Growing up with friends who were outside playing all day definitely helped me learn how to interact with different personalities, become more balanced, and gain some street smarts. It also helped mask the fact that I was a huge nerd, scoring in the 99th percentile on standardized math tests. I may have been dead last in homeruns hit, but if you were picking teams and needed help figuring out who had a better on base percentage, I was your guy.
Really though, beyond the realms of sports and academics, the best thing I had going for me was that whenever I really got to know someone, they always considered me to be one of their most loyal friends. Friendship was always something very important to me. If one of my friends had a problem, it was my problem. Though I never felt very comfortable in my skin growing up (there was a high amount of stress at home related to my younger sister’s severe case of autism and family finances -- we lived in a basement for several years), being around good friends was something that made me feel safe and at peace. Luckily, making friends was also something that always came naturally to me.
This emphasis on developing meaningful friendships really came in handy when I went away to college. Though some people I knew seemed to be having a hard time adjusting to a fresh start at a new school, the quest for friendship and branching out really helped me break out of my shell.
Before my freshman year of college, I was the type of person who would sit down at a table at parties, feeling too self-conscious to even step onto a dance floor in a room full of people. By my junior year, I was dancing alone on a stage in front of hundreds of people, waving a fiery torch, covered in glowing silver body paint under the blacklights. A few months later, without hesitation, I jumped out of an airplane from 10,000 feet up in the sky. Anytime there was a need for someone to step up for a leadership position or to speak in public, I would volunteer first. I had begun to grow into myself. Through seizing this newfound opportunity for independence, I had become a more fully alive human being who was no longer so afraid of outside opinions.
Many of the most important things I learned in college that sparked this personal transformation did not happen within the confines of the classroom. On the contrary, most of the things I learned came about as a result of having the luxury of sufficient time to decompress and question commonly held societal beliefs and norms. Some friends and I would often find ourselves having philosophical discussions about the meaning of life, happiness, love, and everything else under the sun. In the same way that curious babies don’t need to be coerced into learning how to walk or speak, I found that learning happened much more naturally and holistically when it was not forced upon me.
There is one experience in particular that caused such a major detour on my life path that I believe a version of me in an alternate universe that hadn’t gone through it would be completely unrecognizable to me right now. That experience was traveling with friends to Mexico. From the perspective of an outsider, we were nothing more than a bunch of rascally kids going to get drunk in a foreign country where the drinking age was not 21. However, the insights that I gained there would go on to change the course of not only my life, but that of many others I’ve met since.
A history teacher of mine may have briefly discussed severe poverty in class, and I had seen some commercials showing starving people on television, but there is nothing that can really describe the feeling of heartbreak that arises when you see it with your own eyes. There were groups of kids aged four to seven surrounding me as I walked along the street, begging me to buy some gum. I don’t even think I knew how to tie my shoes and cross the street by myself when I was four, and here were these children out late by themselves, making sales pitches and making money out of the need to survive. What made things even worse was that this was a tourist area; meaning that in relative terms, many of the surrounding regions were in an even more desperate situation. I realized that what I was witnessing was just the tip of the iceberg. Additionally, as grim as it seemed, this did not even come close to matching the conditions in some regions of Somalia or Zimbabwe.
Though I had never previously considered myself rich by any means, this really put things into a whole new perspective. So many items were mind-bogglingly inexpensive. Even as a college kid on a budget, I realized that the value of a single dollar took on so much more importance in Mexico. While it was just a dollar to me, it could mean the world to those kids. I realized that a person who was wealthy by American standards could potentially transform countless lives in that region.
On the other hand, there was also a dichotomy. At the same time that I was coming to the realization that poverty was this bad, I was being treated like royalty simply for being an American who had a few bucks in his pocket. For all of us American students visiting, our experience of Mexico was completely different than that of the everyday lives of the locals.
There were beautiful hotels, beaches lined with palm trees, and pools that had a swim up bar in the middle. There were seemingly endless games of Frisbee and volleyball. There were nightclubs sporting breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean that shot off firework displays and stayed open until sunrise. As troubling as it was to witness all of the economic hardship in the area, there was something I discovered that would completely change the way I viewed reality.
For some reason that I couldn’t explain, the underlying sub-culture and unspoken rules of behavior amongst the people I knew had undergone a major shift from what was normal for us back in the states. This was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. People were much more willing to let their guard down and break out of their comfort zones. In fact, it was encouraged. Typical petty arguments and drama largely came to a halt. Competition became collaboration. Scarcity became abundance. Everyone seemed to be more alive and genuinely happy. The level of cohesiveness within the group grew tremendously. A harmonious and interwoven way of existence emerged that felt as if it had been what I was searching for all of my life up until that point. Something about being on vacation had unlocked a part of who we were that was always there, but we were unable to collectively display it up until that point.
An even more interesting thing about this phenomenon was that after we left and went back to school, this new and expansive way of being came back with us. Furthermore, its effects began to multiply. Friends of friends who hadn’t been there started to subconsciously take notice and follow suit. Conformity to this new status quo now effortlessly became a force for something better. It began to feel as if this was the way life should be, and could be -- for anyone who wanted it.
Being nineteen years old at the time, I was fascinated by this seemingly spontaneous occurrence of social paradigm change. Having had grown up around much negativity and discord, and experiencing the psychological damage created by these types of sub-cultures, I was determined to figure out exactly what happened here, and how it could be replicated. I began to examine all of the factors in play, in order to discover the vital ingredients that were the driving catalysts for this pattern to blossom. What was the formula? Could I crack the code on how to set up the ideal conditions to enable a transformational shift of the beliefs and behaviors of a culture? In order to figure this out, I had to first explore the conditions that created the original paradigm, to gain a deep understanding of how it was able to shift.
Having grown up and gone to school in New York City, I was not exempt from the social status totem pole that permeates and dictates modes of behavior in youth circles. As kids, we are often directly or indirectly taught to measure our self-worth through a basis of comparison to those around us. There was a highly competitive atmosphere surrounding individual performance levels in sports, on tests, and materially. If someone had the latest toy or the newest pair of Jordans, it would make everyone else both impressed and envious.
For many teens, the largest measuring stick of all for self-worth involves the amount of sexual attraction received. This is what the fancy items, excelling in sports, and every other form of asserting dominance were all a
bout. Though I had a few girlfriends through the teen years, these relationships almost always ended with me getting dumped without warning, so I definitely did not feel very attractive inside. For others who had not yet had anyone show interest in them, it was even worse. Throw rampant bullying into the mix, and it compounds these problems even further. It’s hard to think highly of yourself when others tell you in one hundred and one ways that you’re not good enough.
This socially awkward phase is actually pretty common, and it’s a shame that we don’t realize that while going through it, because we end up taking it personally as a result. The damage it does to the psyche is so traumatizing that in many cases, it never goes away. We are only human, and every one of us deals with some projected imperfection that can make us feel insecure inside.
Whether it’s feeling like we’re not good looking enough, not funny enough, not athletic enough, don’t have the latest and greatest brand name clothes, or whatever our own personal excuse may be, we take these perceived slights to heart. We begin to carry a chip on our shoulders that positions us against the world. Sadly, this makes it even harder to discover who we really are at the core; as the most important mission in our lives simply becomes proving to everyone else that we are capable of doing what those bullies in grade school said we could not. Alternatively, we might just throw our hands up in despair, and let that misery and bitterness prevent us from ever believing we are capable of accomplishing anything of real value. We can experience a life-altering sense of overwhelming frustration, because we falsely begin to believe that underneath it all, we are not truly worthy of love and acceptance from friends and mates.
This is where I started to delve into Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and John Bowlby’s attachment theory to really understand, at a deep level, the core driving forces behind what motivates nearly all of human behavior. There are the core survival needs that include food, shelter, safety, and good health; but beyond that, it turns out we humans are pretty simple creatures after all.
What we ultimately want is the freedom to feel loved and accepted for who we really are. We want to feel as if our lives are meaningful; as if we are a part of something bigger than just ourselves; and we do that most effectively by giving others the best of what we have to offer, in order to feel a strong connection to other living creatures. Nearly everything we do in life can be tied back to this need for love and acceptance. Even the subtle, seemingly unconscious behaviors such as matching our socks and trimming our fingernails are largely done for this very same reason.
I began to examine the conditions that existed in Mexico that enabled me to transcend the feelings of not being worthy of acceptance that I had carried around with me for years. For starters, there is something about traveling on an adventure to a new place with friends that bonds you closer together in a primal way. Being in a new environment, everyone was also more willing to suspend judgment for the sake of living it up in the moment. This was a major key. It seems that all it takes is one influential person who is too negative or judgmental within a social circle to keep everyone feeling too inhibited to expand past their fears and become more of who they really are. Being completely free of the grasp of oppressive influences for even a short period of time can really do wonders for a person’s self-esteem.
As a result, I was able to be myself in ways that I had never done before. Not only did it make me feel more confident and more alive, but for the first time, it seemed like women were noticing me without me even trying. This was a major part of the chip on my shoulder that I always felt determined to get rid of, and it was an indescribable relief to finally feel it happening. Up until that point, I always felt unworthy of any woman I dated, and wondered what they saw in me. I always felt lucky to have anyone, no matter how little they respected me; and in retrospect, this was exactly why it always ended in such a train-wreck fashion (making the cycle worse each time). It was the essence of possessing a scarcity mentality. But now, things were different. I was with good friends, in paradise, and feeling comfortable in my own skin for the very first time. Every day was amazing and abundant. Every time I went to bed, ready to go to sleep, I was excited to see what tomorrow would bring. It felt like my soul had inhabited a new body, and I was experiencing what it really felt like to live as a free spirit. I felt reborn.
The interesting thing was: I wasn’t the only one who was experiencing this. Many others were experiencing the exact same feeling of breaking out of the shell that I had. Though we came from different geographical regions, grew up with different childhood experiences, and had different perceived personal flaws -- it made no difference. This was the same transformation others had spoken about experiencing at music festivals. I realized that this abundant and positive way of thinking and being was mostly just a state of mind, and that in the right conditions, it was possible for anyone to access and unlock it. This was utopia. This surreal experience of self-actualization was a preview of what world peace would be like, and I could clearly see that it was only the beginning of the next steps in the evolution of human civilization.
When I was walking around the streets to see the reality of what life was like for the impoverished residents of Guerrero, Mexico, I saw that the good vibe that I was feeling was contagious. It transcended language. I wanted so badly to be able to spread that sense of joy to everyone; to give others an opportunity to feel the freedom that I felt. I did not want to see anyone hungry, or poor, or angry.
But when food and survival necessities are scarce, the mission to acquire these items consumes all of our mental energy, and this is what averts us from even beginning to immerse ourselves into an abundance mentality. When we are guided by fear, the self-preservation instinct kicks in, and we see ourselves as being at war with any competing parties that we believe are going to try to prevent us from meeting our needs. This is where I had the insight that changed the course of my life forever, and set me down a path that led to the creation of this book:
All forms of negativity that exist in this world stem from individuals whose basic needs are not being met. If we can create a sound strategy to enable and empower every person alive to be able to create and receive their basic needs -- the proper food, rights, education, environment, love and acceptance -- the negativity will fall to a minimum, and the quality of life for all of us will rise to levels we can barely even begin to imagine.
Imagine a world without poverty, imagine a world without war; imagine a world without random shootings, or terrorism, and all other forms of gore.
Imagine a world without pollution, a world with clean water, soil and air; imagine a world full of joy and happiness, a world that is righteous, noble and fair.
Imagine a world in which we all come together to heal from the vast suffering and pain; imagine a world in which dropping labels and humanizing one another takes precedence over the petty and vain.
Imagine a world completely saturated with love and romance; imagine the transformation that will occur when we finally decide to give this world a chance.
I entered Mexico as a person looking to discover freedom from the fears and self-doubts that had prevented me from ever feeling whole, and I left Mexico wanting to create a world in which anyone could have the ability to experience this transformation. It truly is in all of our best interests to come together right now, focus, and map out a way to make this world a reality.
3
Why We’re Stuck
The visions of utopia in chapter two were extremely important for us to discuss, in order to set the compass needle in the right direction. Next, it’s time to begin looking into how we can bridge the gap from here to there. The first step in that process of bridging the gap will take place in this chapter, as we must first be able to clearly identify and understand a set of problems before we can attempt to fix them. We will examine some historical and current world affairs, in order to shed some light upon how we got here, and why we’re currently in this position.
At the t
ime of writing of this, it’s still relatively early in the 21st century. What a time to be alive. The information age is here, and it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. The speed of technological progress keeps accelerating, and this has resulted in countless mind-blowing inventions that have significantly improved the quality of many lives. But at the same time, it has brought a number of interlocking challenges along with it that are more complex than we’ve ever seen before.
Despite the fact that we can send people to outer space, and send an email to the other side of the world within seconds, nearly one out of every two children alive right now still do not have their basic needs met. An estimated 22,000 children die every day as a result of poverty, with hunger being the number one cause of death in the world. 80% of the world’s population lives on less than $10 (USD) per day, while nearly half of the world’s population (three billion) lives on less than $2.50 per day.
To put that in perspective, if your average daily expenses are $4, including housing, food, water, transportation, healthcare, energy, education, communication devices, sanitation, household appliances, clothing, travel, entertainment, gifts, and all other personal items, you have more money than most of the rest of the people on earth. If your average daily expenses are $11, you have more money than four out of five people on the planet.
Somehow, more people in the world have access to mobile phones than to clean water or toilets. We’ve built nuclear reactors that we don’t know how to shut down right next to fault lines, leaving them completely susceptible to major earthquakes. We’re spilling oil and chemicals that contaminate major bodies of water. Collectively, we are falling short in our ability to prioritize long-term, holistic thinking over that of short-term benefits. Even if one doesn’t personally own or work for a company that creates these products, if there’s a major demand for them, it means that lots of us must be buying them or doing business with them in some way.
It's All My Fault: How I Messed Up the World, and Why I Need Your Help to Fix It Page 2
