As I’ve worked on becoming more enlightened and aware, and explored the deeper ways I’m connected to everything, opportunities to grow with mind-blowing ideas have snowballed.
In junior high. I was obsessed with what atoms were made of. They were the building blocks of life, but they had to be made of something else, right?
The question plagued my adolescent mind. (Never was I concerned with N*SYNC & sleepovers… Lol)
Then, when they began the search for the Higgs Boson, I was captivated. The supercollider was originally going to be in my own backyard (Waxahachie, TX), and I can only imagine the political bs that kept such an important scientific facility out of this state. [rolls eyes]
In the years since, sure, I went to law school and grad school… but those were all things I felt more apt to do. I can talk & argue, look great doing it; love history and the human element that shapes our world… but ideas from quantum mechanics, the unified field theory, and all the physical laws that apply to us all have always captured my imagination. They are behind my work in diversity and inclusion that taps into universal themes and seeks to find the ways we can get on the same page.
This stuff is fun to me. Pondering and pontificating. Expanding my mind. Seeing how everyone else is explaining this life, and seeing the deeper connective tissue. Your girl LERVS it.
Anywho… thanks to data mining and such, my TV apps and phone and iPad all bring certain videos to my attention. And, I just so happened to come across Russell Brand’s latest podcast series — Under the Skin — on youtube. I wanted to watch some of his funnier videos, but – like I said – even my fun is nerdy.
During an episode that ponders the biggest threat to freedom (full broadcast below), the guest Sam Harris says:
“Ideas are the most powerful things we’ve got. Ideas are the operating system for human life and human culture. And if we fail to build a civilization that works, it will be because of the failure of ideas or our failure to communicate good ideas to one another in such a way that persuades them. How do you get 7 billion strangers to peacefully collaborate with one another?”
“Ideas are the most powerful things we’ve got. Ideas are the operating system for human life and human culture. And if we fail to build a civilization that works, it will be because of the failure of ideas or our failure to communicate good ideas to one another in such a way that persuades them. How do you get 7 billion strangers to peacefully collaborate with one another?”
He goes on to say there are two basic options for human interaction: communication and violence. And without one, there is the other.
And, if you look at how social groups and political issues have behaved, you can see that idea come to fruition (albeit, with varying degrees of violence).
It’s interesting, to me, that the “distance” between the characteristics-at-controversy and the degree to which people hold them close correlates to the level of difficulty of communication, as well as the level of acrimony.
The biggest problem seems to come from the non-negotiable aspect of many operating systems, especially the religious kind. They’re the most inflexible within peoples’ minds and least encompassing whe it comes to public concerns.
It’s also the biggest obstacle for me when I try to determine how to implement the concept I created to model how we can work together individually, called Concurrent Good — agreeing on the end goal is tough when so many people REQUIRE that you only use certain and words and steps and ideas to get there, even if the terms you use are synonymous or the end goal transcends all man-made labels.
Really weird to me, the cauterizing effect of adherence on doing actual, effectual, practical good, or even to see that they want verrrrrry similar results, but have different paths to get there.
Here are my big questions, topics I’ve struggled to answer my entire life:
- How can we talk more about desired results & not get lost in the weeds about how to achieve them? (Scheisse. It’s tough to expand narrow minds)
- What does the conversation need to be about to get people to come together?
- What terms can we actually get BILLIONS of people to subscribe to?
Obviously, communication is key, as is a personal commitment to developing the mind and the mindset to look beyond the superficial, to discern what is objectively useful and right (rather than what’s expedient or ego-soothing), and to seek sustainable resolutions.
Because – and this is crucial – it is up to us to save us, which begs the [very revealing] question: WHO DO YOU CONSIDER “US”?
If you’ve got ideas, Holler at your girl 🙂
As promised, here is the full podcast: