As we transition this blog to become Hildy’s blog (vs. Creating the Future’s blogs), we will share highlights of what is going on at those other blogs. If you find these topics interesting, please link to those blogs and subscribe there!

Philanthropy
There are two new posts at the blog Philanthropy that Creates the Future:

Philanthropy as “Love of Humanity”
If we assume that “philanthropist = donor,” are we suggesting that only those of means can “love humanity”? What would it make possible if that were not the case?

Do We Really Want “Donations”?
Do the unspoken assumptions in this sector’s requests for donations actually harm our ability to create the world we want?

What Creates Miracles?
Regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof, most of us doing community benefit work have witnessed “miracles” – someone appearing with what we need, just when we need it the most. But are these really “miracles” or are they something more practical and reliable?

Consulting
There is one new post at the blog Consulting that Creates the Future:

Faculty Qualifications
As Creating the Future seeks to expand its training programs, to make it as easy to find a local workshop on “How to Be the Change You Want to See” as it is to find workshops about fundraising or boards, we’re seeking qualified teachers for those courses. Which raises the question: What qualifications would we need?”

Walking the Talk
There is one new post at the blog Walking the Talk to Create the Future:

Being Human
Just a few words of reassurance – words that let someone know, “I believe in you” – can make all the difference in the world.

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If any of these blogs intrigue you, please subscribe to them directly.

Updates like this one will continue for the next month or so, but more often, you will begin to see posts that are just my own ramblings and explorations and are neither sanctioned by nor necessarily representative of the views of Creating the Future. (And in the next week or so, the name of this blog will officially change to reflect that change.)

Photo Credit: Author Unknown, per Wikimedia Commons

Being Human
In a post in Inc. Magazine, Jeff Haden talks about feeling “completely out of your depth.” The post is about simple words of praise and reassurance – how those words can make all the difference, and what an easy gift they are to give. Read more here…

We hope you will subscribe to receive ongoing posts at that new blog.  And please check out our other new blogs, accessible from this page. We look forward to continuing to connect there!

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Our Animal Nature
As we consider the parts of our past that have led to our present, we must also consider the very meat of what makes us human.

Consider the phrase “Human Nature.” Do we invoke that phrase when we are talking glowingly about our brethren? Hardly. We use the phrase to focus on our greed, our fear, our selfishness – all the things we dislike about being members of this species.

In reality, though, virtually every one of the traits we “chalk up to human nature” is not what distinguishes us as humans at all. Those “human nature” traits are those we share with many, if not most or all, of our animal brethren.

Animals other than humans steal, kill, cheat, and deceive. Animals other than humans are greedy, fearful, thinking of their own survival above all else. Animals compete, they are violent.

When animals feel threatened, their immediate choices are either to run away or to fight back. As humans, our culture suggests one of those approaches evidences valor and courage, while the other is evidence of cowardice. But in truth, either of those reactions is one my dog might also show. If threatened, she might run away, or she might bare her teeth. No valor, no cowardice; just being a dog.

That is not “human nature.” That is part of our animal nature.

Neuroscientists have found physiological / chemical sources for many of the reactions we have come to call “human nature.” The rush of adrenaline, the virtually immediate reactions that allow us to respond physically to danger without having to think about it first – those fight-or-flee response mechanisms are part of the physical composition of our species, the organs and chemicals that are our physical being. We do not have to learn that; it is in us from before the time we were born.

Our species’ long history of the survival reactions we call “human nature,” therefore, are not just cultural. They are physiologically and chemically hard-wired into our being from a time before we were even human. That means overriding those physical reactions – aiming at something beyond our fears – requires something special; it requires that we make a concerted effort to use logic, and to exercise free will.

Our Human Nature is Our Potential
If our “negative” traits are not what set us apart as humans, what exactly is our human nature? What do we have that other animals do not?

Our “humanity” is a bundle of traits that combine to create our unique potential. While some other species may exhibit one or more of these behaviors, there is no other species that has all this and then some.

• A sense that we are part of something bigger than just our own selves and our own families / tribes
• The ability to comprehend that each of us is one life among a vast whole of billions of people we cannot see, but whom we acknowledge and understand are there
• The capacity to consciously de-program our instincts and re-program new instincts – free will
• An almost tangible sense of connectedness to something we cannot see or touch
• The ability to imagine things that do not currently exist – to invent, to create something from nothing but our imaginations
• The ability to express all these more ethereal capacities through language, through art, through music, through various means that allow us to transmit to other humans that which one cannot touch / taste / smell / see / hear
• The ability to envision the future, to envision what is possible
• The capacity for self-awareness, to strive for self-betterment. The ability to be conscious that we are conscious!
• The combined capacity for empathy, compassion, logic and reason, imagination – and joy at experiencing any or all of those

The human part of our nature provides a choice beyond fight-or-flee – a choice my dog cannot make. My dog is incapable of facing her attacker and choosing to neither run nor fight back, but to instead engage. Sweet as she is, she cannot appeal to her attacker’s higher faculties, to learn why he is attacking, and to try to find a better way.

That is the human part of our nature. That is what defines our humanity. Our human nature is all about our potential. Through that uniquely human nature, we have the power to create the future of our world.

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So what do you think? What does this make possible? And what will it take to activate all that potential?

You can read the entire first 4 chapters of The Pollyanna Principles here.

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