The World by Us

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

— John Lennon

Bob turns 71 today! What a legend.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest… Each day we have a plethora of opportunities to exchange, share, communicate, support, and connect with others thanks to the horde of online communities we now have at our disposal.

Though some believe we are feeling more isolated than ever.

An interesting hypothesis, and one we thought worth exploring. So earlier this year (inspired by this post), we solicited the opinion of the world wide web on community in a digital age.

Check out some of the responses we got:

“I’ve always seen online communities as a supplement, not a replacement, for real life ones. I use them as a means to stay connected to people when we’re not in the same physical space. I’d much rather be doing stuff in the real world, because real life is so KICKBUTT.”

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“I think there is always some loss to a community that is online. Its just not the same as a real connection, sharing your time with someone in a physical space. The loss of eye contact, body gestures, fine details… It is sad in many ways, yet being able to communicate and share from a distance has many benefits and will continue to be apart of society as we become more connected.”

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“I don’t think that there is any way to fully replicate the experience of having a face to face conversation with another individual with an online community. Though we have so many new ways to connect with each other, I think that many of us are feeling more isolated than ever.”

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“What I’ve had fun with – is to expand my offline friendships with extended online ones. This has opened up entirely new relationships in very cool ways.”

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“I am an Administrator on a large bulletin board; We are all bound together by the need for support and understanding (prisoners’ families). In real life we would not be able to make those connections so easily. One of the first things that members say when joining is “Thank God I found you! You understand me, no-one else does”.  In my experience the internet has enhanced my ability to join a community towards which I feel a real sense of “belonging”. It has been one of the most rewarding times of my life, and I have made and met lifelong friends through this medium.”

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“In the last year, I moved to a brand new city where I knew absolutely no one. As I explored the city, I was open to connections and talked to whoever was around me when it seemed appropriate, but in most of these cases we had nothing in common more than whatever situation we were in and whatever else strangers have in common. We could talk about local events or experiences, or tell each other our stories but that ended up being the extent of it. I had much better luck finding groups of people with common interests through online communities and then meeting them at events.”

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“The online world can be a good portal into real-world connections if you want it to be – for example, meetup.com or ‘tweet-ups’”

Like many who weighed in, we believe BALANCE is key. Our online and offline communities should not be mutually exclusive but rather mutually reinforcing. Those of us living nomadic or urban lifestyles may have to work a bit harder to nurture our real world connections, but we think there are some fabulous ways to do that. We need only to get off our lap tops (iphones, ipads, etc.), turn off the TV, and get out there!

Here’s a quick look at just a few new community initiatives in our backyard that are successfully using the online world to expand our offline interactions:

This Place is Yours is an exciting non-profit media project launching later this year that seeks to ‘connect communities, open societies and create happier human beings.’ The beauty of this project is the way it plans to do this via online journalism & story-telling combined with real world events & workshops in order to foster face-to-face connection and community.

Urban Love - ‘Extremely social, guerilla-style events across Sydney’s underused inner-city spaces. A much needed chance to get outside, mingle, stretch your happy muscles, meet your neighbours and liven up our streets! Public street-parties every third Saturday 2-6pm. Rogue Tunes, outdoor foosball, great times & BYO drinks & food.’

Make Tonight Count - A new iphone app designed to share your plans for the evening with ‘a few mates, all your friends or the world.’ A nifty little tool to help us all coordinate our social lives. The night is full of possibilities and this app exists to help you take advantage of all of them.

What do YOU think?

Are Facebook, et al. causing loneliness and isolation?

How do you nurture your offline communities?

Why not make a commitment to foster real world connections in NEW ways this weekend?

A clever campaign and an unimaginable injustice we encounter everyday – whether we know it or not. The waitress at the restaurant, the hands that made our clothes,  the child forced to work to produce the chocolate we enjoy…

Human Trafficking – The Facts

• The U.N estimates that 2.5 million people from 127 countries have been trafficked to 137 countries for purposes such as forced labour, sexual exploitation, removal of organs, forced marriages, child adoption and begging.
• According to UNICEF, 2 million children will be sold into the sextrade in the next year.
• In South East Asia, many of these children are sold for as little as $50 and some as young as 6 years old.
• Profits from sex slavery exceed US9.5 billion per year.
• Human trafficking is the second largest organised crime in the world. It has become a bigger business than drug trafficking.
• Human trafficking victims are subject to rape, torture, forced abortions, starvation and threats to family members.

If you’d like to learn more, get involved or simply support great organisations working hard to end modern day slavery, check out:

Stop the Traffik

Not for Sale

Call & Response

Project Futures

Slavery Footprint

We’ve come across some uber-talented ladies lately. Ladies like the eccentric Claire Boucher (or Grimes as most know her). The 23 year old, Canadian born singer and producer has been making big waves in the indie music scene with her ethereal & infectious album Visions.

A darling of the ‘bedroom pop’ movement and in the company of artists like Washed Out, Active Child and How to Dress Well, Grimes is a one-woman show who prefers to think of herself as more of a ‘curator of stuff’ than a musician. While it was her album that first impressed us, it is her authenticity that has won us over.

With a slight lisp, an alternative personal style, and a penchant for Marilyn Manson, Claire is clearly unconventional. Regardless, she exudes self-confidence and a refreshingly matter-of-fact demeanour. However, just 5 or 6 years ago, she was ‘actively hated…locked in lockers, and thrown in garbage cans’ – a pretty traumatic high school experience by anyone’s measure. Though fortunately those days are far behind her now and the tables have turned.

These days, as she told Pedestrian TV, the fashion crowd who ‘would have destroyed her in high school’ are the girls buying the tickets to her shows. Who’s laughing now?