TED Community » Christine Mason McCaull

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Human potential, conscious living, startups, visual art, photography, yoga, family, sustainability, creativity, community.

An idea worth spreading

1) For a full and happy life, always choose love and connection 2) Our scale (our size, our lifespan, even the unaided capacity of our perceptual organs) causes us to fundamentally misapprehend the universe and our place in it. The only solution is endless curiosity and limitless humility- and the enhancement of our capacities to see and hear and feel. 3) No matter what happens, you can always take a deep breath and start again.

Talk to me about

Love in leadership. Startups. Habit change. Brain science. Writing and publishing. Adventuring. Taking your seat. Environmental action. Idealism. Poetry. Modern Art. Photography.

People don't know that I'm good at

Impromptu song writing and a capella performances. Galbraithian efficiency. Handstands.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +2435.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Talk: Louie Schwartzberg: Nature. Beauty. Gratitude.

  Dec 2 2011: TEDxSF ALIVE! Maximum Living as a Human, was held on June 4th, 2011. The day featured so many wonderful speakers who shared their visions and ideas on how to optimize the experience of being human at every stage of the lifecycle. Louie's talk received a standing ovation, and the kind of sighs and oohs and ahhs that you would expect. The absolutely most satisfying thing that has come out of the experience of organizing TEDx events is when the speakers get to 100,000 or 300,000 views, or when they have significant impact on any individual, when it changes a heart or a mind. Louie's message is profound, and simple, and the visuals are stunning, and he himself walks in the world with a kind presence and sense of beauty. Thank you for supporting and spreading his work, Brother David's text, and the overall message of gratitude.

• A comment on Conversation: Are flatter/ more egalitarian societies possible? What beliefs, processes & systems would enable them? What are the risks?

  Mar 4 2011: @tobias > Always something to be learned at the edge case.... so, the man who lives in isolation (the ultimate libertarian) is sort of living without a superior or an inferior, in isolation he is a pretty flat organization. He wouldn't be a citizen of any place, so no tax would be imposed for the common good. On the other hand, in his ignorance of climate change and lack of trade relationships, let's say there are theoretical salinity shifts caused by other nations and people not related to him or his actions- and these cause all of his machines to fail. So the lack of attention to the collective comes back around and bites him in the butt, and his underwater lair and in fact, he himself, dies. This question about the balance between the individual and the collective is somewhat intertwined with the question of a society that has less hierarchy.
  
  I would also explore this assumption that it's hard work by the individual that differentiates reward, not crafty working of the systems for one's own advantage- whether circumstances of birth or connectedness, most of these hierarchy systems seem to self perpetuate, and have little to do with the individual. I need data on this, because the mythos is that bootstrapping your own self is the way MOST people win, but I have this sense that while there are many stories about individuals pulling themselves from nothing to something, but that the bulk of the prosperous/ ruling class are transgenerational. What do you think?
  
  @marek> Thank you. That is a pretty good cognitive answer- it seems earlier than school, though.

• A comment on Talk: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

  Dec 11 2008: Ken's talk is fundamentally about our collective values. When he says education is designed to produce university professors...we educate people increasingly from the waist up and then the neck up and then to the left....he's talking about what we value. When we also value the body, the heart, visual expression, music, inventiveness, risk taking, service- as much as intellect- we will look for stellar capacities and potential in these areas in young people, and nurture those talents as we would someone who has a talent for math or analytical thinking. Only then will our educational environments will reflect these values- and the children "born to dance" will be seen, and rise more swiftly into their own fullness.