Video: Solution-Oriented Media * Audio: Media, Culture & Consciousness
The media spends so much time and energy focusing on problems, but how can they do a better job at empowering citizens towards a vision of hope and possibility?
Music: On The Moon (Trip Hop mix) by disharmonic
This video features some insights on this from Sharif Abdullah, Marilyn Schlitz, Don Beck and Van Jones.
I conducted these interviews at a conference on Consciousness and Healing with the following two lenses:
* How the press can be more solution-oriented?
* How can the press better account for our subjectivity, worldviews and the influence of our culture?
The full audio of 10 interviews from the conference can be found below...
|
Don Beck | National Values Center & Spiral Dyanamics Integral Model of Worldviews and Value structures |
|
Marilyn Schlitz | Vice President for Research and Education, Institute of Noetic Sciences (bio) |
|
Dean Radin | Senior Scientist at Institute of Noetic Sciences (bio) |
|
Fred Alan Wolf | Quantum Physicist featured in What the Bleep Do We Know? |
|
Lynne Twist | Author of The Soul of Money |
|
Van Jones | Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (bio) |
|
Susan Davis | President of Capital Missions Company (bio) |
|
Peter Russell | Eastern Philosophy Author & Futurist (bio) |
|
Duane Elgin | Futurist & Media Activist, OurMediaVoice.org (bio) |
|
Sharif Abdullah | President of the Commonway Institute (bio) |
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS AND CONCLUSIONS
This is a passage that I wrote upon returning from this conference:
There are actually a lot of parallels between the conflicts between Objective Mainstream Media vs. Subjective Blogs / New Media Technologies and between Objective Mainstream Medicine vs. Subjective Mind-Body Healing techniques.
The conference participants provided a lot of insight for the importance of holistic thinking, being inclusive of many different perspectives, how subjectivity and worldviews filter perception, and the importance of how community and collaboration can be facilitated through relationships and conversation.
These interviews are definitely outside-of-the-box of the mainstream way of thinking, but I believe that there are actually a lot of interesting insights packed within this set of interviews. It is an ongoing journalistic experiment to see how to incorporate perspectives that are normally marginalized or ignored.
So I'm really curious as to hear people's responses to these interviews as well as how the material will end up being used throughout the collaborative post-production process.
ENJOY!
Photo Credits: katemina, ford, old_sarge, dwstucke & roland
Despair
Submitted by Chris Weagel (not verified) on Mon, 2006-02-20 14:15.
I feel that despair on a daily basis.
Watching over your videos I am at a loss for what to add.
Which is particularly disheartening when I'm commenting on a video about solutions and hope.
The underlying message I get from this video and from your entire project is the need for engagement. Engagement of everyone in their lives and community.
This is the conclusion I've been sitting on for some time.
But the only thing I can add at the moment IS my frustration and despair. It seems that no matter what I do to communicate and facilitate such engagement with the people I encounter, little to nothing ever materializes.
You say in another post that all the pieces are here, the puzzle just needs to be assembled.
All I can say at the moment is that I agree, but unfortunately, I'm not very hopeful.
Surface-Level & Deeper Response to Despair
Submitted by kentbye on Mon, 2006-02-20 15:18.
Hey Chris,
Thanks so much for the comment.
I have a surface-level response, and a response to a deeper issue you bring up.
SURFACE-LEVEL RESPONSE
We are a long way from where we need to be as a country, as local communities and as individuals -- and it'll take time to get to where we need to be.
We don't need everyone in American to drastically change. That's obviously unrealistic.
We just need a relatively small people who are willing to partipate in something that allows them to focus their energy on hope and possiblity -- instead of on frustration, despair, fear and depression.
If provided the choice to do something that will make a difference, then I believe people will take it.
If people get involved in this project when the tools are in place, then it'll help attract attention from the blogosphere and the mainstream media to both the message and the collaborative process.
The puzzle pieces that I was referring to was for collaborative media -- and this will allow individuals to convert all of this gathered information about the media into personal knowledge and media literacy.
DEEPER REPSONSE
You say, "the only thing I can add at the moment IS my frustration and despair."
There are a lot of people who feel the same way, and I think that we ultimately want to find connection with these like-minded people.
Here's what Peter Russell has to say about where he sees the Internet going:
There's going to be a deeper sense of connecting -- a deeper sense of connecting with each other where we really begin to empathize with each other, a much more compassionate connecting... And that's what we all want in our lives. And when we meet somebody... we don't just want to sit across from them and exchange ideas or theories or what we did in the day... but ultimately we want to get deeper and closer, we want to open up and be more intimate in where we are, what we believe, what we feel, what drives us, what our passions are. We want to make connection. And I think that's where the Internet is going. It allows us to make connection -- one-to-one or one-to-many, or many-to-many -- that heart-to-heart connection where we feel compassion, empathy, understanding, and that's what nourishes us.
So my hope is to tap into this desire for connection by having the tools available to easily remix the words of people who have a lot of authority in order to express your frustrations.
I hope that I can pool this activity in a way that helps me create a film with meaning and to give people the opportunity to be heard.
Interviews
The interviews are ok. Sometimes,it is diverting from the main issues. Still,it is handled properly. Full marks.
Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies.