Lev Grossman wrote an excellent article in TIME on how recommendation engines work (ie, for Netflix movie selection, and for Pandora radio selection) and how they can start turning us into boringly homogenous & predictive blockbuster consumers of the same stuff within one safe space.
Alas, when it comes to movie choices, the options and parameters are so many, that suggestions I get are often unreliable.
In a prior blog entry here, I shared an insight from Linda Gallanter, that your goal when raising children should be to give them purpose, rather than for them to be "happy." If they find purpose, they will find happiness. If you obsess with their immediate happiness as a goal, they may just end up spoiled or feeling self-entitled.
But in reading an excellent article from Andrea Elliot, The Jihadist Next Door, and in remembering some concepts from a novel (OD&H) I started trying to write a decade ago but never finished, one should remember that "purpose" is a double-edged sword. A lot of the most dangerous people find purpose alright - to destroy or vanquish or eliminate.
So the caveat should be that Purpose needs to be Positive. And since Positive is a normative word whose definition may be in the eye of the beholder (ie, for Omar Hammami, killing infidels in Somalia is a Positive act), I would define Positive as rooted in TOLERANCE AND RESPECT TOWARDS OTHER HUMAN BEINGS - or the golden rule of doing onto others as you would want to be done on to you.
Elliot’s article also highlights that the same attributes of leaders in society - being smart, curious, introspective, analytical, charismatic, determined - can be dangerous if not rooted in tolerance.
Ironically, Omar Hammami was brought up by a Muslim Dad and Christian Mom. So you would think that environment can foster diversity and respect (as it has in countless of PeaceWorks and OneVoice team members I have met over the years whose parents come from different backgrounds. Alas, in this case, the teachings that Hammami got from Islam and from Christianity were exclusionary and rooted in intolerance. He would be warned by his Mom’s family and church in Alabama that he would go to hell unless he accepted Christianity. And he would be warned by his Father’s family in Syria that he would be cursed if he didn’t accept Islam. Repressive religious upbringings can boomerang and catch up with your offspring.
Elliot’s article also points how "a constant in Hammami’s life [is] his striving for another place and purpose."
The zeal to transcend one’s life in this world - the search for purpose and posterity - can be the greatest inspiration for good or evil.
At KIND, PeaceWorks, and OneVoice, almost by definition, I think our team members are motivated by the desire to make the world a better place, and the empowerment and joy comes with the journey.
And yet I found myself really intrigued to follow this video that breaks down these implicit assumptions and helps us all understand - what drives us, and how can we "manage" in the most motivating and empowering way?
By Adeena Schlussel on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky
Check out these disturbing old advertisements to realize just how far we’ve come. It’s ridiculous that society used to be this way!
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It is interesting that what we are witnessing right now is just simply the digitization of books formerly printed in paper. For over 500 years, books have been written and conceived with Gutenberg’s guidelines in mind (Gutenberg is the inventor of the mechanical printing press).
But since the advent of computers and now of the Internet, so many new possibilities have emerged - and yet the printed world has barely changed. The advent of the Kindle, the iPad and other portable reading devices has so far simply resulted in turning analog print into digital print, while keeping the same linear prose format.
If you stop to think about it, we are stuck in one model that, while beautiful and applicable for much good, is certainly not the only model to serve all potential needs that books can serve.
Over the coming years, the whole way we think of e-books and just "books" will probably change. One day it will not be "surprising" to read, within a book, interactive pictures and images akin to the ones you see in Harry Potter movies - those quirky 3D moving photos within the wizards’ magical newspapers.
And it is also quite conceivable, indeed likely, that multimedia forms will reinvent how we do storytelling and how we provide information. Why stick to just prose, or just music, or just newspaper, or just video? Why not create new models for information that combine elements of them all?
Why assume that a linear story is best? Why think that a book is necessarily different from a video-game? Someone will come up with a book that merges some elements of a game with different endings. Analog examples already exist. And digital multiple-choice endings already exist. But we have not even begun exploring all the new possibilities presented by electronic "readers."
And why assume that a book needs to first be written and published, then read, then auctioned off to a Hollywood producer who then helps create a movie version of the movie? Someone will surely create a way to inform or entertain that combines elements of both - and more.
The potential for reinvention of the "book" is so far totally untapped.
UC Berkeley has done an interesting study about the role of altruism and generosity in human evolution, stressing the importance of kindness to our survival.
While many of the choices on TIME Magazine’s Top 10 lists for 2009 were lame or uninspired, here are a few worthwhile picks:
MOST HILARIOUS VIDEO:
Bonnie Tyler spoof of 80s (Other viral videos: I had already noted great videos including of Susan Boyle, and there are other good ones like this wedding procession, the post-it film "deadline", the mock ad for Flutter that underlines the silliness of the world we live in, and the baby dancing that even my grandmother had forwarded me)
FUNNIEST AD:
Hulu
COOL AND DEEP:
The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.
Also Cool Scientific Discoveries:
I was surfing through TIME Magazine’s Top 10 Everything of 2009 list. While many of their choices seem random and uninspired at best, some gems hidden among their finds included their choice of Adam Lambert’s "Mad World" among their top songs. I read the lyrics several times, pasted below, and listened also to the original Tears for Fears performance (also below).
When I was a kid in San Antonio, Texas, newly arrived from a sheltered upbringing in Mexico City, I enjoyed the song but didn’t relate to it - or understand why it resonated so much among American kids who "had it all."
In Mexico City, in every corner on popular streets there was an indigent kid begging for alms and struggling to survive, so kids that had a home and a family didn’t generally question their lot. Why then, would kids who could eat American cereals for breakfast and go to Malibu Grand Prix feel deprived?
In retrospect, this song hits such a chord with the alienation and loss of meaning that many feel in modern society, primarily in the developed world. Serious challenges of course are faced every day by struggling kids. But much of it also has to do with the framing of those challenges. "How bad do I have it relative to the 30,000 children who literally starve to death every day?"
The search for depth and meaning, and reaffirmation of our special fortune amidst so much wealth and excess, and of our role and duty to find our own way to make this a better world for others, are critical to the health and happiness of future generations.
In very real ways, thinking of others and kinding others (ie, doing conscious acts of kindness for others) gives us meaning and fulfillment.
Mad World lyrics
Songwriters: Orzabal, Roland;
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Goin’ nowhere, goin’ nowhere
Their tears are fillin’ up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
Children waitin’ for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sits and listen, sits and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson?
Look right through me, look right through me
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
A raunchy young world
Mad world
© ROLAND ORZABAL LIMITED;
According to this provocative study, children from the very beginning are predisposed to help others – we are wired to be KIND to others.
