Daniel Lubetzky

Interesting UC Berkeley study on human compassion…

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According to this provocative study, children from the very beginning are predisposed to help others – we are wired to be KIND to others. 

Interesting article about a calorie-restriction study financed by NIH.

Further to my earlier post about Apple’s cool ads, I got hooked on the songs in there and tried to find the original videos.  For Chairlift-Bruises I came across the video immediately below and was struck by it.  It seemed so cutting edge and professional, yet so casual and young (uncomfortably so for my wife – and I can understand why as a parent I’d also be concerned).  Was it possible that kids did this on their own? Or was the video director so sophisticated as to make it look so down-to-earth? It turns out it was all done by an 8th grader who is quickly building a following.  And it’s actually far better than the official video! You factor in these considerations and you understand why we are just in the beginning of what will be a revolution in content generation, with repercussions for business, culture and society that we cannot begin to comprehend.

Interesting…

Japan : The  Ukita family of Kodaira City
Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or  $317.25

Italy: The Manzo  family of Sicily
Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or  $260.11

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I just finished watching Happy-Go-Lucky, directed by Mike Leigh.  Initially I was jarred by the ebullience of the lead character, played with Golden-Globe-winning excellence by Sally Hawkins.  But I stuck through it and discovered a well-executed character study of a woman with an eternally sunny personality (and her impact on others, including an irascible driving instructor solidly played by Eddie Marsan). 

If you think about it, it is pretty rare that we delve into understanding "excessively" positive people, compared to studies of darkness.  Yet the introspection pays off, and really delves nicely and naturally into her philosophy of life, human nature, and social conditioning.

Why do some of us live our lives wanting to be liked by everyone? Is it insecurity (from lack of affection, or from just biological need to be liked)?  Is it a Karmik outlook of life (treat others with warmth and it will come back to you)? Is it our genes? Or our family history or ethnic culture (living in the shadow of the Holocaust)?  Or our upbringing and parental models? Religious teaching? Is it guided by altruism, self-interest, or just being oneself?

And is it a "good" way to live our lives? Can we make this a better world by making others smile? (and doing unexpected acts of kindness for them – or KINDINGS – as KIND is encouraging with KINDED?).  And what drives some people to care so much about others and about making this world better, while others are less so motivated?

Do we yield better people if guided by social awareness and concern or by internal values?

One of my best friends never cares what anyone else thinks about him – and it doesn’t make him any less ethical or upstanding, quite the opposite in his case. He has a solid core of values, does what he feels is right, and doesn’t wonder how society will receive it.  He also doesn’t lose sleep.  But maybe he is a rare case? Certainly there are many examples of people who also do not care about what others may think and who are not role models for society.

Others like me are always wondering how their behavior and actions will be judged by others, very self-aware, introspective, and insecure.  In some ways this insecurity and self-consciousness can be a positive trait that makes us strive to be better and improve.  But it can also increase occasions of grief and worry, and more dangerously for people in positions of power or responsibility (say a politician leading a nation), it can cause them to bend to political/social pressure and potentially reach a wrong but ephemerally popular decision.  And just like in the other strand, there are also examples of self-aware people who may obsess about how others will see them but just put up fake mirrors and end up harming the world no less (think Bernard Madoff).

What is interesting about Poppy, the lead character in Happy-Go-Lucky, is that she is eternally positive and deeply committed to making those around her happier, WITHOUT judging herself or taking herself too seriously.  She is forgiving – of others and of herself.  That is quite interesting. And not as easy to emulate. She seems genuinely interested in healing the world – and in her own way, she quite succeeds at times.

Beyond values and outside impact, as far as our individual journeys in life, it certainly must be the case that having a positive outlook must yield greater happiness and joy in life than seeing life through gray. 

In very deep ways, attitude is destiny.

In an interesting note about the gap between knowledge and learning, Gidi Grinstein pointed me to this amazing video that highlights the quick pace at which information is growing.  This year, more information will be created than was generated in the prior 5,000 years.

In reply to my post, Mapping Your Life’s Journey, I got a really interesting email from my friend Jonathan Harris, the cool artist whose work is as fascinating as this note:

There is a centuries-old idea coming from the Hindu tradition, of "The Akashic Record", which is said to be metaphysical plane where all information is stored — every thought, action, interaction, and idea that has ever occurred.  A kind of cosmic filing system. 

There is debate over whether The Akashic Record is already completely written (and we simply follow it, like actors following a script), or whether it gets updated every instant with new information (and free will exists).

It is believed that when we dream, we access the Akashic Record, and that this is why dreams often contain either future prophecies, or seemingly random events from long ago that haven’t been thought of for years (because in the Akashic Record, all things are equally simple to access, like searching on Google, or, perhaps more appropriately to dreams, clicking "random page").

It is also believed that tapping into the Akashic Record is our source of energy, and that this is why our bodies need REM sleep to function (REM sleep being the time we access this record).

Whether you believe in this stuff or not, I agree with Daniel that we are fast approaching a time when our technology will essentially create the Akashic Record for us.  You could say that this will happen in "another dimension", as the meta-layer of aggregate online information could be considered as such.

I am very interested in seeing this happen, and believe that it will (if the world doesn’t end first, that is).

Jonathan

P.S. Apologies to any purely deductive rationalists on this list

Often in life I am sure you wonder if you had met a person before. Have our lives crossed paths before a more recent episode? When was the first time we met? Where we together in a particular place – whether at school, or at a conference, or talk, or during our childhoods? Could you even rewind a part of your brain and see what you said to that person when you first met them? I daydreamed about a sci-fi future where the “grid” could keep all your information about every place you’ve been, and what your thoughts and experiences and interactions were like.

Then I realized that a lot of this could already be done rather easily NOW.

All you need is a GPS mapping device with a time-mapping database. Your iphone or blackberry could have an application that every 5 minutes or every hour or every day (depending on your preferred settings and subscription/storage capacity) could store your GPS location at that particular time.

Three or thirty years later, you could wonder openly with your date, or an employee or a colleague if you had met before, or where your lives had intersected before, and you’d just sync your databases to find the crossing points, if any, that exist. You could make some pieces private or public, open or closed. But you’d have the ability to trace back steps at important points, quite simply.

At a formative moment, you could even connect a blog journal or video entry to your geo-time-map.

This would not only be fun and functional, but also existentially transformative.

We always are “surprised” at how small this world is, and how enormous a coincidence it is that you find a friend in a far away random place.

In fact, I have always thought that the laws of numbers make these encounters quite probable, and most likely there are many more opportunities for interactions among people you know, whose paths you cross by milliseconds without knowing it. If you could look at your grid and compare it with a friend’s, or with all your universe of friends, how many amazing “coincidences” wouldn’t you find – when you opted to?

Perhaps Doppler or GoogleMaps or Facebook or a new web/business platform you have could take advantage of this idea.