Let me introduce myself. I am a Norwegian living in New York, chasing the dream and working on the forefront of innovation and democratization of manufacturing. I’ve dabbled in online video gaming, both personally and professionally for multiple AAA game titles. I am a Community Manager turned BizDev turned Product and Ecosystem development guy.

I love the possibilities and opportunities large startup ecosystems like New York have to offer for people with talent. I believe that if you excel, you should be rewarded for that; and that in seeding businesses to create jobs for the communities around you, you positively contribute to the living standard of your area. These are great goals to strive for.

Life here provides me with a constant stream of different vibrant moods and lifestyles, warmly displaying the daily life of some of the many different block to block communities that make up one of the most distinguished metropols in the world. I find it’s nice to sit back and take it all in as a day takes you from neighborhood to neighborhood via the subway system, exposing you to people of all kind from the all over the globe. There are only people here; no races or filters.

And pets, of course.

So what is this Medium post all about?

There’s been a lot of noise in the media about the NSA leaks. We’ve followed the strides of Edward Snowden, a former NSA tech who escaped US captivity and ran off with 1.7 million documents detailing the operations of one of the most well funded spy agencies in the world.

We’ve watched as world leaders are standing up to political pressure, protesting against larger influencers acting unilaterally. Countries like Brazil are openly changing the global geopolitical scene, simply by withdrawing defense contracts thought to go to the American company Boeing in favor of Saab from Sweden.

2013 marks the first realtime uniting of citizens on a global scale getting together and declaring basic digital human rights for all the world’s citizens. The world is realizing that we are no longer as separated by countries, borders, or distance, but rather are becoming an interconnected network of humans learning from each other.

Organizations such as the Occupy movement, Anonymous, and Reddit are creating a generation of people whose thoughts focus more on how we work together than how we are different.

We are growing up, ladies and gentlemen. We are taking our first steps towards becoming a type 1 civilization.

And yet, the ever changing system is reacting to itself in negative ways. We have governments and countries going out and attacking each other, preaching how we are so different and how the other will be the undoing of the world. We have spiritual leaders who forget the core principles upon which their belief system is supposed to be teaching them in the first place: do unto others as you would want them to do to you.

And whether you think government should be heavily involved in the betterment of society via direct intervention or if you believe societies should be able to self regulate and create an optimal culture based on merits, you should ideally be striving for the betterment of society around you as a whole. Raising the common standard of living for everyone and building the path to a better future.

Not fighting like 3 year olds in congress or holding the world’s economy hostage over health care packages.

In light of all of this, and in the spirit of happy holidays, there’s one thing I would like to say to world leaders, politicians, religious leaders, and communities around the world:

“Fix your shit. This is embarrassing.”

We owe it to future generations and we owe it to ourselves. I really don’t want to be in a generation that history looks back on and thinks “what the hell were they thinking back then”. It’s time to embrace the whole world as our collective playground.

We aren’t that different after all.