Conscious Action Network

I found this website promoting conscious, loving action around the world.

To me, their work rings true. It’s not simply about a few people in the ’1st world’ helping those poor souls in the ’3rd world’. It’s about human connection. It’s about everyone taking action to make a difference. It’s about service in its truest form.

I support their work. Check them out at their website.

How do you take conscious action in your daily life? What’s one small thing you do with regularity that creates positive change, no matter how big or small?

Gaining and Holding Power Over ‘Others’

Colonize a new place. Claim that the ‘others’ who were there before were simply savages and barbarians. Claim them as less than human.

Establish government and write the laws that favor you. When ‘others’ disobey the laws, throw them in jail. When the ‘others’ are forced to disobey laws due to conditions that only support people adhering to your way of life, throw them in jail. Claim that they’re in jail of their own doing, rather than due to any sort of system.

When you become the majority, hold onto that majority by any means necessary. Halt any sort of immigration so that you can claim and hold the majority power. Use majority rule as another basis to perpetuate your way of life.

Silence opposition by alienating ‘otherness’. Encourage those who ‘assimilate’ and ‘integrate’, and push those who choose to practice ‘otherness’ out. Use majority and legal rule to do this.

A uniform population is easier to control. Diversity leads to diversity in thought, which only heightens the risk that people may disagree with you and take you out of power. Do everything in your power to make that disagreement seem divergent to nationalistic ideals. Make those who dissent seem like they’re against your government. Appeal to those who agree to take out the ‘others’ and to dissociate with them.

Remember, power over human rights.

Constantly evolve. You never know when your next threat will hit. Take care of it before it even has a chance to rise up.

Pick Up the Fight

Racism is alive and well. Sexism is still kicking and fighting. Religious discrimination strolls along to the beat of its own drummer, without an end in sight.

Each of these cases deals with a majority (or powerful minority) exerting control and dominance over the oppressed.

The Market’s Evolution

Right now, I’m reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. In one chapter, he mentions that the most effective way to communicate and get people to do something is to address their personal wants and desires. In the blogosphere, that might be engaging with another blogger’s materials, directing people to her site, and supporting her work rather than simply promoting your own blog.

So I began thinking about where the market’s headed (Seth Godin mentions this in his daily email. Sign up for it). Carnegie mentioned that those people who give selflessly, who consider others’ desires and then their own (not excluding your own, but be aware of both sets of desires), will succeed the most.

Changing Lives and Living Well

The Problem

It’s so easy to go through life just completing the task at hand quickly without much thought. It’s a product of the education system, where we’re simply told what we need to do next, and what kind of performance achieves what type of grade. Doing the minimum for the grade gets us through school just fine, and we’re gently urged toward thinking passively about life.

Yet how would we feel 5, 10, 20 years from now? Looking back on our lives, would we feel comfortable knowing that we did the bare minimum, trying to chug through each day to get to the next task to chug through?

Leaders We Need

We need leaders of need, not leaders of want.

A leader of want just wants to lead for the look. They want to lead for the resume. They want to lead to exert control and power over others. They might contribute to an organization, but only as long as it serves their purposes. The organization, to derive any benefit from a leader of want, must tailor to his needs. This gives rise to false forms of leadership.

Girltalk

I saw a video by a feminist asking critical questions of movies. There are three questions to ask to measure the female presence in a film, called the Bechdel Test.

1. Are there 2 or more women in it who have names?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?

You’d be surprised by the number of films that fail the test. The Lord of the Rings series, the Batman series, Up, Toy Story, to name a few that surprised me. Watch the video here for a full list.