Exposing the Conspiracy of Goodness.
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[Music]
[Applause]
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