During the week of October 21, 2024 I had the pleasure of attending TEDNext, held in Atlanta. The event is a new initiative from the folks who produce the TED Conference. There were enlightening talks, insightful discussions and revealing discovery sessions. This post is the third in a series highlighting some of my favorite talks.
One of the fundamental ways in which personal stories can create impact is by shifting perceptions on an important topic. When we see an issue in a new light we’re able to think differently, and hopefully, act differently.
In his TED Talk, Leopoldo Lopez reminds us that freedom and democracy are threatened around the world. It was his talk at TEDNext that inspired me to dig deeper into the global state of democracy, which I explored in a previous post — The Story of a Flawed Democracy — so I decided to feature his talk in a separate post as a way to humanize the problem beyond the statistics.
Leopoldo opens with a story of his personal / political experiences, to establish a connection to the issues of democracy and freedom, then begins to explore this problem with a startling revelation:
Only 10 years ago, 42 percent of the world’s population was living under autocratic rule. That was 3.1 billion people. That’s around the same time I was sent to prison. Today, 72 percent of the global population is living under some sort of autocratic rule.
I’ve worked with a long list of people who currently live, or used to live, in one of those countries subject to autocratic rule. These are places where critical issues, such as poverty, healthcare, education, and nearly all aspects of equality suffer when compared to countries living under full democracy. As Leopoldo notes: “80 percent of the world’s poverty comes from autocratic countries.”
If you happen to be a human rights, political, or environmental activist, work in a government agency or NGO that’s subject to the inadequacies of autocratic rule, you probably have a story to share that can provide a personal perspective that others can relate to. As you view Leopoldo’s talk, and read the transcript below, think about how your personal story, combined with a description of the critical problem, and your proposed solution can shift perspectives on a global scale.
Transcript
So today I want to talk to you about something that has been at the core of my existence for the past years: freedom and democracy.
I was elected mayor of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, in the year 2000. I was reelected in the year 2004. And then in the year 2008, when I was running for higher office, I was banned to run for office. Because we were going to win. At that time, we started a movement, a nonviolent civil resistance grassroots movement that went all over Venezuela and worked with people all around the country to build a network that could face off the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.
In the year 2013, Maduro was elected. He stole an election. And in January of 2014, we called for protest. Tens of thousands of people went to the streets. And that took me to prison. I spent the next seven years in imprisonment, four of them in solitary confinement in a military prison.
The history of my country, Venezuela, is one, like many other Latin American countries, African countries,
one of military rule, exile, imprisonment and politics. So I had read a lot about what it meant to be in prison. I read the usual suspects, I read about Mandela, I read about Gandhi, I read about my [role] model, Martin Luther King.
But I also read a lot about the experience of Venezuelans, including my great grandfather, who had been a political prisoner for years and died in exile. Everything that they had to say was relevant to their own condition, but they all spoke about the importance of having a routine. So I had my own routine since day one, February 18 of 2014.
My routine was simple. I would do three things every day. I would pray to take care of my soul. I would read, write, to do something with my mind. And I would do exercise. I did those three things with Spartan discipline every day. If I did them, I would feel that I was winning the day. But there was one thing that I would think about every single day: why I was in prison. And in fact, this is something that I’m sure happens to all prisoners, political prisoners or not. That’s what prison, in a way, is made for.
So every day I thought about what freedom and democracy meant. And it was there in a cell, two by two, in solitary confinement that I really got to understand what freedom was. And it became clear to me that freedom is not about one thing. In fact, freedom is about the possibility of doing many things. So the possibility to speak out, to express your mind. It’s the possibility to move around in your country. It’s the possibility to assemble with whomever you want to assemble, to pray to whomever you want to pray, to own property.
And all of those things were taken away from me and from millions of Venezuelans. And it also became very clear to me that freedom and democracy were two sides of a coin. Were interdependent. You cannot have freedom without democracy. You cannot have democracy if people are not free. So that took me to think about the state of democracy. In fact, next month, in November, we’re going to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 35 years.
Back then, I was in grad school. It was the ’90s. And I remember the excitement that was everywhere about spreading democracy, spreading freedom, human rights, all over the place. I remember my teachers going to different countries with students. But when we look back 35 years ago and we fast forward, things didn’t really come out the way it was expected.
Only 10 years ago, 42 percent of the world’s population was living under autocratic rule. That was 3.1 billion people. That’s around the same time I was sent to prison. Today, 72 percent of the global population is living under some sort of autocratic rule. So let’s think about this. This is 5.7 billion people in the world that don’t have the rights that most people in this room have. They can’t speak freely, they can’t move freely, they can’t pray freely, they can’t own property. 5.7 billion people in the world.
After seven years of imprisonment, I was able to escape prison and went into exile. Exile is another form of imprisonment. At the beginning, it was tough. But then I started to meet other people like myself, who had been leading protests in their countries, who had been political prisoners, who were in exile. And we were very different in any way we could think about: our skin color, our religion, our languages, the story of our families, the history of our countries.
We were very different. But when we spoke about what it meant to fight for freedom and to confront autocracies, I was with my buddies. It was the same people, the same movement. So we decided to create an alliance of democracy defenders and freedom fighters. So alongside with Garry Kasparov, from Russia, and an incredible woman from Iran, Masih Alinejad, we decided to create an alliance of freedom fighters and democracy defenders.
And that’s how we created the World Liberty Congress, which is an alliance of hundreds of leaders, many of them you have seen their work in Hong Kong, in Russia, in Belarus, in Uganda, in Zimbabwe, in Afghanistan, in Cambodia, Nicaragua, Cuba, in many countries. And we decided to work together, to come together with a single purpose: to stop autocracy and to bring democracy to our countries.
But it became very clear to us that we were not only facing our local autocrat, we were also facing a network of autocrats, an axis of autocrats. And this is something that might not be obvious to many people. But in fact, autocrats work together. They support each other. In many ways: diplomatically, financially, militarily, through their kleptocratic networks.
And this is not an ideological alliance. It has nothing to do with ideology. Right, left, conservative, liberals, nothing to do with that. It has to do with power, money and a common enemy: democracy. So that’s why you have the nationalists from Russia, the theocrats from Iran, the communists from China, working together under a similar alliance.
So if autocrats are working together and the world is coming to a point where 72 percent of the world’s population is under autocracy, it’s time to think about why should you care about this? Why should everybody, anybody care about this? Why should someone who’s living in the United States or in Europe or in a functioning democracy care about this?
Well, if you care about climate change, if you care about gender equality, if you care about women’s rights, if you care about human rights, if you care about corruption, if you care about migration, you need to be concerned about the rise of autocracy and the need for democracy.
30 percent of the CO2 emissions come from China and Russia alone. 80 percent of the world’s poverty comes from autocratic countries. 90 percent of the forced migration, and we from Venezuela can speak about this, has at its root cause autocracy. So we need to care about this.
And what can be done? What can be done about this? Well, I believe that we are now at a moment where we need to make a tipping point of the engagement of people around the world to create a movement towards freedom and democracy. Think about the climate change movement 20, 30, 40 years ago. It was not mainstream. It was there, but it was not mainstream.
But then what happened? Researchers, governments, policymakers, activists, artists, school teachers, students, children, everybody came together under the same cause. Because I remember during the 1980s, ’90s, you would look up to the sky and you would think that there was an ozone hole in the sky that was going to destroy. So the threat was very clear. People came together, policy came together, and now it’s mainstream. Things are being done. I believe we are at that point with respect to democracy and freedom. If that trend continues, today 72 percent, if that trend continues, maybe in the next 25 years, in 2050, the entire world would be autocratic. And that is less than a generation ago.
So we must take action. What can we do? Well, the first thing I believe is to assume that we need to take the offensive. Stop legitimizing autocrats. Autocrats today are comfortable. They do business with governments, with businesses. We need to think of smart sanctions, of ways to make them accountable for the violations of human rights. Second, there needs to be a support for pro-democracy and freedom movements.
In the United States, that is the most actively philanthropic society in the world, only two percent of philanthropy goes to democracy-related issues. Only two percent. And a fraction of a fraction of that two percent goes to promote democracy outside the US. It’s not a priority. So supporting pro-democracy movements, supporting the people that want to be free, should be a priority for all. And I mean, let me give you some examples.
Technology. Access to internet, to free and uncensored internet. Think of the potential transformational capacity to give people all over the world access to internet. Let me give you another example. Using new technologies like Bitcoin to promote and support the potential of these movements. We are doing this already. In the case of Venezuela, we supported more than 80,000 medical doctors and nurses using Stablecoins and Bitcoins because under autocracies you are under a financial apartheid.
Give opportunities for training. Give opportunities for these movements to be part of a global conversation. And finally, we need to build a global movement. There is not one person, one organization, one government, that can do this by themselves. Similar to climate change. We need to think of this challenge as a network. We need to create nodes of network, nodes of network that activate all over the place.
We need to activate anyone with the things that they can do. Musicians should think about singing for freedom. Artists, intellectuals, researchers, activists, governments. Everybody can create their own node with a similar goal, which is freedom and democracy. When I was in solitary confinement, I had a window, and I could see through the crack of that window that there was a tree, and in that tree there was a hawk. And I contemplated that animal for hours and hours and hours. I only think that you contemplate an animal that long if you’re in biology or you’re in prison.
And one day, a guard told me, because I was always telling the guards about the hawk, he said, “You know, the hawk is injured, went through barbed wire, and he’s injured.” And I said, “Bring it to me.” And to my surprise, they brought it to me. Maybe because they thought it was going to die. I fed that hawk. And that’s the hawk in my cell. That’s a drawing I made of the prison I was [in], of that tree and of the hawk.
And then one day, after a couple of months, they came to my cell, they threw a blanket on the hawk, they took it away. Of course it affected me. But less than a day after, that hawk was in the same tree. And it reassured me that it doesn’t matter how low you are, how low percentage possibilities you have to succeed, there is always possibility to do so.
So I came out and being in exile, I met a tattoo artist, that put me a tattoo of Venezuela on my leg, so I now have that eagle here, and I have it always with me. As a reminder, as a reminder that we can always rise up to all of the challenges. So I ask all of you to stand up, to speak out, to do something about our freedom. This is our time. Think of 25 years, and let’s give our children a free world with human rights, democracy and respect for all.
Thank you very much, thank you very much.
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Rhaina Cohen: Why Friendship Can Be Just As Meaningful as Romantic Love @ TEDNext 2024
/in Emotions, Family, Friendship, Relationships, TED Talk/by Mark LovettDuring the week of October 21, 2024 I had the pleasure of attending TEDNext, held in Atlanta. The event is a new initiative from the folks who produce the TED Conference. There were enlightening talks, insightful discussions and revealing discovery sessions. This post is the fifth in a series highlighting some of my favorite talks.
I’ve always thought of relationships as constituting the fabric of life, with those closest to us becoming metaphorical threads woven into our human tapestry. But are all threads treated as equals? In her TED Talk, Rhaina Cohen speaks to “…a culture that treats friendship as the sidekick to the real hero of romance.”
I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but that statement rings true for me. In my experience, if you’re not in a romantic relationship, the most prevalent question is, “Are you seeing anyone?” It seems that not having someone to share your life with means your life is somehow incomplete. Which is to say, the story of your life is missing a few chapters. But Rhaina has a different take — one in which friendships can be just as rewarding.
Rhaina uses a variety of story blocks, from her own experiences, to an American Supreme Court case, platonic co-parenting in Canada, statistics about marriage, a reflection on ancient Rome, and platonic life partners, to name a few. While a lot of TED Talks deal with learning something new, in this case I felt her talk was more about shifting perspectives, encouraging the audience to think beyond the status quo when it comes to the value of the friendships we build and maintain.
Transcript
There is a Supreme Court case that you could mistake for a sermon. It’s the case that recognized that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Here is a sense of what Justice Kennedy wrote: “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there.”
He goes on to say that marriage offers care and companionship, and the decision argues that these are basic human needs that everyone should have access to, whether they’re straight or queer. Validating.
But what do these words say to you if you’re single? Anybody single here? I mean, there should be quite a few of you, because in the US, the percentage of American adults who have never been married is at a record high. Married people, you’re not off the hook. I’m going to get a little morbid for a moment and have you contemplate what happens if your marriage doesn’t last until the end of your life, whether because of divorce or outliving your spouse? In the US, about 30 percent of women over 65 are widows.
The reality is, any one of us is unlikely to have a spouse by our side until our last dying breath. Regardless of whether we are partnered now, we need to rely on more than one relationship to sustain us throughout our full, unpredictable lives. We need other significant others. And there’s an overlooked kind of relationship that we can turn to. Friendship.
I got the sense that friendship could be this stronger force in our lives because of a friendship that I stumbled into. We would see each other most days of the week, be each other’s plus-ones to parties. My friend has this habit of grabbing my hand to hold, including when I brought her to my office, and then I’d have to be like, no, not in the office.
(Laughter)
But I mean, I wouldn’t let my husband do that in the office either. It’s just, you know, setting matters. But it was only an issue because for us, affection is a reflex. And I knew it couldn’t be just us. I went out and interviewed dozens of people who had a friendship like ours, and I wrote a book about them. And the kinds of friends that I spoke to, they don’t just have a weekly phone call. They’re friends like these.
Natasha and Linda are the first legally recognized platonic co-parents in Canada. And this is them with their teenage son on vacation. Joe and John have been best friends for many decades. When Joe was struggling with alcohol and drug use, John got him into recovery. And then John decided that to support his friend, he would also become sober. Joy took care of her friend Hannah during Hannah’s six-year battle with ovarian cancer. And that included flying out to New York, where Hannah got specialized treatment. Joy had trouble actually sleeping overnight in the hospital, because she was too busy watching to make sure her friend’s chest was still rising and falling.
Some of the friends that I spoke to had this friendship occupy the space that’s conventionally given to a romantic partner. Some had this kind of friendship and a romantic partner. It’s not either/or. As I spoke to these people, I realized that they were at the frontier of friendship, helping us imagine how much more we could ask of our platonic relationships. Which is true, but another way of looking at it is they’re doing something retro, even ancient.
In ancient Rome, friends would talk about each other as “half of my soul,” or “the greater part of my soul.” The kind of language we now use in romantic relationships. From China to Jordan to England, there was a practice called “sworn brotherhood, where male friends would go through a ritual that would turn them into brothers.
About a century ago, friends would sit for portraits like these, with their arms wrapped around each other, their bodies up close. What I took from this history is that if we don’t limit friendship, it can be central to our lives.
But today, not everybody recognizes that. I spoke to a mother who really tried to get her son to make dating a priority because she wanted him to find emotional wholeness. And her son told her, “I found it in my platonic life partner.” His best friend, who he had known since high school, who had moved across the country to be near him, to live with him, in fact.
The mother said, “I don’t understand how you can be partners with someone you’re not romantic with.” Understandable as a reaction in a culture that treats friendship as the sidekick to the real hero of romance. We get that message from rom-coms, from Supreme Court justices, also from policy.
So Joy, during the six years she took care of her friend, she was not entitled to family medical leave. When Hannah died, Joy was not entitled to bereavement leave, because the two of them were considered unrelated. In our government and workplace policies, friendship is invisible.
Sometimes this diminishment of friendship comes from the outside, and sometimes it comes from the inside. A woman wrote to me about her friend who she considers her person. She spent so much time with her friend’s kids that she was given car seats for them. She’s also divorced and tried to find a new spouse because there was a hole she wanted to fill in her life. Then she read stories of people like Joe and John in an article I’d written. And she realized there was no hole. She had been happy all along, but she hadn’t known, been made to believe that it was possible to have a friend be enough.
If we can recognize what friendship has the potential to be, and if we can recognize that there is more than one kind of significant other then we can imagine more ways for us to find love and care and companionship. And we can support people who have these kinds of friendships. So the mother I mentioned, she’s completely changed her tune. She now admires the commitment between her son and her son’s friend.
I feel like I get to live in a future world where you can just build a life with your friends. I live not only with my husband but also two of my closest friends. One of them we kind of like had a courtship process to recruit him to come to our city and live with us. The other had a job in our city, and we invited her to stay.
It didn’t take long for us to start scheming with about a half dozen other friends, about trying to buy property together. The kind of place where we could raise kids alongside one another, our working title for the place is “The Village.” I don’t know if this will work out. I can keep you posted about it, but if it does, I feel really confident about one thing. That if one of us has a migraine at 6am and there’s a toddler bouncing around, or we get a terrifying diagnosis, we will not be a lonely person calling out only for no one to answer.
And this is what I hope for all of us. That we feel like we have permission to share our lives with whoever we are lucky enough to find, whether that’s a spouse, a sibling or a house full of friends.
Thank you.
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Leopoldo Lopez: How to defend democracy and fight autocracy @ TEDNext 2024
/in Democracy, Freedom, Government, Humanity, Politics, TED Talk/by Mark LovettDuring the week of October 21, 2024 I had the pleasure of attending TEDNext, held in Atlanta. The event is a new initiative from the folks who produce the TED Conference. There were enlightening talks, insightful discussions and revealing discovery sessions. This post is the third in a series highlighting some of my favorite talks.
One of the fundamental ways in which personal stories can create impact is by shifting perceptions on an important topic. When we see an issue in a new light we’re able to think differently, and hopefully, act differently.
In his TED Talk, Leopoldo Lopez reminds us that freedom and democracy are threatened around the world. It was his talk at TEDNext that inspired me to dig deeper into the global state of democracy, which I explored in a previous post — The Story of a Flawed Democracy — so I decided to feature his talk in a separate post as a way to humanize the problem beyond the statistics.
Leopoldo opens with a story of his personal / political experiences, to establish a connection to the issues of democracy and freedom, then begins to explore this problem with a startling revelation:
I’ve worked with a long list of people who currently live, or used to live, in one of those countries subject to autocratic rule. These are places where critical issues, such as poverty, healthcare, education, and nearly all aspects of equality suffer when compared to countries living under full democracy. As Leopoldo notes: “80 percent of the world’s poverty comes from autocratic countries.”
If you happen to be a human rights, political, or environmental activist, work in a government agency or NGO that’s subject to the inadequacies of autocratic rule, you probably have a story to share that can provide a personal perspective that others can relate to. As you view Leopoldo’s talk, and read the transcript below, think about how your personal story, combined with a description of the critical problem, and your proposed solution can shift perspectives on a global scale.
Transcript
So today I want to talk to you about something that has been at the core of my existence for the past years: freedom and democracy.
I was elected mayor of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, in the year 2000. I was reelected in the year 2004. And then in the year 2008, when I was running for higher office, I was banned to run for office. Because we were going to win. At that time, we started a movement, a nonviolent civil resistance grassroots movement that went all over Venezuela and worked with people all around the country to build a network that could face off the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro.
In the year 2013, Maduro was elected. He stole an election. And in January of 2014, we called for protest. Tens of thousands of people went to the streets. And that took me to prison. I spent the next seven years in imprisonment, four of them in solitary confinement in a military prison.
The history of my country, Venezuela, is one, like many other Latin American countries, African countries,
one of military rule, exile, imprisonment and politics. So I had read a lot about what it meant to be in prison. I read the usual suspects, I read about Mandela, I read about Gandhi, I read about my [role] model, Martin Luther King.
But I also read a lot about the experience of Venezuelans, including my great grandfather, who had been a political prisoner for years and died in exile. Everything that they had to say was relevant to their own condition, but they all spoke about the importance of having a routine. So I had my own routine since day one, February 18 of 2014.
My routine was simple. I would do three things every day. I would pray to take care of my soul. I would read, write, to do something with my mind. And I would do exercise. I did those three things with Spartan discipline every day. If I did them, I would feel that I was winning the day. But there was one thing that I would think about every single day: why I was in prison. And in fact, this is something that I’m sure happens to all prisoners, political prisoners or not. That’s what prison, in a way, is made for.
So every day I thought about what freedom and democracy meant. And it was there in a cell, two by two, in solitary confinement that I really got to understand what freedom was. And it became clear to me that freedom is not about one thing. In fact, freedom is about the possibility of doing many things. So the possibility to speak out, to express your mind. It’s the possibility to move around in your country. It’s the possibility to assemble with whomever you want to assemble, to pray to whomever you want to pray, to own property.
And all of those things were taken away from me and from millions of Venezuelans. And it also became very clear to me that freedom and democracy were two sides of a coin. Were interdependent. You cannot have freedom without democracy. You cannot have democracy if people are not free. So that took me to think about the state of democracy. In fact, next month, in November, we’re going to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 35 years.
Back then, I was in grad school. It was the ’90s. And I remember the excitement that was everywhere about spreading democracy, spreading freedom, human rights, all over the place. I remember my teachers going to different countries with students. But when we look back 35 years ago and we fast forward, things didn’t really come out the way it was expected.
Only 10 years ago, 42 percent of the world’s population was living under autocratic rule. That was 3.1 billion people. That’s around the same time I was sent to prison. Today, 72 percent of the global population is living under some sort of autocratic rule. So let’s think about this. This is 5.7 billion people in the world that don’t have the rights that most people in this room have. They can’t speak freely, they can’t move freely, they can’t pray freely, they can’t own property. 5.7 billion people in the world.
After seven years of imprisonment, I was able to escape prison and went into exile. Exile is another form of imprisonment. At the beginning, it was tough. But then I started to meet other people like myself, who had been leading protests in their countries, who had been political prisoners, who were in exile. And we were very different in any way we could think about: our skin color, our religion, our languages, the story of our families, the history of our countries.
We were very different. But when we spoke about what it meant to fight for freedom and to confront autocracies, I was with my buddies. It was the same people, the same movement. So we decided to create an alliance of democracy defenders and freedom fighters. So alongside with Garry Kasparov, from Russia, and an incredible woman from Iran, Masih Alinejad, we decided to create an alliance of freedom fighters and democracy defenders.
And that’s how we created the World Liberty Congress, which is an alliance of hundreds of leaders, many of them you have seen their work in Hong Kong, in Russia, in Belarus, in Uganda, in Zimbabwe, in Afghanistan, in Cambodia, Nicaragua, Cuba, in many countries. And we decided to work together, to come together with a single purpose: to stop autocracy and to bring democracy to our countries.
But it became very clear to us that we were not only facing our local autocrat, we were also facing a network of autocrats, an axis of autocrats. And this is something that might not be obvious to many people. But in fact, autocrats work together. They support each other. In many ways: diplomatically, financially, militarily, through their kleptocratic networks.
And this is not an ideological alliance. It has nothing to do with ideology. Right, left, conservative, liberals, nothing to do with that. It has to do with power, money and a common enemy: democracy. So that’s why you have the nationalists from Russia, the theocrats from Iran, the communists from China, working together under a similar alliance.
So if autocrats are working together and the world is coming to a point where 72 percent of the world’s population is under autocracy, it’s time to think about why should you care about this? Why should everybody, anybody care about this? Why should someone who’s living in the United States or in Europe or in a functioning democracy care about this?
Well, if you care about climate change, if you care about gender equality, if you care about women’s rights, if you care about human rights, if you care about corruption, if you care about migration, you need to be concerned about the rise of autocracy and the need for democracy.
30 percent of the CO2 emissions come from China and Russia alone. 80 percent of the world’s poverty comes from autocratic countries. 90 percent of the forced migration, and we from Venezuela can speak about this, has at its root cause autocracy. So we need to care about this.
And what can be done? What can be done about this? Well, I believe that we are now at a moment where we need to make a tipping point of the engagement of people around the world to create a movement towards freedom and democracy. Think about the climate change movement 20, 30, 40 years ago. It was not mainstream. It was there, but it was not mainstream.
But then what happened? Researchers, governments, policymakers, activists, artists, school teachers, students, children, everybody came together under the same cause. Because I remember during the 1980s, ’90s, you would look up to the sky and you would think that there was an ozone hole in the sky that was going to destroy. So the threat was very clear. People came together, policy came together, and now it’s mainstream. Things are being done. I believe we are at that point with respect to democracy and freedom. If that trend continues, today 72 percent, if that trend continues, maybe in the next 25 years, in 2050, the entire world would be autocratic. And that is less than a generation ago.
So we must take action. What can we do? Well, the first thing I believe is to assume that we need to take the offensive. Stop legitimizing autocrats. Autocrats today are comfortable. They do business with governments, with businesses. We need to think of smart sanctions, of ways to make them accountable for the violations of human rights. Second, there needs to be a support for pro-democracy and freedom movements.
In the United States, that is the most actively philanthropic society in the world, only two percent of philanthropy goes to democracy-related issues. Only two percent. And a fraction of a fraction of that two percent goes to promote democracy outside the US. It’s not a priority. So supporting pro-democracy movements, supporting the people that want to be free, should be a priority for all. And I mean, let me give you some examples.
Technology. Access to internet, to free and uncensored internet. Think of the potential transformational capacity to give people all over the world access to internet. Let me give you another example. Using new technologies like Bitcoin to promote and support the potential of these movements. We are doing this already. In the case of Venezuela, we supported more than 80,000 medical doctors and nurses using Stablecoins and Bitcoins because under autocracies you are under a financial apartheid.
Give opportunities for training. Give opportunities for these movements to be part of a global conversation. And finally, we need to build a global movement. There is not one person, one organization, one government, that can do this by themselves. Similar to climate change. We need to think of this challenge as a network. We need to create nodes of network, nodes of network that activate all over the place.
We need to activate anyone with the things that they can do. Musicians should think about singing for freedom. Artists, intellectuals, researchers, activists, governments. Everybody can create their own node with a similar goal, which is freedom and democracy. When I was in solitary confinement, I had a window, and I could see through the crack of that window that there was a tree, and in that tree there was a hawk. And I contemplated that animal for hours and hours and hours. I only think that you contemplate an animal that long if you’re in biology or you’re in prison.
And one day, a guard told me, because I was always telling the guards about the hawk, he said, “You know, the hawk is injured, went through barbed wire, and he’s injured.” And I said, “Bring it to me.” And to my surprise, they brought it to me. Maybe because they thought it was going to die. I fed that hawk. And that’s the hawk in my cell. That’s a drawing I made of the prison I was [in], of that tree and of the hawk.
And then one day, after a couple of months, they came to my cell, they threw a blanket on the hawk, they took it away. Of course it affected me. But less than a day after, that hawk was in the same tree. And it reassured me that it doesn’t matter how low you are, how low percentage possibilities you have to succeed, there is always possibility to do so.
So I came out and being in exile, I met a tattoo artist, that put me a tattoo of Venezuela on my leg, so I now have that eagle here, and I have it always with me. As a reminder, as a reminder that we can always rise up to all of the challenges. So I ask all of you to stand up, to speak out, to do something about our freedom. This is our time. Think of 25 years, and let’s give our children a free world with human rights, democracy and respect for all.
Thank you very much, thank you very much.
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Shu Takada: Yo! Have you ever seen a yo-yo dance like this? @ TEDNext 2024
/in Humanity, Passion, Performance, TED, TED Talk/by Mark LovettDuring the week of October 21, 2024 I had the pleasure of attending TEDNext, held in Atlanta. The event is a new initiative from the folks who produce the TED Conference. There were enlightening talks, insightful discussions and revealing discovery sessions. This post is the second in a series highlighting some of my favorite talks from the stage.
While most of the folks who step on stage at a TED event are there to deliver a talk, but there are exceptions, most notably for a musical performances. But on occasion, the audience is treated to a different type of performance — one that highlights an amazing talent. To be honest, the last thing I expected to see on a stage at TEDNext was someone playing with a yo-yo.
While watching Shu Takada’s incredible yo-yo performance I was wondering how many thousands of hours it took to reach this level of proficiency. And to realize that he can demonstrate his talent anywhere in the world, and please people no matter their language or culture. By the time he finished I was thinking how cool it would be to hear some of those stories. I’m sure he has a long list of beautiful stories that he could share about the people he has met. Enjoy!
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The Story of a Flawed Democracy
/in AI, Artificial Intelligence, Democracy, History, Society/by Mark LovettAs many of you know, the focus of my work is helping individuals discover, write, and share impactful personal stories. In my view, these stories — human stories — matter most, but some stories come from non-human entities. For example, businesses have stories to tell, as do cities, states and countries. You could also posit that the planet has stories to tell. And the fact is, the collective actions of these non-human entities have the ability to influence our individual stories. Whenever a new law is enacted, for example, it may alter our life in some way.
In this light I was recently reflecting on the state of democracy around the world today, and how different styles of government might affect our personal stories. This topic could fill thousands of pages, so my goal was to just get a sense of the big picture. As I’ve been playing with AI lately, I was curious as to the insights it would provide. So here goes…
If someone asked you what percentage of the world’s population lived in a true democracy, what would you guess? As I live in a democratic country, the notion of “democracy is the default form of government” quickly came to mind, but as I reflected on this question, countries such as Russia and China challenged that assumption. So I thought I’d ask ChatGPT for some guidance, and I must say, I got more than I bargained for after entering the prompt:
What percentage of the world’s population lives in a democracy?
ChatGPT: As of 2023, approximately 45.4% of the world’s population lives in some form of democracy, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. This includes both “full democracies” and “flawed democracies.” However, only 7.8% reside in “full democracies.” Meanwhile, more than one-third of the global population, about 39.4%, lives under authoritarian regimes.
World Population Review – Democracy Countries 2024
Our World in Data – Democracy Index 2023
—-End of response
My reaction was one of surprise that the number of people living in a democracy was under 50%. What I didn’t count on was a further breakdown that talked of a difference between “full” and “flawed” versions of democracy. Maybe I’m the one who didn’t get the memo, but I hadn’t heard of this distinction before, and I had no idea that less that 10% of the world’s population lived in a “full democracy”.
So I asked:
“What countries are “full democracies”?
ChatGPT: “Full democracies” are countries that score highly in areas like electoral process, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. According to the 2023 Democracy Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit, examples of “full democracies” include:
1. Norway
2. Iceland
3. Sweden
4. New Zealand
5. Finland
6. Denmark
7. Ireland
8. Switzerland
9. Netherlands
10. Taiwan
11. Luxembourg
12. Germany
13. Canada
14. Australia
15. Uruguay
16. Japan
17. Costa Rica
18. United Kingdom
19. Austria
20. Mauritius
21. South Korea
22. France
23. Spain (Author’s note: recently reclassified as “flawed”)
24. Chile (Author’s note: recently reclassified as “flawed”)
—-End of response
It’s a pretty small list, and with one notable omission, the United States. Really? How could that be? In my mind, America had always been held up as a beacon of democracy. But as I continued my line if inquiry, it made perfect sense.
So I asked:
Why is the Unites States not a “full democracy”?
ChatGPT: The United States is classified as a “flawed democracy” rather than a “full democracy” due to several factors identified in the Democracy Index:
1. Political Polarization
• High levels of political polarization and partisan gridlock have weakened the functioning of government. This polarization affects decision-making processes, leading to legislative stagnation and reduced government effectiveness.
2. Decline in Civil Liberties
• There have been concerns over civil liberties, including issues related to freedom of the press, voting rights, and minority protections. This has affected the U.S. score in the areas of political culture and civil liberties.
3. Electoral Integrity
• While the U.S. has a robust electoral process, challenges such as voter suppression, gerrymandering, and disputes over election legitimacy have impacted its democratic standing. The events surrounding the 2020 presidential election, including the January 6 Capitol attack, have further raised concerns about electoral integrity.
4. Public Trust in Institutions
• There has been a significant decline in public trust in government institutions, including Congress and the judiciary. This decline affects political participation and the perceived legitimacy of democratic institutions.
5. Role of Money in Politics
• The influence of money in U.S. politics, particularly through lobbying and campaign financing, has been criticized for undermining democratic accountability and equity in political participation.
These factors collectively contribute to the U.S. being categorized as a “flawed democracy” despite its longstanding democratic traditions and institutions.
—-End of response
The explanation didn’t surprise me, of course, as each of the factors listed were well documented. But I wondered whether this had always been the case, or if the demotion from “full” to “flawed” was a recent event?
So I then prompted:
When did the United States stop being a “full democracy”?
ChatGPT:
The United States was reclassified from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2016 by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). This downgrade was primarily due to increasing polarization, a decline in public trust in institutions, and concerns about the health of democratic norms.
One of the key triggers for the downgrade was the growing perception that the U.S. political system was not fully reflecting the will of its citizens. Political polarization, partly driven by the 2016 presidential election, led to greater division and challenges in effective governance. Additionally, issues such as gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, and the outsized influence of money in politics were identified as factors that weakened the quality of democracy in the U.S..
Another significant factor was declining public confidence in key democratic institutions, such as Congress and the judiciary. Trust in government had been falling for years, and the 2016 election cycle highlighted concerns over the fairness of the electoral system, which exacerbated feelings of disenfranchisement among many citizens.
This shift underscored a broader trend of democratic backsliding, as similar downgrades have occurred in other established democracies facing comparable challenges.
—-End of response
Once again, the fact that the U.S. is divided — some would say broken — along political lines has been talked about for many years. But was this demotion unique, or were there other countries that had experience a downward change in their democracy status?
So I asked:
Which counties have been downgraded from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in recent years?
ChatGPT:
In recent years, multiple countries have been downgraded from “full democracies” to “flawed democracies” by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), largely due to issues in governance, trust, and political stability. Spain and Chile, for instance, were reclassified as flawed democracies in the 2021 index. In Spain, concerns arose over judiciary independence, while in Chile, political instability and significant protests contributed to the downgrade. The UK has also been on the edge of a similar downgrade, driven by scandals around government transparency and rule-breaking during the pandemic, which weakened public trust and engagement.
These changes reflect a broader global trend of democratic backsliding, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, economic challenges, and rising populism in many regions.
Democracy Digest – Democracy Review
The Oslo Desk – Decline of Global Democracy
—-End of response
I came away with the feeling that democracy was on the ropes, as various forms of fascism, communism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism increasingly take hold. Which brings me back to the beginning of this post. How might ruling ideologies affect each of our stories? As I consider issues such as climate change, human rights, discrimination, gender equality, education and health, I can’t help but think that the world is heading in the wrong direction, and that there are many more personal stories ahead of us that will illustrate the pain and hardship such a world brings.
So I had one final request for ChatGPT:
Can you create an image that symbolizes broken democracy?
ChatGPT: Here’s an image symbolizing a broken democracy, showing a cracked statue of justice with tilted scales under a dark, stormy sky. This represents imbalance, weakened rights, and hope for renewal through small growth emerging at the statue’s base.
—-End of response
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Franziska Trautmann: Your Empty Wine Bottle Could Help Rebuild Coastlines @ TEDNext 2024
/in Climate Change, Entrepreneurs, Environment, Nature, TED Talk/by Mark LovettDuring the week of October 21, 2024 I had the pleasure of attending TEDNext, held in Atlanta. The event is a new initiative from the folks who produce the TED Conference. There were enlightening talks, insightful discussions and revealing discovery sessions. This post is the first in a series highlighting some of my favorite talks from the stage.
In her TED Talk, Franziska Trautmann highlights the power of individual action to create innovative solutions to local environmental challenges. The first problem she noticed was how Louisiana was falling short when it came to recycling glass. The result: about 295 million pounds of glass was ending up in landfills annually. The next problem Franziska identified was the fact that Louisiana was suffering from a coastal erosion crisis. Since glass is made from sand, the logical solution was to turn discarded glass into sand that could be used for coastal restoration.
To turn their idea into reality, Franziska and her partner founded Glass Half Full, a company that’s diverted millions of pounds of glass from landfills and restored thousands of square meters of wetlands. At just over 5 minutes, her talk is brief, yet clearly highlights the issues, the initiative, the result, and their future plans.
While the talk was top notch, I really wanted it to be longer as there were lots of questions that came to mind: issues around the lack of recycling, the process of turning the glass into sand, alongside how to scale that process, and the nature of the state’s erosion crisis. But that was not to be, as Franziska’s talk was in a session created along with Ignite Talks, which are only 5 minutes in length.
It’s easy to see how this 5 minute talk could be expanded to 15, 30, 45 minutes in length. And that’s not uncommon when it comes to stories that involve social or scientific topics. If this is an issue you’re facing – how to compress a lengthy talk – then study this transcript to see how the main points are laid out in a way that a member of the public can follow and understand.
Transcript
00:04
As a kid growing up on a Louisiana bayou, the boogeyman was the existential threat of my state being washed away with the Mississippi River.
00:16
Louisiana loses a football field’s worth of land every 100 minutes due to coastal erosion. It’s an unimaginably large amount to a kid. But in my lifetime so far, we’ve lost over 600 square miles. That’s more area than New York City, San Francisco, DC and Atlanta combined. It’s due to sea level rise, warming waters, increasingly severe storms and exploration of the oil and gas industry.
00:51
Fast forward to 2020, in my last full semester as an engineering student and over a Two-Buck Chuck, my boyfriend and I lamented over the lack of glass recycling in Louisiana. My state was landfilling about 295 million pounds of glass annually. The bottle we just finished would likely end up in a landfill. It felt like a total waste, and we wanted to figure out how we could get all of this glass recycled.
01:20
The next day, it took a quick Google search to remember that glass comes from sand, and that sand is an increasingly finite resource. We also learned about everything sand is needed for, including toothpaste, by the way. And the last puzzle piece we found was this small, human-sized machine that could crush one bottle at a time into sand, and we jumped into action, setting up a GoFundMe campaign and a pilot project in the backyard of a fraternity house.
01:50
(Laughter)
01:52
Now you might be thinking to yourself, how in the world would two college kids ever be able to make a dent in these problems? And that would be valid. Plenty of people told us the exact same thing. But we didn’t listen, because we knew that no matter how small of an impact we made, it would be worth it. It felt like we could alleviate two problems with one solution: convert the otherwise landfilled glass back into sand and use it in restoration projects across the state. Easy, right?
02:22
(Laughs)
02:25
But we didn’t listen to the haters, which is actually why we named our company Glass Half Full.
02:30
(Laughter)
02:31
But that glass-half-empty mindset might actually be one of the biggest threats we face today. Because climate apathy might be the new climate denial. Meaning that the biggest threat to our environment may no longer be people who deny our part in the changing climate but people who deny that we can actually make a difference.
02:54
Now climate change is happening right before our eyes. It’s terrifying. I’ve witnessed firsthand the severity of rapidly intensifying hurricanes like Ida. But dread, doom and gloom tend to get us nowhere. Whereas hope, combined with action, can be one of the most powerful tools to enact change.
03:15
(Applause)
03:21
Since that late night wine-fueled idea over four years ago, we’ve been able to divert more than eight million pounds of glass from our landfills.
03:30
Thank you.
03:31
(Cheers and applause)
03:34
We quickly grew out of that small, tiny machine and upgraded a lot along the way. We continue to work with over 50 scientists and engineers across the Gulf South. And they helped me learn if this is good-smelling mud or not. But also understanding the interactions of our sand with the plants, animals and even fungi of our region. We’ve also answered difficult scientific questions as well as questions like, can you actually walk on sand made from glass? And I exposed my toes to the internet to answer that.
04:11
In a few short months, we’ll be opening up our new facility, enabling us to recycle the 295 million pounds of glass entering our landfills annually.
04:23
(Cheers and applause)
04:29
And with a combination of biodegradable sandbags and native marsh grasses, we’ve already restored thousands of square meters along our coast, converting open water back into thriving wetlands.
04:41
(Cheers and applause)
04:48
But the key to our success so far isn’t that we had all of the answers in the beginning or tons of money to try this thing out. The key was that we simply started, and we kept going. Somewhere, the belief that we, as individuals, could enact change trumped our doubts. And for us, finding a way to help with a problem much, much bigger than us meant taking that first step. And in our case, it was a step in the sand, in an eroding but once magnificent swamp.
05:22
Thank y’all.
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