Can we transform our world based solely on our common interests?

"Our righteous minds were designed to unite us into teams, divide us against other teams and blind us to the truth ... we need to step out of the moral matrix and cultivate moral humility.. we are passionately involved to improve our world but we are also passionately committed to the truth ... and use our passionate commitment to the truth and turn it into a better future for us all."

 - Jonathan Haidt - Author "Happiness Hypothesis" (TED talk on moral roots of liberals and conservatives) 

Do our debates about God's existence or non-existence really important?  Our convictions are important to us (believers or non-believers) but can we work together based on our common interests?

From a theistic perspective,  we believe that God is immaterial, a spirit and that God had endowed each human being a distinct spirit.  Our faith teaches us and also our hearts and minds tell us about our personal and social duties to love one another.   Our life can be happy or sad, we can help or oppress other people.  When someone gains power and commits injustice or atrocities to other people and somehow escape judgment  in this world, we realize that injustices and crimes should not have happened  because we should have been fervent in our social duties, we should have setup systems or are now helping setup systems that prevent injustice and crime from happening.  We also believe even if a person escapes earthly judgment, this person will not escape God's judgment and the spirit that survives (the intellect and will) will be punished accordingly.  Individually, after doing our best to live justly within the sphere of our influence,  we die and we return back to God in peace.

From an atheistic perspective, we don't care if God exists,  God is immaterial, not important.  We know however that in our hearts and minds, we have a personal and social duties to love one another.  Our life can be happy or sad, we can help or oppress other people.  When someone gains power and commits injustice or atrocities to other people and somehow escape judgment in this world, we realize that injustices and crimes should not have happened because we should have been fervent in our social duties, we should have setup systems or are now helping setup systems that prevent injustice and crime from happening.  When an unjust person dies, the only thing that matters is that we prevent injustices to happen in the future.  Individually, after doing our best to live justly within the sphere of our influence,  we die in peace.

Looking from our world history and our debates, I believe these perspectives can agree on many things (among others):

1.  We are free and we can choose to love and be happy and help other people to be loved and be happy as well; and because we can be weak and abuse our freedom, we also empower a government system to prevent or deal with our weaknesses.

2.  We want to know and live by the truth and let justice prevail.  We want to be responsible and hold others to account and make sure our systems is just, equitable and earth-sustainable.

3.  Failing to live to the good ideals of God or failing to be responsible in our personal and social duties will oppress or kill other people.

4.  Using the idea of God or the idea that there is no God to empower people to oppress or kill other people is a bad idea.

5.  Using our identities as God's people, or using our imperfect personal integrity as a moral authority in dealing with other people instead of the power of our common ideas does not seem to work in our cooperations.

Maybe we need a new word for God because whatever is our belief and conviction, we are essentially talking about the same idea.

Many people feel uncomfortable when others say that we abandon "God" because we don't realize that the transcendence of God also means our humanism - caring concern for our fellow humans. Many people are also worried that our belief in God will cause us to blindly follow God and oppress other people which is a contradiction, although sadly, it can happen in some places - but this situations are extremism, the trajectory that we should and can avoid in all kinds of beliefs and convictions. 

We can translate and contribute the power of our beliefs or non-beliefs and agree on our common interests that will help setup systems that prevent, at the most,  gross injustices and crimes from happening.  We can enable systems that resolve crises and transform our economy into a just, equitable and earth-sustainable global home.

The power of our convictions can strengthen our resolve to energize the hearts and minds of many people and achieve a critical number of caring and inspired people enough to transform our world.

Discussed in Ted Conversations: Unity of beliefs, Global Ethics, Semantics of Beliefs, Convert more people before we can transform our world?

A possible solution to poverty and world hunger. Venus Project. Global Redesign Initiative.

I like many of the ideas of Venus Project.  It helps to create a clear vision of our future that most people can picture and work on.  In the current state of the world today, I am also concerned on how we are going to resolve our crises and at the same time transform our world to an ideal world like the Venus Project envisions.  According to the Weforum.org, the efforts of the UN needs more speed and cooperation and we need to transform our WWII era institutions.  The forum had initiated a Global Redesign Initiative worked on by top leaders of business and government and they identified that one key driver of transformation is "Hope".  The Venus Project could bring more hope and more help from people. (thevenusproject.com, bit.ly/GRedesign)

I think what most people are realizing right now is to enhance the power of our hearts and minds to hope and work for solutions.  I believe that by energizing and directing the power of our hearts and minds, it can have a positive fundamental impact to our world today.  It will eliminate a lot of waste, improve our efficiencies and help transform our world. 

What  is the common idea that most people would understand could help transform our world?  It's the power of our hearts to love and be happy.  Think of the state of a heart that is in love.  When we are truly in love, we are highly inspired and motivated.  We can energize more people, we turn our hopes and trusts in delivering the right political mandates, join the reform movements and help influence our systems to transform in our economic choices (buying habits). 

     
How can we have a critical number of people with energized hearts that can transform our world?   Everyone have a heart and the way to energize our heart is to stimulate it with the force of love that will keep it loving and energized.  It is like the forces that keeps powering the particle and galactic systems.  We give the force.  We give our love.  But not just any kind of love.  We give our true love, our unconditional love.

True love is loving one another the way our heart is designed to love and make us happy.  When our heart is used other than to love another person (we love things, we hate), we have problems and we are not happy.  When our love is used other than to make other hearts happy (we love with conditions, we are buying our love, love is transactional - there is no real love), we have problems and we are not truly happy.  When our heart is unloved and unhappy, we have problems. (we don't want to be sad, we buy our happiness) .  When we stop loving altogether, we have big problems (we don't care, we are selfish).  When our heart and our love is misused, we are not happy and it brings out our weaknesses - we don't care, we can lie, we can steal and we can destroy.

We don't have to be sad, we don't have to be weak.  We have our love, we have our relationships, we have our family, relatives and friends.  Our global family needs help.  We can start giving our love, we can start energizing hearts, we can start inspiring minds.  We have the power to hope and trust.  We have the power to reinvent and innovate.  We have the power to transform our world.

http://bit.ly/ThePowerToTransform 

http://www.ted.com/conversations/3219/how_can_we_energize_the_hearts.html
http://www.ted.com/conversations/3331/a_possible_solution_to_povert.html

How can we have a world that lives in liberty, justice and truth?

I think justice means giving someone or people what they are due.  Our world today as it is has many problems and injustice is everywhere even within developed nations  (See globalissues.org,  weforum.org/issues,  un.org)

There are many people from all over the world that are aware of our global problems and are now contributing into transforming our world into a more just and equitable global home.  But because many problems still persist, we need more people to help transform our world.  We need everyone to maintain our fragile peace and contribute in transforming our world.

Our world today is closely inter-connected that we the people of the world deserve a distinct earth citizenship that along with it goes our basic rights of food, shelter, education, healthcare and security, together with our basic moral rights of freedom, justice and truth.  We empower the government to take care of our large global family, we empower businesses to take from mother earth and provide for our needs.  We now need to transform these systems to equitably take care of everybody.

But how will each of us help transform our global home starting from where we are today?  There is no quick solution but what we need is a transformation.  First we maintain our work stations - we keep turning the wheels of the industries, we maintain our government and economic systems, we avoid the global risks that may further weaken our global home.  While doing all these, we transform ourselves and the systems of our world, we transform our world into an equitable and sustainable global home.

What I believe is the key for transforming our world is the power of our energized loving hearts.  When our hearts are energized, when our hearts are truly loving and caring then it powers the rest of our faculties - our power to trust and hope, our power to seek the truth and justice.

How can many people understand the power of energized loving hearts?  Most of us  can see or imagine the picture of happy family life.  We know that what makes this family happy is the loving care of parents towards their children.  The hearts of our parents are constantly energized by the love that they share with each other.  The only kind of love though that will sustain our parents and our family is unselfish love - unconditional love, real love.  The love that we can give one another without expecting anything in return.  The love whose only desire is the happiness of the other person. This is the only kind of love that can truly satisfy the deepest need of our hearts to be happy.  After empowering our families and friends with this love, we then give it to our global family.  We give it in our political mandates, we give it in our economic choices.

Why is our heart the key to transforming our world?  I believe that our heart is designed to love and our love is designed to make other hearts loved and happy.  We do this in our relationships and whoever gives true love receives the same kind of love and happiness also.   

When our heart is used other than to love, we have problems.  When our love is used other than to make other hearts happy, we have problems.  When we stop loving altogether, we have big problems.  When our heart and our love is misused, we are not happy and it weakens our  powers to hope and trust, and it brings out our weaknesses - we can lie, we can steal and we can kill. 

We empower our governments to provide for our security and protect us from our very own weaknesses but would not it be easier for people and government to enhance the power of our hearts to love instead?  When more hearts are energized, we eliminate our excesses and wastes, we improve our efficiencies, we transform our world.

Most people of the world grew up in different beliefs and people believed in their hearts that this belief is what will bring them true happiness in this earthly life and to the life after death.  I don't wish to debate the merits of any religion but what I believe we should  agree to be concerned about is how do we direct the power of our beliefs and convictions in helping us live a very happy life here on earth?  A happy life for ourselves and for the entire people here on earth.  How can our beliefs empower the very key of our survival - the power of our energized loving hearts?  

Our scientific discoveries are always important but when the hearts of people are not also fed with true love, it will not matter what our great minds would have achieved if our good will, if our hearts are starving.

There are many powers in our world that are beyond our knowledge and control - the unknown "dark" matter and energy, quantum forces and inner dimensions of our existence.  We are just one planet among the trillions of planets in the galaxies and our universe.  Yet what matters most and what we know and can control today is the power of our hearts to right our own planet.

What is the true measurement of success?

I believe true success is first measured by how well we are trained in the principle of unconditional love or real love. When we know how to give and receive real love, then we are satisfying the deep need of our hearts to be happy. Our true happiness is not based on our wealth and power or the lack of it. We are successful because our heart is constantly energized by our relationships - the only true source of success and happiness.

Wealth and power is just an external identity that is connected to the system of government and business that we empower to take care of our fellow human beings. But even on this level, when one is in the position of power and wealth and realize and work on the true purpose of this position - to take care of the bigger family (all the people being served), no words would describe the joy that would go back to that person of power and wealth with the multitude of love and respect received back from the people that are served well.

http://www.ted.com/conversations/123/wealth_and_power_have_been_our.html

What motivates you? What makes you happy?

I am deeply motivated when I'm loved unconditionally. I am loved unconditionally when I'm loved because of (1) my core identity as someone of great worth, importance, of great value (as conscious human being); (2) my core identity as someone of great intellect; and (3) my core identity as someone of good will.

I don't feel happy and motivated when I am loved because of my external identities - the way I look, the way I talk, my education, my current behavior or my affiliations, my wealth and power or the lack of it. These identities change and when the love that I receive is based on these then I know that this kind of love will not last, it will not make me truly happy. When I am secure of my inner worth then it's easier for me to understand the level of appreciation and recognition (or the lack of it) that my current external identities deserve. It is easier for me to improve myself to my greatest potential.

I believe that all human beings are essentially the same in their core identities. We are only different by the extent that our core intellect and good will is maximized to its greatest external identities. The people that inspire and motivate me are the ones that have achieved their greatest intellectual potential and at the same time contributed their good will to many people.

Some people maximized their greatest intellectual capacities and amass great wealth but not at the same level as their good will. It is motivating for me to know nonetheless that I can provide for my basic needs and can have the joy and happiness that my family and my friends we each provide in our relationships.

I realize also that I'm part of a global family with members that could not even afford basic necessities. I have hope and motivation to help my global family knowing that we the people have the power to motivate more people in transforming our system of government and business into an equitable and sustainable global home.

http://www.ted.com/conversations/3223/what_motivates_you.html

Have you reinvented yourself to reinvent the world?

What if we wake up one day and care to know what's happening in our planet earth and after doing basic research and knowing that our world is in crisis, will we have the desire to reinvent ourselves and our world? What if there are many more people like us realizing the dire state of our world and therefore willing to help. Where do we channel our desire to effectively move our world into an equitable, sustainable and happy global home? 

I believe the fundamental problem is the shortage of energized hearts in our globe. We only have enough energized hearts to make our world comfortable to many people but for how long? How about the rest of our global family? How about the future? Truly energized, happy and content hearts can only be powered by our relationships - our beliefs, our family, relatives, friends and co-workers. We energize each other by affirming our core identity as someone of great worth (as conscious human beings), great intellectual capacity and intrinsic good will. 

We continue to energize others by helping each other aspire to their full potential - we appreciate each others' accomplishments and improvements of our external identities - our looks, education and moral integrity. Our hearts are made to be happy and as long as we feed our hearts with false form of happiness, we will not last. But we don't have to. We have our family, relatives and friends. We have our hearts. We can start giving our love, we can start energizing hearts.

http://www.ted.com/conversations/2878/have_you_reinvented_yourself.html

...

The Power to Transform our World

(Updated 05-24-2011)

What is happening in my life today? What is happening in my family? My neighborhood? My community? My Country? My Planet Earth?  Yes we always hear that we should first improve from within but what kind of power it takes to transform my personal world?  What kind of power all earth citizens can channel to transform our global world?  Can we have a bright future ahead of us?

A Happy and Simple Family Life

We have a family. We have a home, we have food, we live. Parents go to work. Parents teach our children how to give unconditional love. Children are sent to school to know how life works and earn an education so they can work and socialize. In our family, as we give our love unconditionally it makes us really happy, and when we receive an unconditional love it makes us even happier. We love even more and the love spreads.  Many families learn how to love unconditionally from their family traditions, beliefs (churches), convictions, ideologies, personal experiences and experiences of others and for some from their near-death experiences.

We socialize with our neighbors, we enjoy life. We continue to give unconditional love and the grown-ups form a new family and the children are born. My family is happy, my neighbors are happy, we live in peace. We trust each other and we hope that after we die, we had left the world with our new happy families living in peace.

What is Unconditional Love?

Loving unconditionally means affirming someone's core essence and giving our love and appreciation without expecting anything in return.  We look at the person, separate that person's core essence of intellect, good will and great worth as a conscious being, we separate these intrinsic presence from their current status - the looks, affiliations, competence and perceived reputation.  Recognize and affirm this person's core presence - that this person is of great worth and very important, that this person is innately a good person and then express sincerely that you love and care for this person and the only reason you are doing this is because you want this person to be happy.  This is what we call deep love and respect.  

Then for any achievement and improvement you notice in this person you give your deep appreciation, a short positive comment, a simple note.  If this person has any need that you can fill, give it without expecting anything in return.  These are the only kind of love that satisfies the deepest desire of our hearts to be happy.  A person affirmed, a love given freely and a love freely given back.

When our love is given with conditions (the expected value given back to you for giving your love) the happiness that we experience is based on that value.  When this value is no longer available, then our happiness is gone.  We are living in a kind of love that is an imitation of the unconditional love, the real love.  Imitation love is temporary, it does not satiate our deep need for unconditional love. 

Unconditional love is as essential as any of our needs to live, like water, like air.  All our frustrations, our anger and its ripple effects in our behavior and the behavior of other people is a result of ourselves lacking unconditional love, lacking a deep and satisfying happiness.

What Does Most Family Life Looks Like?

Many of our families today have problems! Why? because we can stop giving our love unconditionally. When we stop giving our love unconditionally we start giving our love with conditions, then our love weakens, then we stop giving love. We stop trusting each other and we feel hopeless. We become selfish, we lie, we steal and when we despair and our hearts is filled with hatred, we destroy each other. We are hurting each other and we are not happy. But our heart is meant to be happy so we substitute our need for happiness with illegal drugs and other apparent forms of happiness.   


When a family falls apart, what happens to the children?  They suffer the most.  We help the suffering children by forming another family or form a different kind of family like single parents, grandparents or relatives taking over as parents, in adoptions, or orphanages.  As our families and our children grow, life gets harder and when we are not constantly renewed with the power of unconditional love, many children are left at the wayside brought up deficient in true happiness that only an unconditional love can give.  Our children may have earned a formal education or acquired a particular skill but if they are lacking training in unconditional love, they will have a hard time dealing with the deep emptiness in their hearts, in their own selves and in their relationships.  


We can still survive somehow because of the spark of the romantic love that make us love unconditionally.  Romantic love helps us form a family but if this romantic love is not constantly recharged with the power of unconditional love, it can hardly weather the difficult challenges of life.  The cycle of children growing deficient in unconditional love just keeps on going.  This has fundamental impact on the way our world looks today.

Imagine the impact of the unconditional love we give to our family today - our father, our mother, our sister, our brother, our son, our daughter, to our relatives, to our friends, co-workers and even to a stranger.  We look at them in the eye and clearly affirm their core nature - that they are of great worth, they are intelligent, they are good-natured, they matter, they are important and then tell them that we love and care for them and the only thing we wish from them is their true happiness.  We hold their hands, we pat them in the back, we shake their hands firmly, we hug them, we kiss them.  We genuinely appreciate their accomplishments and their efforts, we inspire them to aspire to their full potential and we give them any help that our own personal resources can provide, all without expecting anything in return.  


No matter how our lives look today, we can always infuse any place any time the power of unconditional love.  If we don't feel we are capable of giving unconditional love then we first learn to give unconditional love to ourselves.  We look at ourselves in the mirror and do the same process until we are energized enough to give it to others.  We just do it and we will see the magic happens, energizing hearts around us and around the world.

Understanding How Our National and Global Family Works

We have a big and growing family - our relatives, neighbors, the state, our nation, our global home. We develop, empower and trust a system of government so that all earth citizens can have a home,  food, healthcare, education, work and protection from our very own weaknesses. We develop, empower and trust a system of businesses so that it can take from mother earth and provide for our needs. The business make money out of our purchases, they earn a profit, accumulate it and re-invest it in improving their own business or invest in other business that cares for all earth citizens.  


We pay all the taxes to our government.  We pay taxes based on the income we earn and we pay taxes through our purchases.  When we buy a product, the price includes the tax that the business pays to the government.  We can have a big family because we empower a system of government and business that provide for our needs. We are the government because we empower it. The businesses exist because we empower it. We empower and direct this system so that all earth citizens are supposed to be living in peace and very happy.

The Real Global Family Life

But do we know that we have serious problems?  According to the United Nations and other sources, over twenty two thousand (22,000) of our children die every day.  Over 900 of our children die every hour, or 15 every minute.  A child dies every 4 seconds in our global family today, every single day!  The reasons our children are dying are the ones we have the power to prevent like poverty, hunger and easily preventable diseases and illnesses.

Almost half the world — over three billion earth citizens — live on less than US$2.50 a day.  Look around our family, our neighbors, look around our global home, search the internet and we can see that we are empowering our governments and businesses in a system that causes extreme human crisis, great economic risks, unsustainable use of our mother earth, and a system that leaves us unprepared for devastating natural disasters. Our system is causing great inequalities and many of us are not living in peace. Many of us are not happy.

We have problems because too many fellow earth citizens are not giving their love unconditionally. Many of our fellow earth citizens are helping and giving their unconditional love and care today but the problems still persist, growing and some problems getting more critical because many more of us have stopped caring, many have stopped trusting, many have stopped hoping.   


Imagine developing a unified information and political social network infrastructure to help guide our reform movements and our transition into an economic system that is equitable and sustainable.  Imagine how the hearts of our fellow earth citizens can be moved to help and to hope by having a clear understanding of our problems and of our core power to transform our world.

The Global Effect of Scarce Unconditional Love

Our tax money spent for ensuring our global security is over fifteen hundred (1500) billion US dollars (1.5 trillion USD). This amount does not include the cost of our justice and local law-enforcement systems.  This is huge and it is growing because many of us have stopped giving our love unconditionally. When our love is weak we become selfish, we lie, we lie about being happy in illegal drugs and other apparent forms of happiness, we steal, we don't trust, we despair and ultimately we kill and destroy. We bring ourselves to work as law enforcers and engage our scientific minds in developing control mechanisms so that we minimize and prevent the worst effects of ourselves not giving unconditional love. 


Imagine the collective impact of many citizens loving and caring unconditionally. Imagine how many of us will it take to reduce our spending by forty (40) billion U.S. dollars, enough to provide for the weakest citizens among us, or by giving directly our resources to our citizens living in extreme poverty and extreme injustice.

The growing inequalities and unsustainable use of our mother earth is also a result of ourselves not giving our love unconditionally. We are not giving our unconditional love and care when we don't make sure that the system of government and business that we empower care for every member of our global family.  We don't care when we don't help deliver a clear mandate to our political leaders. We don't care also when we don't make our economic choices (like a simple act of buying a product) help influence businesses to transform their systems . We don't care when we do not participate in our election process, join our fellow earth citizens' movements or contact directly our political representatives and deliver our clear mandates.

When we don't care to deliver a clear mandate, we leave our system running into the wrong direction - capital investments are not used wisely to serve our basic rights of food, shelter, healthcare, education, work and security. Capital investments are not used aggressively and widely to protect our mother earth. Imagine what a strong mandate would do in bringing a unified strategic transformation of our systems. Imagine what would businesses do when their consumers are demanding for products marked as equitably contributing to the welfare of our fellow earth citizens and caring for mother earth.

When we don't care to deliver a clear mandate, our weak system is breeding illegal trade valued at the staggering amount of over thirteen hundred million U.S. dollars (1.3 trillion USD). Impossible? Imagine what the dynamic combination of the following factors could do (1) illegal drugs and most of the "apparent happiness" businesses (2) corrupt administrators (those we empower but we are careless to hold accountable) (3) organized crime (4) weaknesses in our global economic system and (5) a mixture of unloved, unhappy, poor and uneducated fellow earth citizens. These fellow earth citizens came from our homes.  

Imagine giving our unconditional love to our families and close relations and to a lot of strangers wandering aimlessly. We do these concretely by giving them our economic support, deep appreciation and genuine care.  We give them our unconditional love.

When we don't care to deliver a clear mandate, we are served with products that are using mother earth unsustainably; our scientific knowledge is lacking and preparations are inadequate in avoiding devastating natural disasters; our students are not educated and guided enough to design, discover, innovate and improve our systems.

The Secret Power to Transform Our World

Imagine what our unconditional love can do in inspiring the minds and energizing the hearts of our children to do better than we do now and change our world to a better place, our children's place. Imagine our children unlocking the great potentials from the deeper understanding of inter-molecular and quantum forces. Imagine what places we can go to grow our earth family with the expanding reach of our space explorations.

Imagine what our world looks like after we have infused more unconditional love into our family, relatives and friends and even to strangers. Imagine contributing and translating the power and language of our beliefs, convictions and ideologies into the principles of unconditional love, hope and trust. We may still have our personal weaknesses, but we would have put in place effective healing measures. Imagine leaving a shared legacy and a shining vision of our children living happily and in peace in our new global home of tomorrow!

Fellow earth citizens let us understand, refine, expound, translate and spread these ideas.  Ideas that will improve our own lives, work efficiencies and push our transformations.  Today we give our unconditional love.  Today we energize our fellow earth citizens.  Today we energize our world.  Today we transform our world.

For updates go to:  thepowertochangeourworld.blogspot.com  or  bit.ly/ThePowerToTransform