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President’s Message – The Power of Diversity and Inclusion

Part 1 – A Walk into the Past: The Past is always certain.

Are we better together, or are we better alone? A look at the Old World Map shows one supercontinent, Pangea. A look at the New World Map shows the one supercontinent broken into several continents. The continental drift began about 175 million years ago. Although continents are still separated in our current times, people are coming together, faster than any other times in human history, forming a new world, a diverse and inclusive world. Of course, this is possible due to all current technological advances in every industry such as transportation and communication. Although many questions have been answered through the knowledge we accumulated over time as humans, many questions still await answers. I believe the more we come together, the more we build a safer and better world for all, built on mutual understanding, compassion, and respect. Coming together will help us learn from each other, grow in acceptance, and find common values.
We are living at the dawn of a New Era, we are all feeling it and know it, there are big changes happening all around us. We haven’t named it yet, as we are still deciding what kind of an Era this will be, how long or how short it will be, and most importantly, how will this time in history be remembered. Will this Era be the first in Humankind History, without global wars and conflict? Will this Era be the first to be remembered as the Era of Acceptance, Understanding, Selflessness, Honesty, Kindness and Collaboration? We live in amazing times. We live at the border between the past and the future of humankind. This is OUR TIME, and we have the power to shape how we will be remembered by the next generations. We need to ask ourselves how we want our children and the children of our children to remember us.

 

According to The World History for Us All, a project of the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA in cooperation with San Diego State University, there are nine Big Eras that address history on the scale of humankind. They are not limited to a particular region or civilization. Each Big Era deals with a chronological period on the global scale. Each successive period is shorter than the previous one. First Era considers the very long epoch of history up to the emergence of Homo sapiens, and spans from 13 Billion to 200,000 years ago and it’s named “Humans in the Universe”. Second Era, named “Human Beings almost Everywhere”, spans from 200,000 to 10,000 years ago. Third Era, named “Farming and the Emergence of Complex Societies” spans from 10,000 to 1,000 Before the Common Era. Fourth Era, named “Expanding Networks of Exchange and Encounter” spans from the year 1,200 Before the Common Era to year 500 Common Era. Fifth Era, named “Patterns of Interregional Unity” spans from the year 300 to 1,500 Common Era. Sixth Era, named “The Great Global Convergence” spans from the year 1,400 to 1,800 Common Era. Seventh Era, named “Industrialization and its consequences” spans from 1750 to 1914 Common Era. Eighth Era, named “A Half Century of Crisis” spans from 1900 to 1950 Common Era and Ninth Era, is concerned with second half of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty-first, from 1945 to present and it’s named “Paradoxes of Global Acceleration”. Study of all nine eras is designed for exploring the past on several scales of time, space, and subject matter.

 

The world has changed continually ever since the beginning, however recently the speed of the change has increased exponentially. Innovation rates are now increasingly more rapidly than ever before. The only constant in the world today is CHANGE. We are now bombarded every day with information, and sometimes it is very hard for our brains to digest fast enough the information we receive. We live in an era of technological leaps that roll out at the speed of light, in every industry. I think, to some degree, technology is developing far faster than we are developing as human beings and that leaves us with a sense that, somehow, we are left behind, at times. The more we feel left behind, the more we feel overwhelmed, depressed, unhappy, and insecure about the future. Although technology is supposed to make our lives better, technology can also make our lives feel emptier.

Brain Empty
We are human beings, and today’s world feels like a quest for extraordinary. And if extraordinary is not achieved, that leaves us with an empty feeling. Somehow an ordinary life became synonymous with a meaningless life. We somehow forgot that the ordinary moments in our lives are the ones that make us most happy, bring us most joy. Furthermore, knowledge and technology helped answer many questions so far, however there are many questions we still don’t have answers to. In the past, we used faith to believe in something we didn’t understand. Faith gave us comfort. Faith also makes us vulnerable, so if we abandon faith because we want certainty, we abandon vulnerability. Faith without vulnerability leaves us with extremism.

 

We live in a very complex world; we live very fast paced lives. We are not allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in the current environment we created, and with that we are not allowing ourselves to feel happiness or joy, as we fear those feelings will go by too quickly, and something bad will happen next. It is almost like we feel guilty for feeling happiness or joy. We live in an unforgiving world, and we are not allowing ourselves to feel any emotions. Instead, we are numbing our vulnerability. We are the most addicted, medicated, obese, and indebted adult cohort in human history. Adults are in crisis, and so are our children – Mental Health Crisis, Physical Health Crisis, Addiction Crisis, Behavior Crisis, Character Crisis, Stress & Insomnia, Self-Harm & Suicide, and the list can go on. We need to find new ways to educate the next generation about life and values so they can be successful in the extremely challenging times we live in today. What kinds of skills will we need in today’s world in order to live successful lives?

 

Mircea Divricean

President & CEO

Kostopulos Dream Foundation

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