
Today, in our modern world, because of the Internet, everything is connected to everything. We are now interdependent. We are now interlocked as nations, as individuals, in a way which has never been the case before.”
– Paddy Ashdown
Veteran Diplomat and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire Paddy Ashdown describes the period we live in as
one of those terrifying periods of history when power changes… And these are always periods accompanied by turbulence, and all too often by blood.”
Most notably, Ashdown points out that this global interconnection is a fact of life, but one which can be either a terrifying prospect or a cause for celebration and peace, as it means that we all share a common destiny:
Global Interconnection – Danger:
If you get Swine Flu in Mexico, it’s a problem for Charles De Gaul Airport 24 hours later.
Lehman Brothers goes down – the whole lot collapses.
There are fires in the steppes of Russia – food riots in Africa. We are all now deeply, deeply, deeply interconnected.
It used to be the case that if my tribe is more powerful than their tribe, I was safe. My country was more powerful than their country, I was safe. My alliance, like NATO, was more powerful than their alliance, I was safe. It is no longer the case.”
Global Interconnection – Hope:
If it is the case that we are now locked together in a way that has never been quite the same before, then it is also the case that we share a destiny with each other. …The advent of interconnectedness and of the weapons of mass destruction means that increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.
When I was a diplomat negotiating the disarmament treaties with the Soviet Union, in Geneva in the 1970s, we succeeded because we understood that we shared a destiny with them. Collective security is not enough.
Peace has come to Northern Ireland because both sides realized that the zero-sum game couldn’t work. they shared a destiny with their enemies.”
Global Interconnection – Hope For The Middle East?
One of the great barriers to peace in the Middle East is that both sides, both Israel, and I think the Palestinians do not understand that they share a collective destiny.”
The Most Important Thing About What You Can Do Is What You Can Do With Others
In the Modern Age, where everything is connected to everything, the most important thing about what you can do … is what you can do with others.”
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
An interview with Dr. Twenge at Calvin College. Source for the quotes in the “Causes Of Narcissism” section above.
In an effort to raise the voice of the silent majority,GlobalDemocracy.com has introduced a President of the World (POW) who will serve as spokesperson for the People of the World on issues ranging from economics, health, government, environment and more; in this introductory video [3 min.]:
An overview of the world’s problems & solution, according to the POW in the video:
The Problem – A Global Crisis
As a whole, we’re contributing to a system that’s broken.
Countries are competing for limited resources and economic domination,
We’re sucking up resources on our planet like there’s no tomorrow,
We’re breeding like rabbits,
We’re strangulating other species out of existence,
Plastic waste in the ocean is growing larger than most countries with nothing in place to stop it,
Industries that are harming our planet are so powerful they can prevent or slow down cleaner technology for the sake of short term profit,
Governments, justice systems, the media – are all influenced by self-interest groups whose actions often conflict with the wellbeing of humankind.”
The Solution – Create A Unified Public Opinion
The more people united in one place, the more powerful their voice becomes.
Together, through social media, we can influence world leaders and industries to start improving the world as opposed to ruining it,
We know this will work because history has repeatedly shown us that leaders and industries must follow public opinion, or they fail.”
How It Works At GlobalDemocracy.com:
User registers and creates a profile
Registered user proposes an idea
Ideas must meet the principles mentioned on the site: Equality, Freedom and Security
Members vote on ideas already proposed
Additional comments and discussions of ideas are encouraged
The most popular ideas will be presented by the President of the World through future video news conferences.
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.”
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?”
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:
I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor, that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish. Soldiers: don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty. In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written: “The kingdom of God is within man” Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let us use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future, and old aged security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill that promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!”
Since The 1970s Human Demand On Nature Is Larger Than Nature’s Renewable Production
Today, we are using 20% more than what nature can regenerate. In other words, it would take a year and more than 2 months to regenerate everything that we use within one year.
This difference is called the ‘ecological deficit,’ the difference of how much more rapidly we are using resources like forests, fish stock, putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, than nature is able to accommodate.”
Mathis Wackernagel, PhD, Executive Director of the Global Footprint Network exemplifies what he calls an “ecological bank statement” in a video presentation, excerpted below, showing how humanity today is using more than what nature can regenerate.
Ecological Bank Statement Shows Humanity’s Using More Than It Has
If we look at this bank statement and say that we’re using more than what we have, is this good news or bad news? I would say it is good news in the sense that it gives us more information. And we still have choice. We can still just not open the bank statement and recycle the envelope, or we can look at it. But if we do spend too much money, we also know what the consequences are, so there is a kind of a feedback loop. In the same way we have to think about nature from a budgeting perspective, and say, ‘what are the consequences of overspending?’”
Watch The Video [if the video is not embedded below, then you can watch it here] [3 min. 30 sec.]:
The concern with very young children is that, as human beings we have a competitive advantage over the rest of the animal world by the virtue of the fact that we are born with, essentially, a fetal brain.
Our brain gets to develop in response to the environment in which it needs to function. So though we are helpless and completely dependent on our parents for survival at birth, we get to build an architecture that is most efficient for dealing with the world we live in.
What we know about that is that 3 things seem to be very important to building very powerful brains:
Bonding with other human beings: relating to mommy, interacting, developing relationships. Manipulating the physical environment: stacking up blocks or getting a cheerio into your mouth.
Open-ended problem solving, creative type of plays: so a blank piece of paper and crayons, or a piece of clay, are very good.”
Michael Rich, MD, MPH, Director for the Center of Media and Child Health, in the video below in this post How Young Is Too Young To Watch Television? discusses the highly influential role of media – television, books, movies, video games and music – in children’s development, health and behavior.
![Global Interconnection Between People And Nations – A Fact Of Life [TED Talk]](https://mutualresponsibility.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/paddy-ashdown.jpg)
