Currently viewing the tag: "civil rights"

America BurningAs we emerge from the fires of last week’s riots here in the U.S., Europe finds itself in the throes of unrest. With three months of moderately-strict lockdown due to Covid-19, many had reached the limits of their self-containment. George Floyd’s death was the spark that ignited an inferno which would consume American cities all across the country. Like a wildfire it spread, making its way across the Atlantic to Northwestern Europe. And in the ashes of its destruction, good people have been devastated – emotionally, financially, and legally. Some have lost their lives, leaving behind grieving loved ones, and forcing every citizen to reflect on the full implications of their beliefs, their expectations, and their future.

Not one person has been left unaffected by the combined Covid-19 pandemic and weeks of civil unrest. Businesses remained closed, despite quarantine restrictions being lifted in the strictest U.S. states. And 36 million Americans have been left jobless as a result of Covid-19. Analysts have been uncertain as to how the country will recover following the coronavirus lock downs, but many believe that unless something is done to help homeowners and renters, defaults will be abundant as people scramble to put their lives back in order.

I have no uncertainty that we have stepped into a new world in 2020. What that world will shape into is anybody’s guess, but to think it will ever return to life as we’ve known it would be foolish. Of course, some elements will remain the same – technology will reign supreme, social media will be the place to gather news, information, and entertainment, and political polarization will lead to even greater divides between people. But what, if anything, might we look forward to: what ups-and-downs can we expect along the path of reconstruction? The most honest answer is it will depend on our focus.

TechObviously, different people want different things. Every person can have a version of the future they envision to some degree. I will explain this idea more fully in a bit. But right now exists opportunity to shape your world in the way you want it. Yes you can shape society too, but do not fall victim to the belief that you can do it against the will of others. To create lasting social change, the hearts and mind of the people must be won over. Let me encourage you to think of any lasting social change, and investigate how it was accomplished. Yes violence has happened in moments of societal change, but the violence itself was not the catalyst to the lasting change, it was the inspired movement of hearts and minds which led to the transformation. Gandhi won the hearts and minds of the people. Martin Luther King, Jr. won the hearts and minds of people. Even the American Revolutionaries won the hearts and minds of the people. Without aligning these energy centers to your vision, you will be unlikely to cause lasting change. One need only consider the long chain of military occupiers in Vietnam and the drawn out fighting there to understand what I mean about failing to win hearts and minds. If your vision is big, however, and it includes the most people, you will have a greater probability of creating lasting change. I cannot stress this factor enough: hearts and minds.

MLK Hearts and MindsWhen forging a path in this new world, it would be wise to focus on your highest values. Those things that act as drivers for your decisions – things you are inspired by daily – are what you should focus on and centralize in your vision. For some people it is family, for others it is service, and for even others it is the beauty of the world (artists, poets, musicians, mathematicians, etc.). There is certainly no right or wrong in this regard, other than the importance you give it to your mission. Simply put: A mission is a plan with a purpose. The purpose is the why you do what you do, while the mission is the vision.

A powerful vision is one that has a strong purpose behind it, allows the most people fulfillment of their values, and has a coherent, specific plan to make it happen. If one’s purpose is linked strongly to one’s values, one will be more likely to see it through. Many people inject other’s values into their endeavors, but they do not have the drive to ultimately carry things out. We are driven by our true values, and no matter how good another’s values sound, if you do not truly share them, you will peter out and lose drive. A vision which allows for the greatest numbers of people to fulfill their own values will be the most powerful and longest lasting. Civil rights is one of those visions: by ensuring that all people have a right to pursue and fulfill their values, in health, wealth and freedom, failure becomes impossible. Obstacles will arise, as in any endeavor, but ultimately, people will be inspired and driven to support freedom and justice for all. Finally, a vision is only as good as its implementation. You can envision all day long, but if you do nothing to make it happen, it will remain a daydream.  Constructing a specific plan which can be communicated coherently, so that others may become inspired by your vision, is the surest way to accomplishing your goals. You will forge your way in the new world most successfully by following the principles above. Purpose, vision, and fulfillment for the most people are the ingredients for a lasting legacy.

BalanceFinally, and most importantly, is to strive for balance – in your personal endeavors, as well as for the collective or greater good. Understand that regardless of your vision, you will face obstacles in that endeavor. Obstacles are not vision-killers; they are feedback mechanisms that are in place to guide you. Your vision will be shaped and refined by the obstacles you face…and overcome. To do so you may need to alter your plan a bit. You may need to learn more, or you may need to change beliefs or perspectives. I love to read biographies on the greats of humanity to get a sense of their obstacles, their solutions, and their evolution. You will have yours in your unique way. When attempting to elicit change that is resisted by others, try to find a middle ground. Believe it or not, it is possible to exist in coinciding realities with others – that is, many people can live in worlds of their making together, even when it seems that their worlds are diametrically opposed. Find the common ground. How do you get what you love while others get what they love? That may be the very challenge for you to figure out, but what a powerful vision that is. “All you need is love” is not some hokey song lyric, but a profound truth of all human beings: How do I get what I love while you get what you love…? Living in the extreme polarities of any human issue is volatile – it brings the most stress, the least cooperation, and the baddest blood to the table. Finding the center point and striving for a win-win is the greatest achievement one can have, with the highest possibility of longevity. Game theory, a mathematical study, shows unequivocally that people do better when working together.

The chaos of 2020 has been disruptive for most people to say the least. For many it appears, for now, devastating. But in chaos there is always a hidden order, one that allows for a reconfiguration of your life at the micro-level, but the entire world in the macro. There appears to be great opportunity at this time for enormous change, so take the time and invest the energy to create the world that you want to live in. It will not come easy – so do not take this as the walk-away message. Whatever you would love to see and experience in this new world will take great effort, but it will be worth it. If you can observe the principles I have outlined here, you stand the greatest chance of lasting success. People will follow your inspired message if they can see what is in it for them. What this means for most people is how it will allow them to fulfill their own mission, according to their life’s purpose, which, of course, is intertwined with their highest values. People are only fulfilled – that is, filled-up full – when they are allowed to pursue their dreams, in their way, at their pace. If your vision for the new world allows others to do this, it will be embraced by all.


This is a piece on technology, politics and the future. It is meant to be a wake up call. While it might sound obvious to some, I can see through my observation of the masses that, even if they do know, people are acting unaware. And this, dear readers, is a big mistake.

heidi-klum-mel-b-naked-selfieYou may have picked up on my interest in technology—particularly as it pertains to the future of human evolution. As I ponder which problems humans might face in the future, again and again my mind returns to technology. Humans and technology are merging—beyond the apparent efficiency technology brings us. But as our hi-tech machinery becomes even more incorporated into our personal lives (outside of business), we run some real risks of losing things that we take for granted—like privacy, civil rights, autonomy and even species dominance (as strange as that may sound).

An interesting story, dubbed Celebgate, has plugged the media waves last week, of a massive hack job, where pictures stored on the cloud, of celebrities in the buff, were stolen and then leaked onto the internet via sites like Reditt and 4chan. Although both sites have just pulled the photos, despite their simultaneous statement on a commitment to free speech, the Reddit page containing the leaked photos got over 250 million views—the fastest growing Reddit page in history.

unsecure cloud The backlash from the media and the public has been massive. Some have claimed that the breach is far more than simple theft—it is a sex crime, plain and simple. Proponents of this viewpoint point out that, once again, women have been violated, made into sexual objects for the pleasure of lascivious lechers of the male lot, and if the perpetrators are ever identified, they should be drawn and quartered, no questions asked.

Okay, all emotion aside, let’s look at the real issue here. There is no doubt that a theft has occurred, a massive violation of personal property and human dignity. Innocent victims have been hurt and humiliated, their bare assets put on display for anyone to see. I mean, 250 million views—that’s almost the entire U.S. population! And with all sincerity, I sympathize with the mostly women celebrities who had their nude pictures leaked, because who hasn’t done something like that, all the while cringing at the thought of somebody else seeing it, let alone millions of people. And the ugly verbal comments these young ladies have had to endure on social media sites like Twitter is simply appalling. When I read ilk of that sort my stomach turns at the despicability of some human beings. But, alas, that is today’s culture intoxicated on the anonymity of the internet.

Sh happens editSo what’s the real issue here, if this base violation of peoples’ privacy isn’t it? It is not, as far as I’m concerned, that people should refrain from taking nude photos of themselves, as some have suggested, because we all know that sh** happens. Face it: People party. Hormones rage. Body parts get exposed. Cameras click. Having the expectation that people should abstain from taking nudie pics on their mobile devices is about as realistic as expecting them to not have sex. Sorry but I just do not see it happening. The real issue is the notion that it is wise to trust the safety of your information—personal or otherwise—on the cloud. Duh! Stop it. Stop believing that any information which is easily accessible to you is safe from others. This belief is a byproduct of a political ideology, one that has been perpetrated in one form or another by both U.S. political parties, under the assumption that the more centralized your personal information, the more benefit to YOU. Don’t you see the absurdity of this concept? It is now being pushed in every facet of our lives—medical records, central identification and, of course, digital data.

With every new idea, every new invention, every new convenience, there comes a downside. With regard to technology, it is, and will remain, the threat to our personal freedom. Central governing (including of data) is always sold as individual convenience, safety and the like, but the drawback is control, and loss of privacy and freedom. Don’t take this lightly. If you want to be controlled in a Huxley-esque Brave New World fashion, then keep putting your information out there for everybody to access. Please take this Celebgate eye-opener as your own personal ice bucket challenge and wake the f*** up!

freedom-loss

The simplest solution, as I see it, is to reject the cloud as a means of backup. When I purchased my new HTC One phone, the salesman, working hard to make the sale, started pushing the HTC backup function. “Oh yes, and we can set your phone to automatically back up to the cloud…”

“Wait a second,” I said, “I don’t want to be on the cloud.” I had already investigated this issue when the federal government began pushing electronic health records (EHR) toward the end of the last decade. I saw the dangers back then and knew where it was all heading.

“Why not?” my pushy little dough-boy Sprint salesman wanted to know.

“Because I don’t need anybody seeing all my nudies,” was my exact answer. Prophetic.

He informed me that we could shut off the function, and that I could, “manually turn it on” anytime I wanted to. Yeah…fughdat!

Turn-off-delete-backup-dataSo if you are smart, you’ll shut off your iCloud, or HTC cloud, or any other cloud backup the powers that be are trying to push. Yes, okay, it has its use, and no doubt cloud security will improve over time; but if you think taking that chance now with your most private information, which includes your fleshy parts, is wise, then well you will have to learn the hard way. You could just stop taking nudie photos…but you know that’s unlikely to happen. So do the next best thing—instructions here:

How to Switch Off iCloud So Hackers Can’t Find Your Private Photos

Once again, I bring forth this information to remind you that when it comes to technology, and its rapidly progressing sophistication, you had better educate yourself on every aspect of that machine, otherwise suffer the consequences. Our cell phones and tablets are now an extension of us, and will become even more so as time moves on. Trust that you will have to treat mobile safety like gun safety. Make tech news a part of your daily news browsing, otherwise you might just find your privates public, loosely hidden for all to see under the black cloud.

Copyright © 2013 Dr. Nick Campos - All Rights Reserved.