Hurricane Brings People Together
As Hurricane Sandy descended on the U.S. East Coast, a group of 350.org activists, a global climate campaign, gathered together and unfurled a giant parachute banner with the words “End Climate Silence” to increase awareness of the climate crisis. If there is something to be learned from all the natural disasters befalling humanity in recent times, it is that natural disasters force people to put their daily routines aside and come together to help each other in the presence of a much larger nature coming down on us. Here at MutualResponsibility.org, we would like to collect any stories, pictures and/or videos of how this hurricane has brought people together in order to emphasize that one way or another, people will need to come together beyond any seeming differences, and the many inspiring stories of human connection when faced by natural disasters shows us how such connection is possible. Please add your stories, pictures and/or videos in the comment section...
Our New ‘We’ Generation
On May 14, 2012, Greater Good Science Center Faculty Director Pr. Dacher Keltner delivered the commencement address for graduating psychology students at the University of California, Berkeley, asking them to look for the best in themselves and in humanity. In 1986, Ivan Boesky, of insider trading fame, gave a graduation speech on this very same Berkeley campus of free speech and Nobel laureates. That day he declared, ‘Greed is healthy.’Below are some powerful excerpts from his speech. A year later in the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko famously turned that phrase into, ‘Greed is good.’ This battle cry was part of a pendulum swing seen before in history, one that expressed a certain view of who we are as a species. We are selfish gratification machines. Happiness is found in material pursuits. Other people’s concerns are not our own. Altruism is an illusion. The bad in human nature is stronger than the good.” Can A System Teaching Self Interest Gain At The Expense Of Everyone And Thing Provide Us A Beneficial Society? That phrase and its accompanying ideology was the mantra of my generation, and scientific studies show it brought us: Rises in loneliness and a loss of friends; A loss of trust in our communities and institutions; Increases in narcissism and decreases in empathy; Spikes in anxiety, to the point where 75 percent of Americans now say they are too stressed; And the recent economic collapse, an insulated one percent, and levels of inequality in the United States that are literally shortening the lives of our citizens.” Science Reveals The Depth Of Connections Between Humans And The Power Of...
Interdependence: A Property Inherent In Nature
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think. –Gregory Bateson, English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. –John Muir, naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. ...
Breaking Down The Borders Between People
To Be Alone, Or Not To Be Alone? “The individual in his sociological aspect is not the complete organism. He who attempts to live without association with his fellows dies. Nor is the nation the complete organism. If Britain attempted to live without cooperation with other nations, half the population would starve. The completer the cooperation, the greater the vitality; the more imperfect the cooperation, the less the vitality. Now, a body, the various parts of which are so interdependent that without coordination vitality is reduced or death ensues, must be regarded, in so far as the functions in question are concerned, not as a collection of rival organisms, but as one. This is in accord with what we know of the character of living organisms in their conflict with environment.” If We Learn The Depths Of Our Interdependence And Embed In It The Power Of Cooperation, Could We Steer Towards A Brighter Future? “The higher the organism, the greater the elaboration and interdependence of its part, the greater the need for coordination. If we take this as the reading of the biological law, the whole thing becomes plain; man’s irresistible drift away from conflict and towards cooperation is but the completer adaptation of the organism (man) to its environment (the planet, wild nature), resulting in a more intense vitality. Man’s general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include...![Helium By Tom Kyzivat [Animation]](http://www.mutualresponsibility.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/helium-tom-kyzivat.png)