Self Ish
Do you find it strange that once upon a time, it was common knowledge to believe that the universe revolved around the earth?
Scholars who claimed that the earth was not the centre of the universe could suffer persecution for the act of suggesting that the world was not the centre of everything.
Critical minds seemed to be missing something.
The Copernican revolution took place long after Nicolaus Copernicus died.
Copernicus waited until his death to publish the work because of the ramifications. The seminal works on The Heliocentric "Heavenly Spheres" was a revision of a past theory proposed by Aristarchus.
By applying mathematical and physical observations, we were able to understand planets and their relationships. It did, however, take a long time to accept that we are floating around a star that is part of a much larger universe that is mostly unknown to us currently.
Stuck in the Old Geocentric Mindset?
Naturally, many of our minds inhabit the same ancient way of thinking that everything revolves around us. We can only see from a single perspective.
Our reality seemingly emanates from within our bodies, as a result of our interpretation of signals we perceive to understand.
Even if a crowd of people surrounds us, we technically are still isolated in our minds, stuck listening to the inner voice.
Is inner isolation a Problem?
Can we overcome this challenge of single-mindedness?
Communication is more than a skill. It is a lifetime pursuit. It is challenging to communicate our ideas effectively and collaborate in joint efforts.
Language and technology allow us to communicate, cooperate and expand our thinking. With the tools available to us, we can think differently and change the way we perceive the world using our inner dialogue.
Perspective
As modern humans, an artistic response is to train the brain to think from a third-person perspective.
Most of us have experienced this shift of perspective when on holiday.
Taking a vacation exposes you to more of the world and removes you from the inside of your bubble. You see your problems from a different angle. You realise there are different cultures, experiences and forms of identity and communication, beyond your immediate environment.
Eastern cultures may seem more biased towards the importance of family as a single unit whereas Western cultures seem to lean towards the individual as the single unit.
Community of Individuals
Sometimes you need to take the time to look after your number one priority, which is your life. Putting yourself first does not mean that you can disregard the vital role of a community.
Collectively you are part of society, but individually you are somewhat living a single selfish life.
Of course, there are different levels of selfishness.
Imagine you Vaccinate your child to stop them from becoming sick.
Protecting your child seems noble, but perhaps the actual reason is to avoid the personal pain of losing a child.
Is this a selfish act?
Did you have good intentions?
Is this an acceptable form of selfishness?
Make Me!
Our self-interests are also the reason why we cannot make anyone do something.
To impact others, we need to incentivise them to listen, learn or act.
Unless there is an extreme circumstance, like slavery (Which still exists), the person has free will to choose an action and reaction to your orders, suggestions, and commands.
Selfless, Selfish Acts
As a society, we need to understand that in many senses, we are part of a larger collective.
The only way to release yourself from the centre of your universe is to cooperate and purposefully collaborate with others collectively.
There's a wealth of knowledge that people have kindly left for us. Past lives have dedicatedly left behind prosperous expertise in scientific fields such as quantum physics.
These ideas will help future generations even if they take several lifetimes of experimentation and mathematical vigour. Worthwhile achievements can take lifetimes to become practical.
Elon Musk, may not go to mars, but Tesla, the company, most definitely will if the corporation can survive long enough. Space travel may not even happen in our lifetime, but our future generations could undoubtedly be a space race if we, as a species, survive long enough.
It takes a provocative and proactive thinker to remove themselves from their selfish nature for a cause or to develop a masterpiece for others.
Expansive Collective Thinking in 2020.
Currently, the logistics of delivering a COVID vaccine is a priority on all our minds.
Measures are being worked on and coordinated by some of the smartest people in the world to protect our society and our economy.
We will be relying on a collection of some of our smartest minds to firstly control the creation of a vaccine, then handle the logistical and administrative task that lies ahead of us. COVID may be one of our toughest collective challenges in recent history.
Coordination on a Mass Scale
One thing we do tend to agree on is the value of money. For money to have value, we must agree on its worth.
Money helps us work together because it is a form of portable power that can easily communicate value.
Money offers critical incentives to cooperate. You can participate in a shared goal and explore projects that are too large for a single individual to complete. You essentially exchange your value for the power to store and trade the money you earn for other items and services that you want and need at a later time.
The formation of money has allowed people to collaborate and exchange without the need for trust.
If I were a travelling merchant in the middle east, I would much rather take some monetary compensation for my efforts, than a favour to be paid back at a later date by a stranger. (Using the barter trade system)
The removal of the trade barrier makes money a decisive, determining factor of third party trust.
Cash, as an incentive, contributes to effective collaboration because the value of money requires group acceptance. The more people that want money, the more valuable money becomes.
Earning more money generally means that what you do impacts the lives of more people. The people who have created outstanding value often deserve the money because they will likely use it to create more value and impact the lives of more people. The people that impact the lives of many are the same people that serve many.
A person dedicated to service is a person who creates value for others.
Trust Me
Giving people the benefit of the doubt and the decency of respect will help to advance us our species who work together to coordinate, communicate and collaborate to achieve amazing feats.
Being the protagonist of your story can sometimes lead to feelings that others are against us. The lack of trust is mostly unfounded. The reality is that we are not essential or even noticeable in other peoples inner worlds most of the time.
If your reality is a self-created allusion, is it possible to choose how you interpret the world and its fellow occupants? Or is self-administered mind control a far fetched scenario to your consciousness?
Powerfully aware people can control their perception. A responsible human decides to have dominion over their response-ability, to choose how they react to, and perceive any given situation to induce a productive inner reality.
Altruism and Harmony is a Choice.
Is it possible to think from a third-person perspective?
You can overturn your natural impulse towards harmful selfishness. The world does not revolve around us, even if initially it appears that way.
If you think deeply about it, we might be a random character in someone else's story, just as the earth is a rock, among others, that floats around a sun.
To remove our self-centred view that the universe revolves around us, we can shift our perspective by going on a holiday, volunteering to a worthy cause, and working on our communication.
The art of creating value is achievable when we come together and achieve shared goals. You can contribute towards collaborative measures to set up future generations for prosperity. Working together towards worthwhile causes is paramount, especially now that we face a large scale collective pandemic.
The people who have the most impact and create outstanding value will often find they quickly become wealthy. Money has proven to be a successful incentive to reward the productive members of a community.
Leveraging the technology of your time, you too, can provide value to the world. You can make a difference by sharing your skills, mastering your abilities and positively impacting the people in your orbit.
Let us move towards altruism as we make our way around the Sun, drifting within a luscious rocky ecosystem in a universe more massive than we can comprehend.
