The Internet of WE (IoWE)

By Laurie Gibbons

May 7, 2018

“The Island Where People Forget to Die”, a New York Times Magazine article written by Dan Buettner, tells the story of a Greek man who, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer in the U.S., returns to his native island Ikaria to die.

“At first, he spent his days in bed. When his childhood friends discovered that he had moved back, they started showing up every afternoon. They’d talk for hours, an activity that invariably involved a bottle or two of wine. I might as well die happy, he thought.

In the ensuing months, something strange happened. He says he started to feel stronger. One day, feeling ambitious, he planted some vegetables in the garden… Easing himself into the island routine, he woke up when he felt like it, worked in the vineyards until mid afternoon, made himself lunch and then took a long nap. In the evenings, he often walked to the local tavern, where he played dominoes past midnight. The years passed and his health improved.

If you pay careful attention to the way Ikarians have lived their lives, it appears that a dozen subtly powerful, mutually enhancing and pervasive factors are at work. Your community makes sure you’ll always have something to eat, but peer pressure will get you to contribute something too. You’re going to grow a garden, because that what your parents did, and that’s what your neighbors are doing. At day’s end, you’ll share a cup of the seasonal herbal tea with your neighbor because that’s what he’s serving. Several glasses of wine may follow the tea, but you’ll drink them in the company of good friends. On Sunday, you’ll attend church, and you’ll fast before Orthodox feast days. Even if you are anti-social, you’ll never be entirely alone. Your neighbors will cajole you out of your house for the village festival to eat your portion of goat meat.”

We are a long way away, in the United States, from the time where families shared resources and looked after each other’s mutual wellbeing. My Italian-American mother grew up in a four-family house in Brooklyn: grandparents, parents and cousins all in one house. I searched out this house a couple of summer’s ago.

I stared at it with longing. Longing for the days when my own family lived together — not 3000 miles apart. Longing for those big Sunday meals, dining al fresco, with plate after plate of delicious food with my family. Longing for the laughter and conversation, while my grandfather slowly sliced a peach for his Chianti.

And let me say, I am one of the lucky few. I’ve known this type of community and the mutual support that a close family provides. Many people have never known either. The cold hard truth is that too many people in our country are struggling to survive.

Yes, we have seen the rise of social media and the creation of virtual communities connecting family and old school friends. However, studies show there is a correlation between social media use and feelings of loneliness.

“If you’re using it to reach out and connect to people to facilitate other kinds of [in-person] interactions, it’s associated with more positive effects, however, if you’re passively using it, if you’re just scrolling feeds, that’s associated with more negative effects.” (From “Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Heaviest Burden”, a National Public Radio article written by Rhitu Chatterjee.)

Many people exist in a culture of self-preservation because they have no choice. Because in America the inequality gap — be it gender, wealth, health or social inequality — is staggering. There are 400 people in the United States that have the wealth of 21 million families. Many survive through self-preservation because the systems are stacked against them.

And sadly, too many of us exist in a Culture of ME, where social interaction has been turned into a marketing game playing to our inherent need to be “liked”. How do we bring about change that requires the engagement of a culture in a self-preservation mode? How do we change the systems, structures and programming that have been built over many years while many of us were glued to our IPhones?

We can’t “like” our way to a better world.

Many years ago, I read Portuguese novelist Paulo Coelho’s inspiring fable, The Alchemist, published in 1988[i]. I loved this little book, as many others have, and packed it in my backpack for a five-month trek to Southeast Asia in the Spring of 2001.

The Alchemist follows the journey of a shepherd boy named Santiago. Believing a recurring dream to be prophetic, he asks a fortune-teller in a nearby town about its meaning. The woman interprets the dream as a prophecy telling the boy that he will discover a treasure at the Egyptian pyramids.

Early into his journey, he meets an old king named Melchizedek, who tells him “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” This is the core theme of the book and words that have inspired many people to believe in the power of intention.

With my two-ounce copy of The Alchemist in my backpack, each day we trekked the foothills of Nepal’s Annapurna mountain for up to seven hours. We stopped for lunch in local tea houses, where the woman of the house prepared meals of dal, fresh greens pulled from the farm and added to Ramen soup, and potato curry. I never grew tired of these meals, eating the exact same thing twice a day, and drinking milk tea. And, at the end of those days, we treated ourselves to ice-cold beer. As we moved from house to house, it was hard to spend more than $5 or $6 each day — including lodging!

As I trekked around Annapurna, with my own misdirected dreams of one day climbing it, the lesson of that journey was not in the ambition of the climb, but in that little book in my pack. In Sanskrit, Annapurna means Harvest, Mother Earth and Nourishment. At the base of

Annapurna, through The Alchemist, I came to believe in the power of intention.

I believe we see the power of intention to bring about social change in many forms today. We are witnessing the rise of movement-oriented politics. Trusted movement leaders such as Oprah Winfrey provide the megaphone for these issues. Time’s Up, which began as a meeting of Hollywood women last fall to address sexual harassment in the workplace, has become a movement for victims everywhere.

Social media has paved the way to massive marches: #Women’sMarch and #MarchforOurLives, where young people in this country came out in large numbers in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting. If social media provides the platform, what role does the “power of intention” have in the creation of these movements?

Social media is also providing the platform to the courageous women speaking up in the #MeToo movement about gender inequality and sexual harassment. What role do brave individual voices and vivid descriptions of trauma give to the collective consciousness?

Are we reaching a tipping point through this shared intention that leads to collective action to overcome years of patriarchal power structures and systemic programming? Is the power of intention at work — as in The Alchemist — when we “share our stories”? Is the world conspiring to help us?

There is much discussion regarding Web 3.0 and what it will mean with all the advances in mobile, the internet of things (IoT), blockchain distributed networks, tokenized economic models and artificial intelligence.

How do we use this technology to drive engagement in a meaningful and sustained way without the modeling, family and peer support of our communities, which now largely exists virtually?

As was noted in Dan Buettner’s Times article about the Ikarian lifestyle, it was the “dozen of subtly powerful, mutually enhancing and pervasive factors” that lead to wellbeing.

Peer pressure of family and friends contribute to the ecosystem.

Buettner also pointed out how “the factors that encourage longevity reinforce one another over the long term. For people to adopt a healthful lifestyle, I have become convinced they need to live in an ecosystem, so to speak, that makes it possible. As you take culture, belonging, purpose or religion out of the picture, the foundation for long healthy lives collapses. The power of such an environment lies in the mutually reinforcing relationships among lots of small nudges and default choices. There’s no silver bullet. If anything, it’s silver buckshot.”

Let us commit to a Web 3.0 that designs in “this silver buckshot.” Let us innovate on these assumptions and on the notion that systemic change requires intention as expressed in subtly powerful, mutually enhancing and pervasive actions. Let’s transform the Internet of ME to the Internet of WE (IoWE) and create a culture that:

• Recognizes the power of technology to create a platform for mutually reinforcing relationships with lots of small nudges and default choices based on values.
• Understands that many people have never known community as have the privileged few; that many people don’t have the support of family or community; that many people are struggling to survive in a system that is stacked against them.
• Understands that we are not all starting from the same place; therefore, we need different things.
• Innovates blockchain, decentralized governance and tokenized economic models to foster community and level the playing field.
• Designs software and methods to provide the mutual pathways of intention through daily practice, sharing, crowd building, and civic and social engagement incentives that lead to social good and lasting change.

Let us develop an Internet of WE that is the interconnection of our hearts, minds, and bodies with the online world where our individual intentions lead to collective action. An Internet of WE that leads to collaboration with the:

• Dazzling voice of Oprah — in her fight against harassment and gender inequality, #TimesUp.
• Youthful voices of the students from Parkland — #MarchForOurLives.
• Spirited voice of Marianne Williamson, who recently tweeted, “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
• Courageous voices of the #MeToo women who dare to tell their stories.
• And the well-intentioned voices of People of Color in their pursuit of equality and racial justice in #BlackLivesMatter.

It is, I believe, the wisdom of these people that if we harness the intention of social change the universe will conspire to help us. This is a call to action to design mutuality and equity into the innovations of tomorrow, where people come together to take care of one another and, in doing that, take care of themselves.

Intention that says we are responsible for each other and will create pathways of possibility that support our human right to thrive.

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alchemist_(novel), Retrieved 7 May 2018