HumanKindMedia

Crisis news: bad, good ... What's in it for us?

I'm in a state of confusion today over my media vows. Having set an intention last year to "be the change" I wanted to see in the world, I vowed to create and consume only news media about possibilities, not problems; about openings, not closed-ended event coverage with opinion after opinion on what it all means -- and no day-to-day political cat-fighting.

A few weeks ago, I broke down and subscribed to the New York Times online, just to get the "essentials," because friends were starting to be weird about me and the news. They'd say, "Did you read that...?" and then they'd wave their hands and go, "Oh, I forgot, you don't have TV, you don't read the paper." It was like a stigma. Plus, people had forwarded to me a few wonderful mainstream articles filled with exciting ideas and hope for the particular direction in human evolution I'm voting for.

Yesterday, I hadn't gotten to my Times headlines yet when someone asked me if I'd heard about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. I actually felt the impact of the news in my body. I guess I've become so light and footloose, not hearing about the kidnappings, murder trials, and the play-by-play "race" coverage for our next president. I was blindsided by the news of the violent murder of someone I thought represented hope in a part of the world that I would want hope for.

Peace and Connection: HumanKind Challenge #3

Okay, here it is: We've got something really, really cool for you today! You and I (and you and you and you) are about to demonstrate, in clear, vibrant detail, the global desire for peace and connection. We're asking each of you to put a virtual pin on this funky -- but functional! -- Frappr map, and click on "Email this" at the bottom of this post to send the invitation to your friends and relatives FAR and NEAR, til the map is full of people around the world who are all saying, "Yes, we want to consider new possibilities for peace."

Think of it as a new kind of peace demonstration. (When we thought of that a week ago we could barely contain ourselves. Get it? It's a peace demonstration!) It's a show of hands around the world, visible connections among many people all voicing that single intention that we've been talking about at HumanKind: to consider the possibilities for more peace in our families, workplaces, communities, countries, and our shared global community. (If you're new to HumanKind, check out "Why we started" on the right side of this page.)

A collage of oneness: Think about it

In September, we started HumanKind Media with a "what if." What if, now that it was possible for everyone in the world to be connected, thanks to new communication technology, what if we were finally at a place where humans could solve centuries of problems, just by using those connections to voice a shared global intention?

This month, we've been feeling pretty warm and fuzzy, like we're gearing up for tackling big things next year (more on this later). Our friends at the Global Oneness Project have been roaming the world looking at how we look at being one -- one family, one species, one with our world -- and they recently released a wonderful collage of some of their work (see video below). It's got some more "what if's" in it, and it also asks what's possible, which, as you may know, is our favorite question. On this December 24th, Liz and I wish you peace and connection, and the possibility for much more of that in the year to come.

Don't hold back, do the dance!

Busy, stressed, over-stimulated, under-appreciated, or just feeling the need to dance for no reason at all? Don't hold back! Jump out of your chair! DO THE DANCE!

Know someone who would love to do the dance? Pass it on.

Many thanks to Brad and Matty and KarmaTube for so many good videos.

We're taking a couple days off to celebrate Christmas with our families, but we'll have a sweet something for you on Monday, and we're back full force on Wednesday with an awesome surprise. Seriously, we cannot wait to show you this super cool thing. In fact, we can barely keep ourselves from telling you what it is! You'd better stop reading before we slip up. Get away from the computer! Do the dance!

New word in my peace vocabulary: pronoia

Have you heard of pronoia? According to author Rob Brezny, it's the opposite of paranoia. It's when you assume that the universe is constantly trying to shower you with unexpected blessings. (Thanks for that tip, Audrey.)

The story goes that Brezny was driving along a California freeway when he found himself embroiled in some road rage with the female driver of a Jaguar. He became furious, then unexpectedly calm. He tossed into her car an eight-pointed star made of hundred dollar bills, a treasured talisman made for him by a friend.

[Ed. note: If you click that link, you'll have to ignore or forgive all the instances in which these two people almost cause car accidents, and remember that we at HumanKind don't literally advocate throwing things into strangers' cars while driving, especially at freeway speeds. The lesson here, though, is bigger. Bear with us.]

Junk mail vs. love mail

I have four active e-mail accounts: one business, one HumanKind, one personal, and one that I use as a catchall for registering on news sites and shopping sites that require a valid address -- you know, the ones that send "valuable" coupons and updates on a regular basis. Ugh.

The result is I get a LOT of mail, and a lot of it ends up deleted, unread. But I've been way more careful lately about what I subscribe to, since I know that even the time spent deleting an email is time better spent reading something I actually value. One recent addition to my subscriptions is Camfed's video blog (a vlog, for you non-techies).

Peace: It's not just your imagination

In a small art museum at a university near my house, I came across a piece of “Grapefruit” – not the fruit, but an art exhibit from the ’60s comprised mostly of word paintings. You stand at the wall, read the words, and have your experience. It’s pretty amazing.

At that point I had been thinking about starting HumanKind Media for about three months, dreaming daily of healing the world by tipping the balance in favor of the idea of it, by getting enough humans to imagine, to believe that they could.

So when at the exit I noticed a bowl of buttons that said “Imagine peace,” I took one. Also near the exit was an article about how this exhibit, Yoko Ono’s “Grapefruit,” first shown in New York, was said by John Lennon to be the inspiration for the immortal “Imagine.”

The little green laptop that could

What would I do without my laptop? It's even on the kitchen table with me at lunch. I use it dozens and dozens of times a day: Google, Wikipedia, my four e-mail accounts, my calendar, my various networks of friends and work contacts ...

Being connected is like having running water and working lights. Living without it now wouldn't just be an inconvenience, I'd be seriously disadvantaged. I would get much less freelance work, I'd be in touch with far fewer people, and I sure as heck wouldn't feel like I could connect with anyone, anywhere, on any topic.

So when I read about One Laptop Per Child and its Give One, Get One program -- through Dec. 31, if you donate one of their highly simplified, wirelessly connected XO laptops to a child in a developing country, you receive one for a child in your life -- I wanted to stand up and cheer. (A lot of HumanKind makes me feel like that.)

Hometown Baghdad

When I'm reading a news story about Iraq, I always wonder what the heck the normal people there are experiencing and I wish they knew that I, and everyone I know, don't mean them harm. I'm thinking of the people who own the stores, who live in the houses, who argue passionately about religion and politics, and who at the end of the day just want to be able to go to the market or to school without feeling terrified. What's their story? Why does it seem missing from the rest of the news? I start to wonder if the only way to know is to go to Baghdad and find out.

Then I think of car bombs, kidnappings, and beheadings, and I feel terrified. Even reporters with whole news organizations behind them aren't getting many of those stories out. Those stories must be impossible to get! Those people must be impossible to interview!

But an amazing thing has been happening to me since the start of HumanKind. Almost as soon as I write off something as impossible, I hear that someone is doing it. "Hometown Baghdad" is a web-based TV show that follows three Iraqi young men -- Adel, Ahmed and Saif -- through daily life during some of the worst of the violence. A production company in New York City called Chat the Planet has been editing and airing the footage, filmed by Iraqis, and hundreds of thousands of people have been watching it online and now consider themselves to have three Iraqi friends. The series premiered in March 2007 with the matter-of-fact "Brains On Campus" and the last episode went live in June. I was going to write some of my favorites in here, but there are too many. You'll just have to find your own.

Investing in connection: An interview with the founder of MicroPlace

When HumanKind first launched, I wrote about Kiva, a microcredit institution that lets you lend money, as little as $25 at a time, to entrepreneurs in developing countries all over the world. You don’t earn interest on your loan, but it does get repaid.

There’s a new organization that takes this idea a giant step further, turning microcredit lending into a sustainable enterprise by letting investors earn a profit. It’s called MicroPlace, and it just launched in October.

“It was really just me and a business plan when eBay brought it in-house in June 2006, and it became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay,” says Tracey Pettengill Turner, who came up with the idea for MicroPlace after doing a fellowship with the newly formed Grameen Foundation in Bangladesh in the late 90s; Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in microcredit.