Archive for Communication

The HumansTogether Focus

June 12, 2013 Communication, Economics, Global Ecosystem, Politics, Values No comments

All of us tend to focus primarily on our own lives and our immediate frame of reference. But most of us are missing the big picture.

We vigorously pursue of our own self-interest in what we believe is a dangerous, competitive world. We take detrimental divisions for granted: race, religion, nationality, class, location and political ideology. This results in clashes rather than commonality.

But despite the absolute uniqueness of each person, we are all human. Being part this remarkable species means that we are all much more alike than different, particularly when it comes to what each of us needs to be secure.

We all know that an infant plucked from its birth environment — say from the slums of Mumbai — and adopted by a family in Beverly Hills, will grow up with the frame of reference of its Beverly Hills family. Perhaps the child will even become a Republican and come to believe that the poor are to blame for their own situation. But wealth won’t save the child from the global effects of climate change or a focused explosion of global hate in the form of a nuclear terrorist attack on LA.

HumansTogether is dedicated to the notion that ideas can change the course of human history. The right of self-determination expressed by the American revolutionaries is an example of a big idea that, over time, created positive global change.

It’s time to focus on big ideas that are expressly global — on beliefs and values that can unite all people and help all humans advance. It’s time to focus on a common new vision of what human advancement should look like. This vision has to be part of our everyday sense of reality. Because unless we develop a common idea of what a positive future for humanity should be and develop a shared sense of responsibility for getting there, every human’s future may be dire.

The first step is coming up with a common goal for humanity and the second step is gaining majority agreement on that goal. Questions need to be raised and answered. What is the purpose of progress? Is there a limit to how wealthy a single individual should be allowed to be? What political system produces the greatest good for the greatest number? Is it time for a truly global set of governing principals?

The HumansTogether focus is on articulating and gaining agreement on a common vision of reality and a set of shared beliefs and values that can help make as many humans as possible free from hunger, fear and physical danger.

The Vision Thing

May 4, 2010 Communication, Consciousness, Evolution, Politics, Values No comments

Those of you who are as old as I am may remember that when George H. W. Bush ran against Bill Clinton in 1992, there was talk that he lacked “the vision thing.” Bush was accused of running as a competent manager, rather than someone who had a grand philosophical vision of where the country should go. At least that’s how I remember it.

Clinton’s “I feel your pain” turned out to be a better message than George Bush Sr.’s “I know what I’m doing.” But in truth, neither candidate then, and none of the candidates today, really have the vision thing. The best that can be said is that every four years we have a choice between two opposing philosophies of governance. And both philosophies operate within fairly narrow agreed-upon parameters.

Nowhere, for example, is there a politician who says that he has a vision for how human beings should all live together on the planet—a vision for where evolution is taking us. Politicians don’t even really speak in terms of a global vision. It’s still the U.S. vs. China, or the West vs. the Third World, or the rich vs. the poor.

So it is left to philosophers and activists and NGOs and academic commissions to promote the vision of how all people of the world can live together in peace, harmony and physical security. The shift to a global consciousness is already starting to occur among—dare I say—intellectuals. Articulating this vision in a way that is simple and powerful enough to gain traction in popular culture is the mission of HumansTogether. Despite clear evidence that no one is paying attention yet, I am confident that they will.

Lost in the Flood

March 28, 2010 Communication, Evolution, Politics, Values No comments

I wear my iPod when I go for a walk. Today, when I heard Springsteen’s “Lost in the Flood” off his first album from way back in the 70’s, a new meaning occurred to me: Lost in the flood of thoughts.

All of us, unless we take great pains to step outside them, are lost in a flood of conscious thoughts that prevent us from connecting with our true selves. We’re focused on the things that are right in front of us, right off the front bumper of our awareness, instead of looking down the road and getting a more comprehensive view of what’s actually affecting all of us.

We get absorbed with our own self identities instead of the fact that we are all human beings on planet earth. We are all the same.

All of the hate and separation we feel from others is based on a belief that we are all different and that those differences are dangerous. They are dangerous because the others may want to hurt us, or because the others have ideas that if correct, would make us wrong, or cause us to question what we believe. And no humans are really in love with being wrong or having to change.

And that’s the point, under the superficial differences of appearance, culture, religion, class, gender and politics; we are a single species that is way more the same than different. We are all here together on this planet, an infinitesimal oasis in a cold and empty universe (so far as we know). After billions of years, we are the highest example of life-based, matter-connected consciousness that exists (so far as we know). And we’re in danger of destroying ourselves because we see our own personal survival and that of our group as being in competition with other humans who are exactly the same as us.

I believe the highest calling we have as humans, is to recognize that all of us are responsible for getting our species through to the next stage of evolution. This can be a world in which we cooperate together by acting from a set of beliefs based on we are all the same, we are all valuable, and we are all deserving.

The alternative is a set of beliefs based on I’ve got mine, good luck to you. That belief is not going to move humans forward. That belief will keep us divided and invested in fighting with each other, because it is based on a fundamental untruth—that I, my family and my group are better and more deserving than all the others. It is based on denying the truth that we humans are all the same underneath.

Witnessing a Century of Change in Personal Communications

June 14, 2009 Communication No comments

My mother, Adina Ferri, who passed away on May 28, 2009, was an exemplary person who lived her life demonstrating a high standard of personal values, traditions, and decency.

Her 80-year life journey began as a young girl in Canosa Sannita, a small town in Italy; matured as a teenager who spent 18 months in a concentration camp during World War II in Northern Italy; and culminated with her life as a proud, naturalized American citizen.

As a young girl, she and her family lived off the land in what we now consider a very organic, holistic, largely plant-based culture in harmony with nature.  They cultivated linen from seed, worked it into thread, and used it to embroider fabrics.  Their wheat crop was milled into flour for breads and pasta.  And their harvest of beans, grapes, olives, and fruits fed a large family and enabled them to buy salt, sugar, and other commodities they couldn’t grow.

In her small, Adriatic coastal town, my mother was part of a very strong community where neighbors went in and out of each other’s houses as if they were family.  They borrowed each other’s pots and pans, and shared charcoal, cooking oil, and baked goods.   Everyone looked out for everyone else, and unfortunately gossiped about everyone else—but the communication was all face-to-face and word-of-mouth.

When bombs were falling on their small town during World War II, they didn’t have the AP or CNN to tell her how the war was going.  They saw German soldiers running roughshod through their town, and later watched them run away in fear as American tanks bearing Red Cross banners rolled along, signaling the end of the War.

In her lifetime, my mother developed strong interpersonal skills in dealing with people, and upheld her generation’s affinity for visiting with relatives and friends.  If she didn’t hear from someone in awhile, she wouldn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call them.  Because she valued people and personal relationships, she cautioned me not to carry grudges, judge people’s motives, or burn bridges.

In the years before she died, the world had changed dramatically.  She could watch RAI, Italian public TV, 24 hours a day on cable; and a world of news, communications, and services were also readily available on her daughter’s PC and BlackBerry.  She relished telling everyone she knew how she found great recipes or shopped with incredible convenience on “The Internet.”  She didn’t understand what the Internet was, but fell in love with what it could do.

In stark contrast to her background, her grandchildren’s interpersonal relationships were not fueled by Afternoon Coffees, but rather by texting, Tweeting, and “friending” people on Face Book.   In their online world, news is instantaneous, multifaceted, and emanates from different sources worldwide.

While their way of communicating isn’t face to face as it was in my mother’s day, they’re able to rapidly blast their thoughts to everyone and anyone in the world.  But in this electronic world, their generation is losing the interpersonal skills and energy exchange my mother’s generation derived from being part of a close-knit community.