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The Conscious Consultant Hour

Tuesday, April 26, 2016
26
Apr
Facebook Live Video from The Technology of Consciousness TEDxUpperWestSide2016

 
Facebook Live Video from The Technology of Consciousness TEDxUpperWestSide2016

 

The Technology of Consciousness TEDxUpperWestSide2016

A Holistic Approach to the Challenges We Face Today

How to Solve The World’s Problems

For my first TEDx talk I thought I would speak about something I am passionate about - Consciousness - in relation to something small - The World’s Problems.

As you can imagine, my fascination with consciousness – that awareness of our connection and place in the cosmos – started at a young age.

Back in third grade, I remember a particular winter afternoon. It’s the first snow of the season. Of course, being a young boy, I decided to go out and play in the snow. I run out of my house in the Bronx and around the corner to see if my friends are there. But before I have a chance to do anything, a much older kid tackles me from behind. He proceeds to stuff snow in my face until I couldn’t breathe and then I start to cry. After a while I could hear his friends telling him to stop, but he doesn’t, not for what seems like an eternity.

He finally gets off of me and I run back home crying. I fall into my bed, asking “why?”

In fifth grade, I remember my Elementary school taking everyone to a local park for our annual spring picnic. All the grades are there, and the kids are running around the rocks and trees as kids do on a sunny Spring day.

As I stand around minding my own business, when one of the 8th graders, an older brother of one of my classmates, comes up to me and says something about a falling rock. I look up at him and he pushes me back. I stumble back and trip on a tree stump.

I fall to the ground, fracturing my wrist in the process. It all seems to go by so fast. Although my arm hurts, it quickly goes numb. Eventually I get back to the school where my older brother picks me up and we go to the emergency room.

All that time sitting there the only thing I can think about is “why me?” Why did this older kid, whom I barely knew, pick on me?

Life was not always about being picked on as a kid. There were wonderful days when I would rush home from school to watch the Apollo launches. I would dream about what it must be like to travel in space and go to the moon.

Star Trek, of course, quickly became my favorite TV show. The promise of the future, and advanced technology, bringing us to a place where we no longer fought with each other, but instead focused on self-improvement and exploration, appealed greatly to me.

The only thing I ever dreamed of as a kid was growing up to be an astronaut.

The Technology of Consciousness

Unfortunately, by the time I made it to high school I quickly learned that all the astronauts had to have 20/20 vision and came through the Air Force. That pretty much crushed my dreams of going to space, but my fascination with technology continued.

A couple of years later, I was introduced to computers. The concepts of hardware, software, operating systems, and programming, appealed to me as I could use them as analogies of how we function as people. Our brains are the CPU, our ears, eyes, nose and mouth are our input devices, and well, you know about the output devices.

More importantly, I finally got some insight as to why those kids picked on me years before.

As humans, we are all affected by our environmental programming, which comes from our families, our friends, our schools, our religions, and society at large. Those bullies picked on me because they viewed me as weak, as an easy target, as someone who would not stand up to them. So it was ok for them to do what they did. That was their level of consciousness at the time, or their programming.

This analogy satisfied my question of why for the moment, and I continued to be seduced by the promise of technology. Going to college at first I was a Physics major, and later, I became a computer science major, preferring to use technology to make a living.

In our society it is easy to think of technology as a modern day savior. We think technology will cure all the world's ills. What I have learned over the years is that by placing our focus purely on technology, we are merely treating the symptoms, not the root cause.

What happens when we do that?

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Today we have everything from iPhones to iPads to iCars and iHomes. While we may be more connected than ever before virtually, we are having a harder and harder time connecting to each other in reality. Technology can divide us, not bring us together.

This is not just an issue for us here in the United States. This was pointed out to me quite poignantly a couple of years ago when someone called into my Internet radio show – you see, I actually do like technology – during a show where I was talking about negotiations. I spoke about how everything in life is a negotiation, even getting our family’s attention at the dinner table.

Then, in the middle of the show a gentleman called in to say how much he related to what I was saying, because he has trouble getting his teenage children to stop looking at their phones during dinner. He had a bit of an accent so I asked him where he was from, to which he replied New Delhi, India!

People are not that different around the world. It’s easy to get addicted to the technology bug. Technology will save us! Technology will free us! Technology will make our lives and our world better! Technology will solve all our problems!

This may sound a little extreme, but I am sure you know someone personally who feels that way. Or perhaps it is you. I know at one time, I did too.

Yet, focusing on technology to solve the world’s problems is like a doctor prescribing an artificial heart for someone with high blood pressure. Sure it can help, but shouldn’t we look at the root of what caused the problem in the first place?

Einstein’s famous quote, how we cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that got us into it, truly resonates with me. There’s something more we need, that higher level of awareness or consciousness, to truly fix things.

What I have learned is that a higher level of consciousness can also bring us together.

But what happens when we approach issues without that higher level of consciousness?

Let’s take a look. Want to solve the pollution crisis? Get this gadget that pulls pollution from the air to refill your printer’s ink cartridge! Granted, ink cartridges are ridiculously expensive, but can’t we find a better way to fix the world’s pollution issue?

Or maybe you want to cut down on the amount of plastic we use by instead using these disposable plates made from pig urine? I’m not so sure...

Or perhaps you want to save energy by cooking your dinner with this lovely gadget that uses the fumes from your car to cook your steak. It gives a new meaning to smoked ribs.

I particularly like this one – fake trees to suck up carbon dioxide from the air. This was invented by Wallace Broecker, the scientist who originally coined the term “global warming.” Is there something wrong with the idea of planting real trees?

In Seth Godin terms, these ideas are all broken. They are broken not because they don’t do their jobs effectively. They are broken because the level of consciousness that went into them was the same level that created the problems to begin with.

My contention is that only by focusing on one aspect of our lives, raising our consciousness, can we create holistic solutions that bring us together to solve the world’s problems. By focusing on raising people's consciousness, we ensure that not just one or two problems are solved, but all of them!

So what does it look like when we focus on raising people’s consciousness first to find solutions?

In 2007, Annie Leonard put out a 20-minute video about the way we make, use, and throw away Stuff, called The Story of Stuff. It started a conversation around the impact of our consumer-crazed culture on people and the planet.

She set about raising people’s consciousness on some normally hidden aspects of our consumer-centric economy, and has touched millions of people from around the world in the process. Now that little video has brought people together into a whole new movement.

One comparison she gives in her videos is how in one community they offered gift cards to people who recycled their plastic bags. Nice idea, but eventually these people will spend their gift cards to buy more stuff, with more plastic packaging, which they will take home in more plastic bags.

Compare that to another community where they worked to ban the use of all plastic bags and replaced them with reusable canvas bags. One solution only dealt with the symptom, while the other focused on the root cause, the plastic bag, and came up with a solution that involved the entire community.

Another example is a wonderful organization called Seeds of Peace. They bring together teenagers from opposite sides in conflict areas such as the Middle East. Their goal is to eliminate war, but knowing that hatred and misunderstanding are learned at a young age, they focus on raising the consciousness of the kids by bringing them together for a summer of playing sports and learning peace-making skills.

The intention is that when these kids grow up they will turn into the global leaders who will be less likely to go to war because they see their neighbors as fellow human beings, not just enemies. A very low tech solution indeed.

It’s a longer term view on the issue of war, but one that strikes at the very heart of the matter. Once again, it brings people together to understand each other so they are more connected to each other.

If we look at the major issues that face the world today, war, violence, crime, climate change, poverty, they are all branches of the same tree. If we purely focus on technology to solve one issue or another, it is like pruning one branch of the tree while the rest grow wild.

The root cause of all of these issues, and more, is the level of consciousness we bring to our lives. From the words we use to whether or not we recycle, to the businesses we work at, our consciousness dictates how we show up in the world, and how the world responds. When it is developed and nurtured, it brings us together to solve problems.

It can inspire us to cure poverty – something that brings us together - instead of building a better bomb – something that divides us.

People created these issues, and granted, we did the best we could at the time. Now we understand more, now we see the implications more, now we feel the impact in our own lives more. In other words, now we are more conscious.

By fertilizing and watering our consciousness we ensure the fruit will be plentiful and sweet. Perhaps, at some point in the future, we won’t have to be concerned when our children, or our grandchildren, run out of the house to play in the snow

My love of technology is still here. My love of an ideal future is still here. What has changed is my awareness. Now I can see that the greatest technology we have, is our consciousness, our hearts, our connection to each other.

I know you may be asking yourself just how do we go about raising our consciousness? Well, that will be the topic for my next TEDx talk. Thank you!

download this episode of https://tabmaron.s3.amazonaws.com/talkinga/recordedshows/The+Conscious+Consultant/The+Technology+of+Consciousness+TEDxUpperWestSide2016.mp3

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