7.5 billion people. Strip away the wealth, experiences, and material possessions and we are all simply human. We are one.

Physically Connected

The history of humanity is a river with many routes. You call the nearest branch of water to you your mom, dad, brother, and sister. If you sail out further you’ll find James, your long lost cousin. Sail out even further, with a few twist and turns, and you will find the stranger you bumped into last week. The deeper you go you will eventually find someone you will never meet in-person living the opposite side of the world. We are all rivers connected over the history of humanity stemming from one body of water.

One thing we know for sure about the history of humanity is the way the river was made. New life starts when two people physically connect themselves together. Then, you wouldn’t even exist in the physical realm without being connected in the temple of a Queen for 9 months. Without this form of connection, the river branches of humanity would cease to expand.

Emotionally Connected

Every human is a result of the spark of emotion before they existed: Love. Through the process of “making love,” you were conceived. You are a product of love.

Tim Samuel asked his audience the thought-provoking question, “What makes everyone smile?”. He received the overwhelming response, “The one thing that makes everybody smile is simply seeing other people smile.” Isn’t it amazing that joy can be transferred from one person to another? Whenever a small action causes a bigger uncalculated reaction, the Butterfly Effect exists. The Butterfly Effect is the phenomenon when a small change in one state of a nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. Transferring joy can completely alter the attitude of the person receiving it, and the attitude of a person determines how they interact with their world. Thus amplifying the spread of positive emotion. Grand gestures that happen to you are a result of a ripple effect of positive emotions started by one person. A lot of times the person who started the small chain of positivity that caused the grand gesture towards you — was you. That’s karma.

Unfortunately, this is not limited to positive emotion. Anger and sadness can be transferred in the same way. The book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz has a section called Don’t Take Anything Personally. In this section, he reminds you that the negative words and actions of others are the products of their own realities and past instead of being caused by you. When negativity is thrown at you it is your duty to end the Butterfly Effect by deflecting it with positivity. Armed with this knowledge: take nothing personally. It will defuse the power of the negative words and actions of others.

Mentally Connected

Humans have achieved more through pure intellect and manipulation of their environment than any other species. Today we are pursuing life on Mars, developing super-humans with CRISPR, and boundlessly connecting on the internet. Humans have not always been this advanced. The intelligence of humans today can only be credited to the intelligence passed down to us yesterday. Human intellect as a whole increase over time simply because of our mental connection with our past. Any knowledge you share is a drop added to the bucket of human intelligence.

Collective intelligence refers to the capability of a group to collaborate in order to achieve goals that an individual, even the most gifted, would not be able to accomplish alone. You can brainstorm a topic yourself, but your brain can only go so far. As you add more people to the brainstorming session your brains connect to make a larger, more powerful brain. This brain can take the spark of one idea and filter it through the minds of a group to take it from concept to reality. Collective intelligence has given us the greatest advancements of our time and is the core of providing the next generation with the knowledge needed to go even further.

Connected

The feeling of being close to someone comes from experiencing aspects of these connections — physically, mentally, or emotionally. Lowering your guard and making love. Consistently exchanging positive emotions to the same person. Taking the time to understand someone’s mind. These are just examples of experiencing connections that make people feel close. And the more you feel close to someone the more you care. Once we are all aware that even without these experiences we are already connected, it will be so much easier to spread love, happiness, and intelligence.

Love,

Dwayne

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My thoughts on human connectivity.