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About Me

Lately a lot of people have been asking me what I do with my life, I ask myself that every day and I would like to answer once and for all, at least to have a link to share instead of repeating everything again.

I want to change the world, that’s the only thing I’ve had clear since I was a child, when I looked at adults behaving in a violent, distorted manner. I saw we, the kids, where much more calmed and riper in judgment than the average person, and that a child with bad temper, anger, or “bad” was basically a copy of his/her environment. But we were not born this way.

Since I was a small boy I had constantly being ignored for being "too young” and that has been perhaps the most difficult burden that I’ve had to carry. As I look back, I was not wrong; it was a huge hindrance not to have those years to presume by. Today that no longer applies, nor the famous title which I am close to completing, nor the judgment of having reached nothing in life. It was never really valid, but at least the rest have been left without pretext.

As I said: I want to change the world, and that outlook is profoundly clear to me. I had all kinds of frustrations in my head and necessity to do something about it was always evident, but once you find the solutions, the battle becomes inescapable.

Today 21,000 children starved to death, which means that every 4 seconds a child dies of hunger. Count it out slowly 1, 2, 3... and again: 1, 2, 3... The son of someone exactly like you has been starving for at least a week, his stomach has burned on the inside, his body has eaten itself, his skin has frozen, his muscles disappeared, his brain turned anxious, confused, desperate, lost, he can barely breathe, and finally he dies in continual agony.

Every day 200 species disappear, we will never see them again, nor ever learn from them. Part of the only home we have will be consumed, making our home smaller and smaller; war will continue, and someone will see their husband or wife come back in pieces over a stretcher. Why wouldn’t I want to change the world?

I constantly hear people lamenting over an empty meaningless life and every time I ask, there is always a dream that went unfulfilled, generally altruistic, or of personal development, that innate curiosity that we force ourselves to ignore.

That’s why I do what I do, not just because I know the problem, and because my empathy doesn’t allow me to ignore it, but because I know about the solution, about the impact of its application, about how irrelevant the obstacles that exist become. I am not a romantic; I don’t want a better world for my kids… I want a better world for my family, for the person that is in the room next door, for the being that has to pick food from the trash, even when you don’t know it, for those who die in starvation, for those who think that they are alone in this fight. You are my family.

I do what I do not because it is easy but it is worth, because only a deep comprehension of our problems, their solutions and the way that people behaves, on their own and as a group, will take us to a better place in the future. I teach not for necessity but for solidarity, because a family with members in discord is incomplete. Who hasn’t lived it?

I am homesick, I want to sleep peacefully, accompanied, with no troubles in my head, with the certainty that I receive all the help I can get, without doubting for a second that the people that take care of me are keeping an eye on me, I long to have something new to learn everyday, something to satisfy my curiosity and finally, I desire to rest pretty aware that we all consciously share the same feeling.

Will you give me a hand?

Location:
Ecuador, Quito
Current organization:
The Zeitgeist Movement
Current role:
Coordinator
Gender:
Male
Areas of expertise:
Medicine Student, Social and Behaviour Psychology, Social Design, Idea Development, Activism and Education
I am:
Activist, Atheist, Blogger, Change Agent, Environmentalist, Global soul, Idea generator, Musician, Philanthropist, Writer/Editor
Languages:
English, Spanish, Italian
My website links:
Movimiento Zeitgeist Ecuador, Blog Personal, The Zeitgeist Movement
Universities:
Universidad Tecnol
Member Picture

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More About Me

I'm passionate about

Open Source, Science, Non-violence, Social Behaviour, Sustainability.

An idea worth spreading

The scientific method applied for social concern creating a global resource-based economic model

Comments

  • TEDCred score: +13.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

  • A reply on Talk: Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

    Apr 3 2013: Where can we find the best evidence to reverse climate change? Please PM me as well.

  • A reply on Conversation: How the enviroment [everything around us] shapes our behaviour as a society? Can we change the culture in order to change the world?

    Jul 9 2012: Short answer: Yes.

    A friend of mine told me that once you understand how a mechanism controls you (if cultural mainly) you won't be controled anymore.

    So while I want the answer my long-term goal is change the culture by this mechanism. Carl Sagan used to say: if we are naturally inclined to reject foreigners, isn't knowledge the best way to avoid it?

    Also I don't want to limit the cultural-shift process to this, so I'm looking for other methods that had proven to be efective when talking about changing culture.

  • A reply on Conversation: How the enviroment [everything around us] shapes our behaviour as a society? Can we change the culture in order to change the world?

    Jul 9 2012: Indeed, I'd like some evidence about the enviroment affecting our behaviour, to be specific about culture altering our behaviour, let me explain a little bit.

    Today's world is basically suffering from one thing: bad (awful) managment of the Earth resources... We have created an economic model that's based on nothing more than thin air. It was created centuries ago and it has not been really modified since them. Our FIAT currency is stimulating some virtual 'growth' that makes us steal the resources of the future and consume more than we need, exactly the opposite of what an economy is meant to be, which is economize.

    Now there are far more better approachs to the managment of the earth resources, to name a couple of them we have open source as an emergent feature but more holistic systems like the circular economy (Ellen MacArthur Foundation) or the resource-based economic model (http://goo.gl/zMGK1).

    So from a technical point of view our current problems: poverty, hunger, restriction to water, health defficiencies and even war (since they are most likely caused to gain other countries' resources) are technical nor economic nor politic; caused mainly by an awful managment of resources but even more important by people who thinks this (our current decision-making processes aka democratic and our current market system) is a natural predisposition.

    This is the origin of my question, could you imagine a society where all of us had been raised with "the scientific method for social concern" as the method of decision-making... Could you imagine if we had been raised with abundance around us, instead of scarcity?

    So I see education as the tipping point to create sustainability, giving new values to future generations, how do we change culture in order to achieve that?

  • A comment on Talk: Peter van Uhm: Why I chose a gun

    Mar 5 2012: This talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWMJmDDohz4 could highlight a better perspective on sustainable peace.

  • A comment on Conversation: How can today's youth get involved and help initiate change in the world?

    Jan 10 2012: They could join the zeitgeist movement, It's hard to tell what it is with just one comment and probably one single movie can't describe it even if that's one of the most beautiful pieces of art (www.zeitgeistmovingforward.com) however I could describe it as an international initiative to raise awareness about the world's problems, and not just to identify them but to understand them so deeply that the solutions become self-evident.

    It's not only about a movie and hippies, we have a lot of free available materials created in several languages from several members from all over the world, and we don't charge a peny for it. We donate it. :)

    www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

  • A reply on Conversation: If you could make a wish on behalf of The City 2.0, what would it be?

    Dec 8 2011: Not really, The designs in "flat land" are just an example of how the best technology applied could work. It's more a way of building cities than a unique design, you can learn more about it in the website. However if we keep efficiency and sustaniability as our goal. We need to move forward and forget our current market based structure. That will make a real City 2.0

  • A comment on Conversation: If you could make a wish on behalf of The City 2.0, what would it be?

    Dec 7 2011: We, the people, already awarded this idea long time ago, there are people in nearly every country trying to educate people with new values related with sustainability, science and the use of technology, to create an ecofriendly enviroment.
    You can see something here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/travis-walter-donovan/the-zeitgeist-movement-en_b_501517.html but you know, we don't need money, we barely use it, we don't even ask for it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
  • +3

    A comment on Talk: Sam Richards: A radical experiment in empathy

    Jul 24 2011: This is hard for most americans to realize... Easy for all the rest of the world...

  • A comment on Conversation: Which relevant/important events currently unfolding around the world are being ignored by the media? Why are they relevant?

    Feb 16 2011: A better question to this would be.. Where can I find this ignored information? www.zeitnews.org
  • +1

    A comment on Talk: Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

    Dec 2 2010: My own personal hero...
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