How to Change the World

So some of you may be wondering why oh why is Eric being so quiet lately? Is he like Alanis Morisette, that only creates amazing art when times are tough?

Well... no. Not exactly. I've got a new secret project. Ok... it's not so secret. Ok fine! Geez... If you're gonna press me about it: I'm working on changing the world. Well, I'm working on a website that I hope will change the world... but I'll be happy if it helps a few people.

You see, I don't really know where to put this post, because it's partially related to my blog about going to Japan (Blue Cranes Among Cherry Blossoms), and partially related to my blog about wanting to be a positive force in the universe (A New Ideal).

I feel like my life is converged to a point. I want to change the world, and the only way I can effectively shape the world is by changing the behaviour of others, since I myself am not capable of changing the whole world single handedly, one benevolent action at a time. So now in order to change behaviour, one needs to shape people's understanding of the world, because knowledge shapes behaviour. A change in knowledge is facilitated by a change in thinking, and a change in thinking is the active goal of education. Education is manifest through teaching, and I am going to Japan to teach. So that's one line of the convergence I was talking about earlier. 

The other line of convergence is that although I'm skilled at English, and therefore qualified to teach it (kinda), I'm a professional software developer... so what if I use my software development skills to enhance the effectiveness of teaching. Wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't that be the ultimate charity as well? I mean, if my best money generating asset is my software development skills, then surely from a economic points of view, to give of my software development skill is the most valuable contribution to society I can make.

So that's the plan. I'm going to try to create something positive, that helps people to think better, and by helping them improve their thinking, each person can be better at evaluating independently how best to change the world.

"What do You Want to do?"

It's such a simple question, but a surprisingly difficult question to answer. I suspect that some people spend their whole lives without being able to answer this question. I myself struggle to answer it with confidence, and am considering making some significant changes to help me find the answer.

It would probably help if I clarified what I mean by "what I want to do". You see, most people would answer that if they had the choice they would like to read, play video games, watch movies or series, watch sport or spend time with friends and family. But this isn't really the question I'm trying to answer.

A good way of re-framing the question to get to the answer I'm looking for is, if you won the lottery and could retire tomorrow, what would you want to do with you life? I suspect that few people would answer that they want to watch television, or read, or watch sport etc.

You see reading and watching television are forms of escapism. It's the modern equivalent of attending the gladatorial games; it's engaging, relatively relaxing, something to talk about and it helps to pass the time, but would you feel proud of a life spent watching the games?

In modern life, I think that this kind of recreation acts an escape valve in a lot of peoples lives. Besides, you have this do deal with:

• 24 hour day
• -10 mins Get the kids out of bed
• -15 mins pack a healthy lunch for work
• -20 mins Get the kids out of the house
• -15 mins Drop the kids off at school in time (stress!)
• -20 mins Try avoid the traffic and get to work on time (stress!)
• -9 hours  Put in a hard day's work
• manage and maintain intra-office relationships (stress!)
• -20 mins Navigate the unavoidable traffic (stress!)
• -15 mins Picking the kids up after school
• -40 mins Go shopping or go to gym
• -20 mins Groom
• -30 mins Make a nutritious supper
• -1 hour  Help the kids with homework
• -30 mins Meditate, or nurture the spiritual side of self (if you're an atheist, score! You just gained 30 minutes a day above your spiritual counterparts)
• -8 hours  Get a full 8-9 hours sleep
• < 2 hours Concious resting time (if you manage to avoid going to the loo and avoid any human interaction outside of work hours)

So when trying to fit all of this in, it's not surprising that when you do have a few minutes to yourself you want to do something that requires little to no effort, but that is satisfying and provides a brief few moments away from the vigour and relentlessness of modern life.

But then after spending your whole day doing what is required of you, have you really done anything that you really wanted to do?

In order for me to be okay with this existence, the only way I can see myself savouring each day of my life, is to find a job that I love. In other words, a job that I enjoy so much that I would do it, even if I didn't have to work; to live as if I had won the lottery and could now fill my days with anything I choose.

This does not mean that I plan professionally to become a beautiful sunbeam, but rather that I hope to find something to fill my days that I would do even if I won the lottery. I suspect that being a motivated, reasonably intelligent, and somewhat dashing person, it will be possible to convert my passion into an adequate living without being a burden on others... if only I could figure out that that special something might be.

I'm in the (ironically) privileged position at the moment of being unemployed, but with employment virtually guaranteed on the horizon, yet only in 2 months time. Given that I have exams to write during this time, and that I have to pack my life into 27kgs, this time will not be completely restful; however it's a better opportunity than most get to figure out what I want to do.

Introspection

I have a few suspicions about what I enjoy:

• I don't hate programming, which has been my profession up until recently, although I think I overstayed my passion in my previous job which has significantly tarnished my interest in software development. 
• I enjoy learning, although I don't particularly enjoy preparing for exams.  Although I don't have much of a track record with it, I suspect I may enjoy setting up educational material, which will put me in a good position to learn without having the pressure of having to put up with exams. I'll be on the other end of the exam if I choose to walk this dark path >D.
• I have always enjoyed learning new languages. This is something I have "done for fun" sporadically over the last 20 years that I find quite energising, motivating, and not entirely difficult; although there is only one language that I can claim any degree of mastery (and that's Afrikaans, although even then, it's probably only the first level of mastery). This hobby and pastime is something I've enjoyed for over 10 years, and as such I think it would be fair to say that I want to learn languages. I also believe that this can in fact be a livelihood, although I have no idea how much it pays to be a translator/interpreter.
• I enjoy wasting my time writing, when I have the time to do it. Plus it's cheaper than therapy ;).

Reflection

If you're living your life to retire, then I'm going to put it out there and say, you probably don't know what you want to do. Just be careful... when you reach retirement, you may be surprised to be left with a void that you have no idea how to fill. Even worse would be to believe that all that is left is the void. 

It's like having to choose a career when you've never worked; the only way to know if you enjoy something is to try it, and the sooner you start looking, the earlier you're likely to find it.

So... what do you want to do?

Positivity by Abstinence

It's been a while since I've posted in this forum, mostly because of some major changes going on in my life at the moment, and partially because I'm satisfying my blogging-itch by writing on a new blog (Blue Cranes Among Cherry Blossoms) which is related to some of these changes.

Anyway, the point of this blog is to sow the seeds of positive ideological change, and today I feel I have something constructive to share:

I think that sometimes the idea of charity can seem very daunting to people whose lives are spent trying to make ends meet. How can they give, when they can neither afford to spare money, nor time.

I'll give you a clue, how does a business increase it's profit margins? The answer is simple and 2 dimensional: Firstly the company can increase it's prices; in doing this, the profits will automatically be higher (although then you run some risks that are not really related to my illustration). Secondly the company can decrease it's costs.

So what I'm getting at is that our day-to-day experience is affected by others in two similarly obvious ways:

A positive change can be something as complicated as the contribution of a person who has dedicated their lives to teaching the underprivileged in the hope of helping them achieve their dreams, or it could be as simple as a sincere smile from a stranger, laughing at your own silliness, or talking and really listening to someone.

A negative change, on the other hand, can be sometime as overt as witnessing or being a participant in violence, but there are many other more subtle ways of spewing venom into society. Tell me whether any of these sound like something you've seen or done:

• Demonstrating anger at a shop attendant who is unable to satisfy  a customer, not out of negligence or incompetence, but because they do not have the authority to satisfy the customer's need.
• Hooting at someone for being a bad driver. While the hooter is great when attention needs to be drawn quickly, it was never intended as a sonic weapon of mass destruction. Hearing someone making a point that their fellow driver did something wrong at 5am by letting out a long drawn out honk, is really not fun when you're living and trying to sleep in the city. Similarly hanging on your hooter until someone moves at an impasse does little to make them move faster, yet it irritates the everyone around them, leaving everyone feeling worse off.
• Being apathetic, knowing that your actions could improve someone else's lot with no real cost to yourself, but not doing it out of apathy, laziness or as a demonstration of power.
• Shouting, swearing or cursing someone when they've made a mistake (because I think we need to be honest and admit that most times when people makes a mistake, it's not because they are trying to be a malevolent force in the universe.)
• Gossiping. At the risk of being called dogmatic, all gossiping is bad. Really. Gossiping is so destructive, and people don't even realise it. Today in my life, someone divulged that someone they named was sexually active and criticized them for trying to be a responsible person by seeing a medical professional. This dishonours the person while tainting the audience's perception of that person. So here there are two immediate negative effects with zero positive effects, and the audience is probably not going to mention it to the person being gossiped about because it would shame the gossiper and the gossipee, thereby robbing the gossipee of any opportunity to defend himself.
• For guys, whistling, or even simply looking at a woman in a way that causes her to feel unsafe.

None of these things are really acceptable, as in all cases the harmony of society is diminished, with little to no positive effect.

So my message for today is so simple. If you want to change the world for the better, then the easiest, easiest way to do it is to try to decrease the negative impact you have on society.

It's like decreasing your carbon footprint. Few people are actively trying to reverse the accumulation of carbon dioxide by planting trees to break down the molecule, but many people are trying to decrease the negative impact they're having on the ozone by producing less carbon.

Sometimes to be more positive, all you have to do is be less negative.

This week in the car, I allowed someone to cut in front of me. Yes, they were in the wrong lane, but there's a good change they didn't know it at the time. My patience allowed them to correct their mistake without having to manage the manoeuvre while also trying to outwit my attempts to block access to my lane. This meant that they could change into the correct lane safely. In addition to this, if I had gotten upset and gesticulated threateningly, then both of us would have been in worse emotional states.

I also felt a sense of pride at having been so mature, and felt a lot better than I would have had I allowed myself to let out my inner Hulk.

Try it today. And maybe tomorrow. And maybe the day after that. And maybe...

The Critical Mass of Collaboration

Today I listened to a TED talk by Luis von Ahn the creators of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, the text confirmation software used by some websites to confirm that you're actually a real person accessing the page. To the average person, this looks like some wonky, squiggly text with some random curves drawn through it; and you're supposed to fill in what the text says.

An example of a reCAPTCHA image.

The talk was well worth listening to in its own right because it reveals how, when filling out these "human detector" puzzles you're also, without even knowing it, helping to digitize books... And millions of books are being digitized each year through the use of this technology. So as I said; this TED talk is well worth checking out.

One of the comments that I found particularly interesting is his suggestion that one of the historic boundaries to human collaboration has been the inability of people (before the proliferation of the internet) to be able to coordinate an effort involving more than one hundred thousand people.

What Luis reminded me is that measuring the world's population in billions, is a very modern phenomenon. In fact, according to Wikipedia, around 200 hundred years ago, the human population was breaching it's first billion. 

Let's consider Europe for a moment, which is often considered as the focal point of development over the last few thousand years. In Europe at the moment, the population is around 740 Million. This is compared to an estimated 20 million people around 1000 years ago. This is a massive increase by 37 times.

Now let us consider some remarkable and enduring things people have built around the world:

• The Parthenon built in 15 years when the population of the entire city of Athens was estimated to be around 150,000.
• The  Taj_Mahal built in 22 years by about 22,000 people.
• The  Colosseum built in about 10 years by an estimated 30,000 people.
• The  Pyramids of Egypt built 3000 years ago with an estimated 20,000 - 100,000 people.
• (If you can think of more examples, please feel free to comment or message me.)

The point here is that it doesn't take that many people (let's use 100,000 people) to make a big difference. Imagine if 100,000 people volunteered to build a school, how long would that take to build? What would be the effect of 100,000 people volunteering to teach 1 hour a week? What would be the effect of 100,000 people volunteered to make a hospital a beautiful place to be? How long would it take to create a computer system to manage these efforts, if 22,000 software developers volunteered to build it? 

Requiring 22,000 people to build the Taj Mahal is quite a feat; however requiring 22,000 among the 3.5 million people living in Cape Town is only 1 in 159 people. Requiring 100,000 among six billion is only 1 in 60,000. 

The Challenge: Do not let your feeling of anonymity, among the many millions of people with whom you share your city, dilute your own expectation of the effect you can have on society. Be the 1 in 159 people that volunteers, and change the world for the better.

I invite you, if you agree with the sentiment of this article, to kindly +1 this page.

Today I Saw 3 Incidences of Littering and a Brawl

I have approximately a 2.5km walk from my place of work to the place I live, on the other side of the Cape Town CBD.

Today I saw 3 separate people littering.

The first, very close to my office, was an individual among a number of labourers on the back of a bakkie (a small pick-up truck) that threw a almost empty roll of electrical tape into the road. Being the kind of person that has accepted as my responsibility a subset of the problems of society, I picked up the roll of tape and disposed of it in the bin.

On my way to the bin, I passed a guy that threw a piece of paper, quite nonchalantly, into the street. Now, I was still pissed because of the previous guy, so removing my headphones, I rebuked the guy publicly, asking who he expects to pick up the paper he just threw, etc. I feel that this is necessary as (i) it reminds the person that this kind of behavior is noticed and perceived negatively by at least some people, (ii) it hopefully challenges the person to question whether what they did is right, (iii) and I hope it causes the person a tiny bit of public shame that I hope will cause him to feel some guilt at his transgression. My behavior may also have reinforced the perception that whites still live under the misconception that their black neighbors are in some way subservient to their white overlords... obviously this is not my intention, but some people may have viewed it that way.

The 3rd person was just some woman threw a cigarette butt into the road. At this point, I had run out of social currency and simply ignored the person.

Before arriving home I also saw a brawl between what looked like a security guard and a male-female couple. They all looked to be in their twenties and none of them were "street people". I could not tell who was in the right and who was in the wrong, all I know is that it was two against one, with the "authority figure" being in the numeric minority. The fight was quick, violent but without significant repercussions. Being the kind of person that I am, and listening to an Audiobook on morality, I wanted to help; but could not identify who was the perpetrator and who the victim. Instead I watched hoping that the violence would not escalate. Others around me also watched and some even looked ready to join the brawl (as I was), although whose allegiance they would choose was beyond my guessing. The fight was over with the couple leaving the area, and the security guard did not take pursuit.

So, what can we "learn" from all...

Is Cape Town a bad place? No, I don't believe so. In fact I still believe that Cape Town is probably the best place to be in South Africa.

Am I disappointed in these people? Yes, of course. I want people to get along, and to accept their roles of responsible citizens in society.

Are these people bad people. No, I very much doubt it. Careless? yes. Lacking foresight? Yes. Lacking an understanding in how government resources are allocated? Yes.

But more than anything it reminds me that we, as a world society, are not yet at a point at which we can put down tools and say that we have done enough good in this world.

I would love to see the emergence of a society (not based on religion so as to be inclusive to all), that sets an example of how to live their lives as responsible citizens of society. A society that teaches, not about morality necessarily, but about economics (and a million other disciplines) so that people can be brought to understand that the money spent cleaning the curb could have been spent feeding a child, or building a school, or creating a place of psychological healing.

But if a society like this is built, who will join it?

So What Am I Getting At? Part II of II

Ok, so I'll admit the previous post ended somewhat cryptically.

So what am I getting at then, with all that obscurity about Supermarket chains?

Well... there's a reason you don't see Pick n Pay, Shoprite and Woolworths working together to deliver the lowest prices at the highest quality.

The problem is not that these corporations have a reason to conspire against the consumer (ok, there's profit, but let's ignore that for now). Rather, there's a brand associated with each of these companies, and this brand needs nurturing, and the strong image of a brand is easily diluted.

If Woolworths started supplying some very cheap items (lower quality items), one could misperceive that they are dropping their standards. Similarly, if  Shoprite started including some high quality (and more expensive) items with the rest of their low priced stuff, it would leave some consumers with the impression that their prices are becoming "out of reach" of their customers.

Similarly, although I believe that most people that volunteer for a good cause are well intentioned, I also believe that there is an element of religious branding that goes with their good deeds. I think there is a perception, a misperception, that working collaboratively across religions can somehow dilute the apparent righteousness of the act of generosity.

To phrase this scenario less abstractly, if there is a Christian orphanage, then it's clear that it's the compassion of Christian people, presumably inspired by a Christian god, that has brought hope to someone in unfortunate circumstance. If the orphanage was run by Muslims and Christians, then I think some people would be left confused, in the same way that some consumers are confused when they find unexpectedly expensive/cheap merchandise at their favorite supermarket. Is it the Christian god or the Muslim god that has brought hope?

So now, my suggestion for building a better society is as follows:

1. Respect People that Try to Do Good

Respect that not every good person will agree on your ideology. Accept that this does not diminish the good that person does.

2. Do Good for the Sake of Doing Good

When contemplating doing something good, please consider doing it in a religion free way. This action is inclusive; it opens the circle to those that are not part of your religion, not part of a mainstream religion and even those that are not part of any religion.

3. Teach Only When People Ask

Some people seem to do good because they want to teach people what they have learnt about being a good person. I understand this, but I don't agree with the technique of doing good as a means of enticing people to listen to a message. If you are a real leader when it comes to spirituality, then I believe people will be drawn to you.

As an illustration of the point, the religion I'm most interesting in finding out about is Buddhism, because I love it that Buddhists seems so unpretentious. I've never met an evangelist of Buddhism, yet I'm attracted to the religion because of the way in which its members behave.

In Conclusion

So as a challenge, live your life in such a way that people are led to ask your opinion on spiritual matters.

If the above-mentioned principles are adhered to, then I think it will be much easier for people to collaborate across ideological boundaries; because the volunteers will be doing good for the sake of doing good. They will specifically not be trying to broadcast a signal. Instead they will be making themselves available to those in need of spiritual, intellectual and perhaps even physical nourishment.

I believe that if people lived their lives in this way, the world would be one step closer to becoming a more ideal place.

So What Am I Getting At? Part I

So, what am I getting at here?

Well, what I'm trying to do with this post is stimulate a conversation about morality, about government, society and life in general by highlighting some observations about the way we all behave, and challenging whether or not our behavior is sensible.

Obviously I cannot do this all today, as I'm supposed to work on a Latin assignment tonight, but maybe I can get the conversation started.

In particular, a big issue I want to discuss is why various religions and organisations cannot seem to get along. And then I want to take it one step further and broadcast a proposal that may help us all.

When I imagine a perfect world, I see a Christian man and a Muslim woman working together to offload bread off the back of a truck, like builders passing bricks. The bread is being passed on to a retired Hindu man that is slicing and buttering the bread before passing it an atheist teenager that is adding the slices of tomato and cheese before handing a completed sandwich to a vegetarian African child of Asian descent and his Xhosa friend.

These volunteers doing the "work" in this scenario are all operating at Level 4 in the hierarchy of morality I discussed earlier this month. Let's call these people the Resource Benefactors, in other words, these are the people that have the ability to share some of the abundance of their resources with others.

The children, for the sake of completing the symmetry in the story are at Level 2, they do not have an abundance of resources to share with society. In fact, they don't even have enough to feed themselves. This doesn't make any less valuable members of society, in fact they could be the resource super-benefactors of the future, if they are given the opportunity to grow.

But I digress, the point is... why don't people from different ideological backgrounds work together in this way. In fairness, there probably are isolated cases of this kind of collaboration, but my observation from a Christian background, is that Christians will get together with other Christians and do this kind of thing... but wouldn't it be better if we could pool our resources... Economies of Scale and all that?

I don't know the answer to this question, in truth it probably cannot be answered; but I think a factor in answering this question can be found by looking for clues in the behavior of supermarket chains...

Give it some thought. ;)

Focusing on Commonality

So what can we agree on when it comes to right and wrong?

I think it is appropriate to divide morals into levels of acceptance. The reason for this is because while it seems obvious that stealing is wrong, not feeding your children is a greater crime than theft. If you have children and no food, and you are really unable to find work nor earn enough to eat (which is a reality for some South Africans), then surely we cannot criticize someone for stealing enough to feed their family?

Level 1: Survival Level: In a society in which people are fighting for survival, the following foundation level of morality still applies:

1. Do not rape (there is never a good enough reason for this)
2. Do not steal for profit
3. Do not kidnap
4. Do not physically force someone to do something they do not want to do
5. Do not murder for any reason, other than as a form of defense
6. Do not cause someone harm for no reason (to me, this is the very definition of evil)
7. Do not sell people (seems obvious, but it wasn't for a very long time)

Level 2: Members of a society not fighting for survival can extend their morals to include the following:

1. Do not murder
2. Do not steal
3. Honour your contracts
4. Accept responsibility for your own actions
5. Do not cheat
6. Do not practice revenge
7. Minimize your harm of animals

Level 3: For members of a society that have more than they need

1. Do not be a burden on society

Level 4: Make the Circle Bigger

1. Accept responsibility for society. i.e. Work towards solving the problems of society, not just those problems that effect you directly
2. Recycle
3. Sacrifice some of the abundance of your resources for the betterment of the lives of others

Level 5: Minimize Harm

1. Vegetarianism
2. Drive a hybrid car instead of a purely petrol car ;)

I believe I am at level 4 in this list. I believe that it is better to be vegetarian, than to eat meat, but at this stage I still eat meat and have no intention of becoming vegetarian anytime soon. I include it in the hierarchy of morality because what I'm trying to do here is create a hierarchy in which people can find A level of morality on which we can all agree. While some people may feel it's important to not eat meat, I think that we can all agree that's it's not morally better for us to eat meat, than not to eat meat.

A New Ideal

I live in South Africa, a wonderful country filled with people with all kinds of religions, diets, colours, languages and philosophies. South Africa consists of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims to mention only the blockbuster religions; it has 11 official languages (last time I checked); it is home to Khoi San, Xhosa, Zulu, descendants of the Dutch, descendants of the English,  descendents of the French, and descendants of the Portuguese; and many, many other cultures and peoples.

Living in a society like this, helped me to realize that knowing the difference between right and wrong, is not always an easy process. How do we decide, what is right, when my next door neighbor cannot find it within him to agree with me. And once we reach an impasse, surely it wise the consider that perhaps it IS him that is rights, and not me. Just because I think something is true, doesn't make it any more true that my neighbor's opinion; because to him, he thinks his opinion is true too.

So lately I've been thinking... maybe we need to step outside the boundaries of our own perception of truth, and try and find a new truth. We as a nation have been able to define a legal constitution despite our differences. Perhaps we can do the same thing for morality. Perhaps we can establish a foundation of commonality on which we can build with unified purpose, for the betterment of society.

I believe it is possible to change the world into a better place, by doing the following:

• By focusing on the things what we have in common (philosophically)
• By tolerating what we don't have in common
• By accepting as our own the responsibility for change
• By accepting that others will not accept this responsibility, and not letting their rejection diminish our responsibility
• By building up, instead of breaking down
• By creating... (that's it, just creating)