Academic Mayor Transforms Bogotá
The following inspiring story from the Harvard University Gazette shows how one man's vision transformed the lives of over six million people in Columbia's capital of Bogotá. In his 10-year tenure, Mayor Mockus focused on changing hearts and minds – not through preaching but through artistically creative strategies that employed the power of individual. He also spoke openly of his own failings, not suggesting that he was more moral than anyone else. May we all focus on creatively changing hearts and minds for the good of all with whom we share this world.
Academic turns city into a social experiment
Mayor Mockus of Bogotá and his spectacularly applied theory
By María Cristina Caballero
Special to the Harvard News Office
Mayor Mockus.
Mimes instead of traffic police
Antanas Mockus had just resigned from the top job of Colombian National University. A mathematician and philosopher, Mockus looked around for another big challenge and found it: to be in charge of, as he describes it, "a 6.5 million person classroom."
Mockus, who had no political experience, ran for mayor of Bogotá. He was successful mainly because people in Colombia's capital city saw him as an honest guy. With an educator's inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogotá into a social experiment just as the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street children who mugged and stole. It was a city perceived by some to be on the verge of chaos.
People were desperate for a change, for a moral leader of some sort. The eccentric Mockus, who communicates through symbols, humor, and metaphors, filled the role. When many hated the disordered and disorderly city of Bogotá, he wore a Superman costume and acted as a superhero called "Supercitizen." People laughed at Mockus' antics, but the laughter began to break the ice of their extreme skepticism.
Mockus recently came to Harvard for two weeks as a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics to share lessons about civic engagement with students and faculty.
"We found Mayor Mockus' presentation intensely interesting," said Adams Professor Jane Mansbidge of the Kennedy School, who invited Mockus to speak in her "Democracy From Theory to Practice" class. "Our reading had focused on the standard material incentive-based systems for reducing corruption. He focused on changing hearts and minds - not through preaching but through artistically creative strategies that employed the power of individual and community disapproval.
He also spoke openly of his own failings, not suggesting that he was more moral than anyone else. He is a most engaging, almost pixieish math professor, not a stuffy 'mayor' at all. The students were enchanted, as was I."
A theatrical teacher
The slim, bearded, 51-year-old former mayor explained himself thus: "What really moves me to do things that other people consider original is my passion to teach." He has long been known for theatrical displays to gain people's attention and, then, to make them think.
Mockus, the only son of a Lithuanian artist, burst onto the Colombian political scene in 1993 when, faced with a rowdy auditorium of the school of arts' students, he dropped his pants and mooned them to gain quiet. The gesture, he said at the time, should be understood "as a part of the resources which an artist can use." He resigned as rector, the top job of Colombian National University, and soon decided to run for mayor.
The fact that he was seen as an unusual leader gave the new mayor the opportunity to try extraordinary things, such as hiring 420 mimes to control traffic in Bogotá's chaotic and dangerous streets. He launched a "Night for Women" and asked the city's men to stay home in the evening and care for the children; 700,000 women went out on the first of three nights that Mockus dedicated to them.
When there was a water shortage, Mockus appeared on TV programs taking a shower and turning off the water as he soaped, asking his fellow citizens to do the same. In just two months people were using 14 percent less water, a savings that increased when people realized how much money they were also saving because of economic incentives approved by Mockus; water use is now 40 percent less than before the shortage.
"The distribution of knowledge is the key contemporary task," Mockus said. "Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules, and are sensitized by art, humor, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change." Mockus taught vivid lessons with these tools. One time, he asked citizens to put their power to use with 350,000 "thumbs-up" and "thumbs-down" cards that his office distributed to the populace. The cards were meant to approve or disapprove of other citizens' behavior; it was a device that many people actively - and peacefully - used in the streets.
He also asked people to pay 10 percent extra in voluntary taxes. To the surprise of many, 63,000 people voluntarily paid the extra taxes. A dramatic indicator of the shift in the attitude of "Bogotanos" during Mockus' tenure is that, in 2002, the city collected more than three times the revenues it had garnered in 1990. Another Mockus inspiration was to ask people to call his office if they found a kind and honest taxi driver; 150 people called and the mayor organized a meeting with all those good taxi drivers, who advised him about how to improve the behavior of mean taxi drivers.
Yet Mockus doesn't like to be called a leader. "There is a tendency to be dependent on individual leaders," he said. "To me, it is important to develop collective leadership. I don't like to get credit for all that we achieved. Millions of people contributed to the results that we achieved ... I like more egalitarian relationships. I especially like to orient people to learn."
Taking a moral stand
Still, there were times when Mockus felt he needed to impose his will, such as when he demanded that every bar and entertainment place close at 1 a.m. with the goal of diminishing drinking and violence.
Most important to Mockus was his campaign about the importance and sacredness of life. "In a society where human life has lost value," he said, "there cannot be a higher priority than re-establishing respect for life as the main right and duty of citizens." Mockus sees the reduction of homicides from 80 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1993 to 22 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2003 as a major achievement, noting also that traffic fatalities dropped by more than half in the same time period, from an average of 1,300 per year to about 600.
Contributing to this success was the mayor's inspired decision to paint stars on the spots where pedestrians (1,500 of them) had been killed in traffic accidents. "Saving a single life justifies the effort," Mockus said.
The former mayor had to address many fronts simultaneously. In his struggle against corruption, he closed down the transit police because many of those 2,000 members were notoriously bribable. When he assumed power, many city positions were distributed according to council members' recommendations. "I stopped that, and some called me an anti-patronage fundamentalist," Mockus said. He remembers that when he handed a text explaining his goals of transparency to one key council member, the council member first smiled, but later resigned.
Mockus was a constant presence in the media, promoting his civic campaigns. "My messages about the importance of protecting children from being burned with fireworks, protecting children from domestic violence, and the sacredness of life reached many, including the children," he said.
Once the mother of a 3-year-old girl called his office to say that meeting Mockus was her daughter's only birthday wish. But the meeting also revealed, said Mockus, that Colombian society has a long way to go. During the visit, the mother told him: "When I am going to hit her, she runs to the telephone and says that she is going to call Mockus. She doesn't even know how to dial a number, but obviously she thinks that you would protect her." Mockus, who has two daughters himself, was shocked at the woman's nonchalance about striking her daughter.
There is almost always a civics lesson behind Mockus' antics. Florence Thomas, a feminist and a professor at Colombian National University, pointed out to Mockus that in Bogotá women were afraid to go out at night. "We were looking for what would be the best image of a safe city, and I realized that if you see streets with many women you feel safer," Mockus explained.
So he asked men to stay home and suggested that both sexes should take advantage of the "Night for Women" to reflect on women's role in society. About 700,000 women went out, flocking to free, open-air concerts. They flooded into bars that offered women-only drink specials and strolled down a central boulevard that had been converted into a pedestrian zone.
To avoid legal challenges, the mayor stated that the men's curfew was strictly voluntary. Men who simply couldn't bear to stay indoors during the six-hour restriction were asked to carry self-styled "safe conduct" passes. About 200,000 men went out that night, some of them angrily calling Mockus a "clown" in TV interviews. But most men graciously embraced Mockus' campaign.
In the lower-middle-class neighborhood of San Cristobal, women marched through the streets to celebrate their night. When they saw a man staying at home, carrying a baby, or taking care of children, the women stopped and applauded. That night the police commander was a woman, and 1,500 women police were in charge of Bogotá's security.
A bigger classroom?
Mockus noted that his administrations were enlightened by academic concepts, including the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, who has investigated the tension between formal and informal rules and how economic development is restrained when those rules clash; and Jürgen Habermas' work on how dialogue creates social capital. Mockus also mentions Socrates, who said that if people understood well, they probably would not act in the wrong way.
Mockus—a sterling example of the current vogue in Latin America for "anti-politicians"—says that transforming Bogotá's people and their sense of civic culture was the key to solving many of the city's problems. He is looking forward to returning to the classroom at Colombian National University after a sabbatical year. But Mockus is also considering the possibility of launching a presidential campaign—and perhaps being in charge of a 42 million student classroom.
Full original article with photos at: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Collective Evolution - emdonelan@gmail.com - Gmail
Collective Evolution -
The concept of teleportation seems to primarily come from science fiction literature throughout history, but things have recently changed. It’s 2014 and developments in quantum theory and general relativity physics have been successful in exploring the concept of teleportation for quite some time now.
Collective Evolution |
Posted: 16 Jan 2014 04:00 AM PST
The concept of teleportation seems to primarily come from science fiction literature throughout history, but things have recently changed. It’s 2014 and developments in quantum theory and general relativity physics have been successful in exploring the concept of teleportation for quite some time now.Today, numerous teleportation breakthroughs have been made. One example is the work of Professor Rainer Blatt, at the University of Innsbruck. They were successfully able to perform teleportation on atoms for the first time, their work was published in the journal Nature.(1) They were able to transfer key properties of one particle to another without using any physical link. In this case, teleportation occurred in the form of transferring quantum states between two atoms, these include the atom’s energy, motion, magnetic field and other physical properties. This is possible due to the strange behavior that exists at the atomic scale, known as entanglement. It’s what Einstein referred to as a “spooky action.”
Another study was published by a team of University of Queensland physicists in the journal Nature in 2013 demonstrating the successful teleportation with solid state systems. (2) A process by which, again, quantum information can be transmitted from one place to another without sending a physical carrier of information. This is the same concept, and is made possible through the phenomenon of entanglement.
Quantum teleportation has been replicated by numerous scientists all over the world a number of times.
The above examples all refer to quantum teleportation, and given that we are all made up of atoms, it lends belief to the possibility that one day we will be able to teleport full physical objects, but some studies, at the highest levels of government, suggest that it’s already been done.
There are different categories of teleportation. Again, the two examples I used above are refereed to as quantum teleportation. Another type of teleportation is psychic, which is the conveyance of persons or inanimate objects by psychic means.
“It became known to to myself, along with several colleagues both inside and outside of government, that anomalous teleportation has been scientifically investigated and separately documented by the Department of Defense.” (3) - Eric Davis, Ph.D, FBIS
A paper published in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in September 1981, in the journal Ziran Zazhi (Nature Journal) tilted “Some Experiments on the Transfer of Objects Performed by Unusual Abilities of the Human Body” (Shuhuang et al., 1981) reported that ‘gifted children,’ were able to cause the teleportation of small, physical objects from one place to another. Objects included watches, horseflies, other insects, radio micro-transmitters, photosensitive paper and more. The participants never touched the objects beforehand. The experiments were done under both blind and double-blind conditions, and the researches involved came from various colleges and sectors of the Department of Defense.(3) This is an exceptional case, because it was deemed necessary that an unclassified Intelligence Information Report be prepared for public viewing.
More research was done by the Aerospace Medicine Engineering Institute in Beijing, in July of 1990. It was published in the Chinese Journal of Somatic Science (Kongzhi et al., 1990: Jinggen et al., 1990; Banghui; 1990). This study reported several experiments involving high speed photography video taping, which was able to capture the transfer of test specimens like nuts, matches, nails, pills and more through the walls of sealed paper envelopes, sealed glass bottles and tubes, sealed plastic film canisters and more without the walls of any of these containers being breached. All of these experiments reported using gifted children and adults to cause the teleportation of various materials.(3)
In all of the examples, it was reported that the test specimens remained in their original state after teleportation, including the insects.
“The Chinese papers are all extremely interesting and very well written, and they show photographs and schematic diagrams of the various experimental setups. The experimental protocols were explained in lengthy detail, and through data and thorough data and statistical analysis were presented in the results.”
(3) Eric Davis, Ph.D, FBIS
(3) Eric Davis, Ph.D, FBIS
The experiments showed that:
- Different research groups designed different experimental methods, used gifted psychics, different sealed containers and test specimens that were to be teleported
- Time required for teleportation of the test specimens through various barriers was anywhere from a fraction of a second to several minutes, it didn’t matter which test specimen was used.
- The high-speed photography/videotaping recorded test specimens melding or blending with the walls of sealed containers, and then simply disappear from inside the container only to reappear at another location.
- The Radio Micro-transmitter used as a test specimen changed in frequency dramatically during teleportation, researchers concluded that this indicated that the specimen was “nonexistent,” or in another altered physical state during teleportation. The frequency of the transmission were stable before and after teleportation
- The experimental results were all repeatable
- The conditions for fraud and sleight of hand were totally eliminated, and multiple outside witnesses (technical and military-intelligence experts) were present at all times
Obviously, the scientists could not offer an explanation to explain the results.
“Some researchers state that it is necessary to invoke a new physics, which somehow unifies the human consciousness (i.e., physics of consciousness) with quantum and spacetime physics, in order to understand psychic teleportation and related PK phenomena. The researchers were amazed by their repeated results, and were barely able to fathom the altered “state of being” that test specimens underwent during teleportation.” (3) – Eric Davis, Ph.D, FBIS
This was the conclusion given by Eric W. Davis, in the same report cited throughout this article, done for the United States Air Force, at their research lab which was approved for public release:(3)
“The results of the Chinese Teleportation experiments can simply be explained as a human consciousness phenomenon that somehow acts to move or rotate test specimens through a 4th spacial dimension, so that specimens are able to penetrate the solid walls/barriers of their containers without physically breaching them.” – Eric Davis, Ph.D, FBIS
This is just another example of many that demonstrate the validity of consciousness, and the many different influences it can have on our physical material world.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
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