#empathy #perspective
#empathy #perspective
A friend of mine posted this on FB today:
"When confronted with someone whose “normal” is not our “normal,” we are forced to confront the most frightening prospect of all: that there is no such thing as “normal.” Just the accidental cultural moment we happened to be born into, a cultural happenstance that never existed before, and will never exist again.
We resist difference because it requires we acknowledge that the culture we grew up with as “normal” is just a momentary accident. It requires we accept that the world we were born into will never be the same as the world we die in. The longer we live, the more we become interlopers, even in our home towns. But, if we’d let it happen, also, the more we will learn.
...someday, someone will look back and think, “Those were the days! That was what was normal!” And that person will be wrong. And that person will be right."
(which, side note, led me here and here, but that’s a story for another occasion)
While another friend of mine emailed me today and talked about having to unfriend someone on FB today because of racist comments on a friend’s timeline related to what’s going on in politics today...
In some respects, I think that tools like Virtual Reality could be a real help in teaching people to learn to acquire a less judgeful and more peaceful mindset-- take a look at this article: The Virtual Reality Renaissance: How Learning in VR Will Inspire Action Like Never Before
... of course, technology is never the panacea, VR could be a great tool in the arsenal of the one thing if anything would help solve this problem--- education...
Education has the power to change the world... that is truly one of my core beliefs...
I’m encouraged by organizations like following as well as articles that I’ve tagged #empathy on delicious
StartEmpathy.org
ActionSprout.io
RootsofEmpathy.org
So while it's very telling that the largest factor of predictors for Trump is education- or lack of education that is- there’s still the hope that rationality will win out...
And if all else fails there’s:
How to move to Canada – Google search spikes after Donald Trump Super Tuesday success
More Posts from Krillion and Others
Octopuses
Octopus slips out of aquarium tank, crawls across floor, escapes down pipe to ocean
Swarms of Octopus Are Taking Over the Oceans
Octopuses may indeed be your new overlords
Deep Intellect
It’s not aliens... but...
Not a Drill: SETI is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space
some of my related posts
Kardashev Scale (tumblr post)
Fermi (weebly page)
other old, related tumblr posts
http://krillion.tumblr.com/post/140353978285/aliens
http://krillion.tumblr.com/post/137384284965/update-aliens-maybe
http://krillion.tumblr.com/post/131250260930/aliens
Fermi
I’ve been meaning to post these links together for a while now, fascinating stuff!
Where are all the aliens via Quartz
Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” II: Questioning the Hart-Tipler Conjecture via Universe Today (Paul Patton)
Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” I: A Lunchtime Conversation- Enrico Fermi and Extraterrestrial Intelligence via Universe Today (Paul Patton)
11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox via io9 (George Dvorsky) The 7 Least Plausible Solutions To The Fermi Paradox via io9 (George Dvorsky)
This Animated Explanation Of The Fermi Paradox Is Fantastic via io9 (George Dvorsky)
Where Are All The Aliens? This Short Video Offers Some Solutions via io9 (George Dvorsky) this is part two to the previous link
Side note... George’s posts on io9 are awesome, if you like science, I definitely recommend you check them out!
update: The Surprisingly Obvious Way We Could Hunt for Alien Life
another update:
The Fermi Paradox
I <3 Jimmy
I'm a big fan of Jimmy Kimmel, the other day at lunch a friend and I shared some of these videos. Had to make a post and share!
I'm F*@#cking Matt Damon
I'm F*@#cking Ben Affleck
Matt Damon Takes Over Jimmy Kimmel Live
Jimmy Kimmel Auditions for Every Matt Damon Role
Matt Damon: "I'm still F@ing Sarah Silverman"
Apologies to Matt Damon
Ben Affleck Stays Loyal to Jimmy Kimmel
Robin Williams Helps Matt Damon with His Monologue
Matt Damon Interviews Gary Oldman, Amy Adams and Nicole Kidman
Celebrities Congratulate Matt Damon on the Show
From the Snowden, Poitras, Greenwald AMA on reddit
SuddenlySnowden EDWARD SNOWDEN 3499 points 2 hours ago*
"What's the best way to make NSA spying an issue in the 2016 Presidential Election? It seems like while it was a big deal in 2013, ISIS and other events have put it on the back burner for now in the media and general public. What are your ideas for how to bring it back to the forefront?" (masondog13)
Snowden's reply:
"This is a good question, and there are some good traditional answers here. Organizing is important. Activism is important.
At the same time, we should remember that governments don't often reform themselves. One of the arguments in a book I read recently (Bruce Schneier, "Data and Goliath"), is that perfect enforcement of the law sounds like a good thing, but that may not always be the case. The end of crime sounds pretty compelling, right, so how can that be?
Well, when we look back on history, the progress of Western civilization and human rights is actually founded on the violation of law. America was of course born out of a violent revolution that was an outrageous treason against the crown and established order of the day. History shows that the righting of historical wrongs is often born from acts of unrepentant criminality. Slavery. The protection of persecuted Jews.
But even on less extremist topics, we can find similar examples. How about the prohibition of alcohol? Gay marriage? Marijuana?
Where would we be today if the government, enjoying powers of perfect surveillance and enforcement, had -- entirely within the law -- rounded up, imprisoned, and shamed all of these lawbreakers?
Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determing thour futures.
How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens' discontent.
How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.
You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn't to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where -- if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen -- we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new -- and permanent -- basis.
Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.
We haven't had to think about that much in the last few decades because quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and there throughout history, we'll occasionally come across these periods where governments think more about what they "can" do rather than what they "should" do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what is moral.
In such times, we'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends."
Some of what I come across on the web... Also check out my Content & Curation site: kristentreglia.com
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