“…at the end of the day it’s really impossible for one person to make a difference and thus the more clearly, absolutely, utterly, irrevocably, unchangeably clear it is that it is impossible for you to make a difference and make the world better… the more you must!”
I recently stumbled upon an interesting documentary titled “Stress, portrait of a killer”. Dr Robert Sapolsky is showing there his results of the research on baboons which he led for many years. As much as the stress factor is an inseparable part of the message in his research, for the purposes of this blog I would like to underline one of the observations: change of the cultural/habitual behaviors CAN be achieved within a one generation of baboons! Why wouldn’t it be possible then with humans?
Have a look at this speech, which he gave at the Stanford University graduating class in 2009. Among all the interesting points about the similarities and differences between human race and other animal species, we find messages which can strike us, make us reflect on ourselves and teach us the lesson about the nature of change.
This beautiful message coming from Dr Sapolsky speech is addressed however to people whose mental construction was already shaped by years of being raised in the outdated system. System where the values and beliefs on how the society works is not actual in the present times and is getting dangerous for the future generations. I’m not saying it’s too late, it’s never too late to learn and relearn, but our systems of beliefs have strong roots in what we’re growing up on. Moreover the more we face that something couldn’t have been done differently harder it is for us to think that it actually CAN. And it really can. Otherwise we wouldn’t move as a civilization. More even – we would not have a civilization!
Yet some changes can take billion years, evolution of one species for example, and that’s totally reasonable and normal. But in the face of a danger time is not our ally, its ‘resource’ is becoming deficient. We need to find the efficient ways of dealing with problems not only of now, but also and even mainly – of the future.
How much easier would it be if we could grow up with different values systems and where what we think now seams like a huge mountain which is almost impossible to jump over, would be just a simple, natural way of doing things. How to make it happen then? We can create that world starting from those for whose future in fact we’re working on – our children.
Here I would like to introduce another remarkable man – Sir Ken Robinson and his talk on ted.com about the issue he addressed in his newest book – The Element
For those who would like to see more of Sir Ken Robinson here are couple links more:
http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJAL21IE9fY&feature=related
http://vodpod.com/watch/1354819-video-sir-ken-robinson-the-element-psfk-com
