As Stephanie Fairyington via the UTNE reader explains in this article,
...by choice, I don’t mean that one can choose one’s sexual propensities any more than one can choose one’s personality. What I mean is that it’s a choice to act on every desire we have, and that acting on our same-sex attractions is just as valid as pursuing a passion for the Christian faith or Judaism or any other spiritual, intellectual, emotional, or physical craving that does not infringe on the rights of others. And it should be respected as such.
Stories shape the worlds that we create in our heads. Photographs, newspapers, books, movies, magazines, and oral stories themselves -- they suggest to us how things are. They are like brush-strokes, slathered together, overlapping, coalescing into pictures with meaning. Helpful as they are to informing us, though, we are particularly vulnerable to stories. More exactly, we are vulnerable to giving too much credence to single stories; calling a picture meaningful when it is only a single brush-stroke. This is the subject of Chimamanda Adichie's talk below. In a world as complex as ours, Adichie reminds us that we must be mindful of The Single Story, and be humble enough to know when we don't know enough.
WATCH "The Danger of the Single Story" (~19 minutes)
You've been missing a lot of incredible stuff. Here's the skinny:
"We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.
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The TED Conference, held annually in Long Beach, is still the heart of TED. More than a thousand people now attend -- indeed, the event sells out a year in advance -- and the content has expanded to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn't work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole." ("About Ted", Ted.com)
"The cosmos is all there is -- or ever was -- or ever will be," opens Carl Sagan in episode 1 of Cosmos, promising that what follows will be a story about everything. The 13-part journey with Carl Sagan is an unprecedented and unmatched attempt to ground ourselves in the story of existence. It lays out the breakthrough findings of humanity and is rich in stories and explanations that still tend to surprise us with what we know and don't know of the universe. If you are like most people, there are at least a few gaps in your understanding of what the method of science has revealed about existence. If you are like most people, then you easily forget, or have perhaps never fully experienced, the elegance and majesty of the machinery of the universe.
Watch episode 1:
Lose yourself in it. Watch one episode. Maybe two. Don't feel as though you shouldn't start, just because you may not watch all 13 episodes. Also, Sagan's passionate narration may easily amuse you -- have a laugh, but don't let it distract.
Watch the whole series on Hulu.com. The downside to Hulu, of course, is that you will occasionally need to take a break from lucid insights into human nature and the fabric of space and time, to yield to limited commercial interruptions. Some more background:
"In 1980, the landmark series Cosmos premiered on public television. Since then, it is estimated that more than a billion people around the planet have seen it. Cosmos chronicles the evolution of the planet and efforts to find our place in the universe. Each of the 13 episodes focuses on a specific aspect of the nature of life, consciousness, the universe and time. Topics include the origin of life on Earth (and perhaps elsewhere), the nature of consciousness, and the birth and death of stars." (from Hulu)
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