This was so funny to me that I wanted to share it. I showed it to some friends of mine and one of them said "I actually don't understand this..." I give up... I actually don't understand how you don't understand : \
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
The Empathic Civilization
Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. I really enjoyed what this video had to say and hope this becomes an important factor in our future social infra-structure.
Personally I suspect that empathy (and altruism) is a commonly used and genuinely understood phenomena of people already - just not perhaps from the perspective of scientific theory. This 'folk' knowledge however is less likely given officially supported credibility for its capacity in furthering our understanding of 'real truth' in the world, until it seems, a form of science picks it up and runs with it.
Instead, simple empathy has been a phenomenon more likely embraced in instances that are less publicly recognized, and less economically rewarded. Empathic understanding I suggest has always been a legitimate form of knowledge - it's just a shame it has taken science so long to catch up.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Man Cannot Live as a Commodity Alone
Someone asked me the other day what advice would I issue that captures the spirit of our times. The only catch was that I couldn't just speak in parables and be all mysterious and everything. I'm ok with temporarily suspending my reality - so here was my response...
The 'Spirit of our Times' might be different where you live but for me here now it reeks of profiteering without ethics and Weberian Corporatism. It reeks of a society where the darning mistress only focused on strengthening the social fabric where the individual gets to be economically useful to someone - whether that be as a consumer or as a worker.
Society leaves people to take personal responsibility for the maintenance of their personal connections without truly providing sustaining, quality backup mechanisms for people to genuinely engage when they most need it. For the healthy and 'successful', personal responsibility alone, may sound like a fine option if you find yourself able to gorge yourself at the banquet of success.
Too often however I speak to people who are left with a profound sense of personal loneliness and disconnection when their lives are not going so good. Our social experiment failed as far as I am concerned. The mistress forgot to darn the parts of the fabric that give balance to work and keep us connected to others in times of deep or lasting personal crisis.
For people to be ok (even when bad things happen) we need others - in the flesh, besides us. We need people around us who can listen to us with their hearts and talk to us with their brains. We need to have people around we feel we can trust with our vulnerabilities, and our not so socially successful parts of self.
Our society is setup to be economically focused as the social standard, with the catch of deep social isolation during the rough patches. Our families are often broken leaving two adults whose wages now maintain two households instead of one. Our elderly are left in nursing homes because being 'a carer' is not economically viable and people are too busy engaged in their economically useful lives. Blah blah blah...
This is why men cannot live as a commodity alone.
The 'Spirit of our Times' might be different where you live but for me here now it reeks of profiteering without ethics and Weberian Corporatism. It reeks of a society where the darning mistress only focused on strengthening the social fabric where the individual gets to be economically useful to someone - whether that be as a consumer or as a worker.
Society leaves people to take personal responsibility for the maintenance of their personal connections without truly providing sustaining, quality backup mechanisms for people to genuinely engage when they most need it. For the healthy and 'successful', personal responsibility alone, may sound like a fine option if you find yourself able to gorge yourself at the banquet of success.
Too often however I speak to people who are left with a profound sense of personal loneliness and disconnection when their lives are not going so good. Our social experiment failed as far as I am concerned. The mistress forgot to darn the parts of the fabric that give balance to work and keep us connected to others in times of deep or lasting personal crisis.
For people to be ok (even when bad things happen) we need others - in the flesh, besides us. We need people around us who can listen to us with their hearts and talk to us with their brains. We need to have people around we feel we can trust with our vulnerabilities, and our not so socially successful parts of self.
Our society is setup to be economically focused as the social standard, with the catch of deep social isolation during the rough patches. Our families are often broken leaving two adults whose wages now maintain two households instead of one. Our elderly are left in nursing homes because being 'a carer' is not economically viable and people are too busy engaged in their economically useful lives. Blah blah blah...
This is why men cannot live as a commodity alone.
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| Photo by Paul Clark https://picasaweb.google.com/paulclark7559 |
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