sunshine on the mind

We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us.

—Thich Nhat Hanh (via -warmtea)

(Source: yellow-ribbon, via wordslessspoken)

The Enlightenment held that individuals should be free from the coercion of concentrated power. The kind of concentrated power they were thinking about was the church, the state, the feudal system, and so on. But in the subsequent period, a new form of power developed — namely, corporations — with highly-concentrated power over decision-making in economic life. We should not be forced simply to rent ourselves to the people who own the country and its institutions. Rather, we should play a role in determining what those institutions do. That’s democracy.

—Noam Chomsky  (via nirvikalpa)

(Source: chomsky.info, via nirvikalpa)

Having put that stake in the ground, in legal corporate form, I was forced to figure it out. In our first two years, Project H completed over a dozen projects in six countries; I wrote a book about humanitarian design, learned how to be my own publicist and accountant, got in an Airstream trailer and drove to 35 cities in 75 days on a Design Revolution Road Show, and picked up a border collie puppy as an impulse buy in Texas along the way. What some call impulse, others call initiative. Ideas are worth little without action. The best way to start is simply to start.

I said these exact words to an industrial design student I met in Detroit, who was working on a project with the local homeless population. She asked me, “What’s the best way to get started, to make this a real enterprise and not just a school project?” I gave her the stupidly simple answer: “The best way to start is simply to start.” Now, two years later, her organization, The Empowerment Plan, is thriving. She has a viable financial model, a manufacturing facility, and has employed numerous homeless individuals using design as the vehicle. She recently sent me an email to thank me for my advice, but I can take no credit. The bravery is all hers: the hardest, but always the most important thing to do, is simply to start.

—Advice for Design Graduates: Start Now (via huffingtonpost)

(via huffingtonpost)

Over 40% of recent college graduates are living with their parents, dealing with government loans that average $27,200. The unemployment rate for young people is about 50%. More than 350,000 Americans with advanced degrees applied for food stamps in 2010.

As Washington lobbyists endeavor to kill a proposed bill to reduce the interest rates on student debt, federal loans remain readily available, and so colleges go right on increasing their tuition.

Meanwhile, corporations hold $2 trillion in cash while looking for investments and employees in foreign countries, and American students are forced to accept menial positions. Yet delusions persist about our new generation of would-be workers. Conservatives are all bubbly about today’s young entrepreneurs creating their own jobs — jobs that “don’t yet exist.

—Five Facts That Put America to Shame (via nirvikalpa)

(Source: humanformat, via nirvikalpa)

‎I think the reason why I’m such an optimist, in the middle of terrible collapse, disaster everywhere, is because I know there is no linear guarantee that its going to continue that way. If we do a little more, if we think a little differently, we’re more engaged as citizens with responsibility, we could take it to another place

—Vandana Shiva (via nirvikalpa)

(Source: apartmenstories, via nirvikalpa)

Consider your present self as an actor in a play, hardly a new analogy, but a suitable one. The scene is set in the twentieth century. You create the props, the settings, the themes; in fact you write, produce, and act in the entire production - you and every other individual who takes part.

You are so focused in your roles, however; so intrigued by the reality that you have created, so entranced by the problems, challenges, hopes, and sorrows of your particular roles that you have forgotten they are of your own creation. This intensely moving drama, with all its joys and tragedies, can be compared with your present life, your present environment, both individually and en masse.

—Seth, Seth Speaks (via elige)

(Source: nirvikalpa, via elige)

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

—Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions (via elige)

(via elige)

The more deeply we are cast under a story’s spell, the more potent its influence. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.

But perhaps the most impressive finding is just how fiction shapes us: mainly for the better, not for the worse. Fiction enhances our ability to understand other people; it promotes a deep morality that cuts across religious and political creeds. More peculiarly, fiction’s happy endings seem to warp our sense of reality. They make us believe in a lie: that the world is more just than it actually is. But believing that lie has important effects for society — and it may even help explain why humans tell stories in the first place.

—Jonathan Gottschall, author of the excellent The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, on why fiction is good for you. (via explore-blog)