TED Community » Mark Hurych

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Managing the anthropocene. The current sixth extinction episode and other imbalances in global systems must be understood and addressed.

An idea worth spreading

An expanding empathic civilization, based on a vision of a thriving future for 100% of humanity, can be nurtured with something like the murmuration of swallows. Imagine tribes of people around the globe, all interested in a thriving biosphere, networked together with more and more tightly related bonds of empathy. Then imagine this network swarming like a murmuration, Imagine the über-humanity. Imagine identifying with the planet and all its life in the same way that we now identify with "BFF's."

Talk to me about

biosphere vulnerability, CO2 in the air, horticulture, wetland biomes, solar power, C2C, empathy

People don't know that I'm good at

Problem solving, making connections with odd ideas

Comments

• TEDCred score: +9.80 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 14 2013: "...seeing our children for the hope that they are..."
  A quote from Sir Ken lifts my expectation to the most hopeful possibilities.

• A comment on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 13 2013: We are educating people out of their creative capacities. I'm quoting Sir Ken Robinson but I think we can generally agree that this is the case in our current education system. Unless. My contention here is that this does not offer the kind of hope for the future that we would wish to see instilled in future generations. Current kindergarteners will be retiring in 2072. A centuries old tradition does not seem to me to be the best way of offering an engaging culture of hope and empathy. Sorry. That's another annoying aspect of my view. Expanding empathy as well as creativity is absolutely essential for out collective future. Sure, technology and its advances offers hope. Also our new-found social circles that expand to do good globally. These things offer hope in brand new ways and I am grateful for them.
  
  Let's be organic gardeners of hope. Let's inspire future generations and humanity at large, not just tolerate them.

• A comment on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 13 2013: Part of what I gain in these TED conversations is the sense of where paradigms are changing or need to change. I start conversations attempting to change others by changing their perspectives. While that does happen I also end up seeing my own perspective change as well.
  
  Now I'm thinking that the wording of this question is misleading since "win" or "win out" is associated with zero sum games.
  
  I mean to play a non-zero sum game here, to both advance my ideas as well as absorbing the ideas of others in an attempt to improve every participant's knowledge base, including my own. In general I attempt to turn "either/or" perspectives into "and/and" perspectives. I believe the aggregate of our attempts to improve the world are what matters, not who comes in first, second, or third.
  
  I am not looking to exclude resources or people or ideas. On the contrary, I'm looking for ways to be inclusive, to find collective intelligence in our efforts, to add to the next generation's bag of tricks for improving the human condition.
  
  There are several metaphorical asteroids of doom headed toward our collective thrivability this century. I want all of us to find and share ways of facing these threats and tipping points with hope and courage and empathy and non-zero-sumness.
  
  Before I add comments to conversations or reply to comments here I look at the profiles and past comments of the commentators and listen to the TED talks that they like. I invite you to do the same with my web pages, TED talks or even Google results of my name. Not in order to win points, but to better understand each other so we can understand how we can support and generate support for the common good of our future on this planet.
  
  In a spirit of the audacity of hope,
  and hoping for audacity,
  Peace.

• A comment on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 13 2013: I am not sure how this might be done. Some art form or creativity in any realm might help us re-envision the familiar. This would allow us to associate hope and possibility where before it was lacking.

• A reply on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 12 2013: According to the anticipation model in Tali Sharot's theory on optimism bias, we maintain our best performance and happiness when we have an optimistic (one with hope) bias. We tend to make objective reality turn out well since we want so badly for it to fit the subjective positive outcome we are expecting.
  
  My dream for the future is that all humans reach a healthy, safe, and interesting lifestyle for themselves and their children in this century. Is that somehow your nightmare?
  
  I am not able to filter the increasing useless stuff very well even when I can tell the difference, but I consider this a software problem, not a personality problem. So my response is to ask software developers to tackle this issue head on. For example, if we had an algorithm that would search the meaningful context of web pages instead of just word proximity and word count, then we would be taking a huge step in the right direction.
  
  Finally, if you are a parent (i. e. human family mentor) like me, it might be a good idea for us to infect our offspring with the viral meme of objective optimism. Note the chocolate and rain boots in Sara Kay's poem "Point B."
  
  http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter.html
  
  http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/11377.Sarah_Kay

• A reply on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 12 2013: Hmm. ...best we can hope for... ...dream vs nightmare... ...filter...
  
  Unless...

• A comment on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 12 2013: 的聖人徘徊不知道， 看到不看， 完成而不動。Rather than be a sage on the stage I'd prefer to be a guide on the side. 在舞台上，而不是一個聖人就在身邊，我寧願是一個指導。
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanity�s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 12 2013: Re "wake up"
  Haley Goranson 
  Hope may not have been the right word for this question. You're right, awareness has to come first. For some of us, perhaps the time is right to act collectively on the hope we have, validating each other's efforts. 
  
  In this century, we are more sensitized... 
  http://www.naturalcapital.org/ 
  "...more able to think, feel, and respond together..." -Richard Tarnas

• A comment on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 11 2013: From chapter 47:
  The sage wanders without knowing,
  Sees without looking,
  Accomplishes without acting.
  -I Ching
  
  Of concept, emotion, and perspective, I want creative collective change.

• A reply on Conversation: During the coming decades, in what ways do you anticipate that our humanityâ��s hopes will win out over our fears?

  Jan 9 2013: The kind of hope a glowing pregnant woman has is her personal confidence that her baby is wonderful. As an uncle and great-uncle and independent study teacher with teen moms I validate that personally and one-to-one.
  I want to inspire hope for the future. Activities that I participate in are not for me so much as for the future generations. The Internet offers ways to inspire hope and collaborate for the greater good. Hope to me is that emotion that gives me the sense that working for the future is worthwhile. I see it in (grandfather) James Hansen's confident optimism, when facing David Letterman saying, "We're screwed, right?"