Exposing the Conspiracy of Goodness.

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[Music]

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there is a conspiracy of goodness

happening right now an enormous wave of

progress

is well underway in the world and almost

no one knows about it now not many

people know that during world war

ii the little village of le champon

france managed to save

3 500 jews from the nazi concentration

camps

at great risk to their own lives and

with no formal organization they saved

thousands most of them orphans for

several years

now in 1987 a rabbi harold shillweis was

giving a

talk in europe about this chapter in

history and he said at the end of the

talk an

old man stood up in the back of the room

to say he’d been one of the dutch

rescuers

and the old man asked why do we always

focus on the conspiracy of

evil that was world war ii

do you think i could have saved an

entire family in my home

without the active participation of the

milkman

the mailman and the neighbors

no the old man said for every one person

saved there were seven who were rescuers

it was he said a conspiracy

of goodness now this

is who we are we are not what we see

on the internet and social media right

now we

are doers we are rescuers

we are helpers we have been for hundreds

of thousands of years

the advent of the internet does not

change that

while there are countless people who are

very famous for doing

acts of incredible heroism and goodness

by far the majority of people

who are making the world a better place

well they’re

genuine conspirators for goodness like

the milkman the mailmen

and the neighbors in le chamber and

france

their stories are just not rising to the

top of the internet

for now take for example topher white

he’s an ordinary engineer who has

discovered that we can

save the rainforest using old cell

phones like we all have in a junk drawer

his organization the rainforest

connection takes the old cell phones

tunes them to pick up only the sound of

a chainsaw

and then places them at intervals around

the forest and the minute illegal

loggers fire up the chainsaws

this phone sent a signal up to the

satellite and down to local rangers who

can swoop in

and save the day and save the rain

forest for the local communities

who depend on them for their livelihood

another great example

is an organization called scadistan

so that story starts with a wonderful

australian researcher

named oliver perkovich who wound up in

2007

in kabul afghanistan and he looked

around himself

and realized that 75 percent of the

population

were under the age of 25 and no one was

investing in this group

after decades of war so he looked at the

problem carefully

and the resources at his disposal and

decided there was something that

he held dear that might hold an answer

skateboards oliver realized that

no one had banned skateboarding yet so

he swooped under the radar screen and

started an enormous community

all focused on educating girls and

street children who might never have a

shot at a nice future

skada stand grew so fast that in 10

years they had similar programs

up and running in cambodia and africa

and have you heard of a wonderful

thought leader named daniel kish

maybe you have some people refer to him

as the original batman

you know daniel got that moniker because

he lost both his eyes as a baby

and taught himself to see with sound

part of the brain that was going to be

devoted to sight repurposed itself and

now

he uses a kind of natural sonar like

bats and dolphins

to create mental images of the world

around him

daniel’s organization visioneers.org

has taught this technique to thousands

of people

in 40 countries daniel

can ride a bike

now i tell you his story just kicks down

the door

on what we might all think is impossible

what daniel’s doing is backed up by lots

of research on

other capabilities that our brains might

have

right between our own ears who knows

what we’re capable of

i mean these kind of things stories go

on and on

um scientists have discovered that trees

are talking to each other

and doctors are using virtual reality

instead of anesthesia

have you heard of damien mander he’s a

former counter insurgency

expert in the iraq war who has

discovered

that single mothers make the best game

wardens

in africa for a whole host of reasons

and they are changing conservation in

ways that

will be portable all around the world

saving endangered species

it makes my heart sore to know these

stories why

aren’t we hearing this in the news and

on the internet

i don’t think it’s a lack of goodness in

the world i think it’s a lack of

awareness

because the earliest kinds of

selflessness

and good intention is always quiet

and for now those stories are just not

making it to the top of the internet

so if you feel like it’s all too crazy

too much to tackle

like we can never reign the internet in

i’d like to offer you a

different perspective experience tells

me

that the internet is only a slice of

reality

a more complete picture of our world and

each other would include

countless ordinary people making the

world a better place

in all kinds of ways large and small

and for now their stories just aren’t

rising to the top

because the internet has become an

attention

economy nothing else matters there

in fact the last 20 years the internet

has been designed

to completely capture and hold our

attention

and to do that they’ve designed

especially social media

to trigger some of our most primitive

and irresistible emotions

like fear anger and scarcity

what we have now is an internet

functioning like a toddler running with

scissors

and the first thing we have to do is

stop running with it

what if instead of allowing the internet

to unconsciously divide and confuse us

what if we conspired to bring goodness

and

progress to the surface on the internet

what if we

chose to elevate what’s best in each

other

and the world we can do that

there are four simple shifts that we can

use the internet as normal

but practice and fundamentally change

what rises to the top of the internet

now the first shift is really easy pause

pause before you click on anything

because someone is counting

every click you make and what we click

on

we get more of your click is a

vote for anything you engage with

and by click i mean a tap a like a share

a comment

anything that we engage gets brought to

us and served to us next

even if it’s leaving us confused

heartbroken or fearful and that brings

me to shift number two

ignore more we can ignore the chaos

building

and all that negativity right into

obscurity

no one is creating content if we don’t

engage with it

i’m guessing that if you pause for just

a millisecond

before you click on anything and ask

yourself one simple quick question

do we need more of this i’m guessing

about 80 of what you used to click on

out of fear anger or boredom

you will ignore and that brings you to

shift number three

seek signs of goodness and progress

for now the internet will not bring it

to you it’s not built that way

but if you do the first two shifts pause

and ignore

more eventually signs of goodness and

progress will start popping up

everywhere for you and that brings me to

the fourth shift

share signs of goodness and progress

content creators are paying very close

attention

to what we share and the internet is now

built

to amplify that we can use that

to open a new era

we have all the power to bend the

internet

in the direction of positivity over and

over again the opening of a new era

happens

when a new way of thinking takes hold

and starts gaining conspirators and a

new way of doing things

starts building momentum of goodwill

that becomes

unstoppable a conspiracy of goodness

is a pattern throughout history

just before the next major leap in

progress

think about it for a minute we humans

have a habit of adopting some really

primitive practices

that eventually collapse of their own

weight

think about things like gladiators

fighting to the death in the coliseum

slavery child labor

not allowing women the right to vote all

those practices

made perfect sense to many

until one day they didn’t

and this is the way social change

happens

quietly at first when one by one

we take matters into our own hands turn

it against

things that seem like madness

and offend us at our core

i think we’re at just one of those

tipping points right now

with the craziness in our online lives

we have got to stop the noise

the negativity and the division and we

can get there

we can rethink the role of the internet

and make one of those leaps in progress

we can conspire

against the chaos builders and the noise

and we can quietly take matters into our

own hands

and make the world a better place

remember that for every one person

saved in le champon there were seven who

were rescuers

we don’t have to go out and personally

save the rainforest

we can be like the milkman the mailman

and the neighbors

and create all kinds of goodness we can

start

and propagate waves of progress

it is still an amazing world

when that slice of reality rises to the

top of the internet

a new arrow will open for us all

and all we have to do is pause

ignore more seek signs of goodness and

progress

and share it welcome

to the conspiracy of goodness

you