Category Archives: Entertainment

Spirituality From an Unlikely Source: Will Smith

I was on YouTube like I had been a and on the sidebar, I noticed a video under the suggestion heading by the title of: . I’ve always subscribed to the theory that our words and thoughts have an effect on the world around us (check out our or , and you’ll see some of the kinds of books that I recommend discuss these principles in their books), but I didn’t expect this kind of wisdom from a famous actor.

It’s not that I don’t think that Will Smith has the capacity to understand or even believe these kinds of things, it’ s just that with entertainers, it’s harder to imagine them outside of some of the roles they’ve played. After watching the almost 10-minute video of many clips spliced together where Will advocates the theory that our thoughts have a decided effect on the outcome of our lives, I couldn’t help but write a post here about it. In fact, I’ve even included the video at the end because I really think it’s worth the 10 minutes it takes to watch it.

One of the interesting perspectives that he offers is on talent and skill. He says:

Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.

I think that there is definitely truth to this and it is backed up by the work of in his book . In it, Gladwell purports that to be over-the-top successful at something, you need to spend upwards of 10,000 hours doing that something. Gladwell cites an example of , explaining to the reader that for 4 straight years, The Beatles were able to perform live in Germany. In this time, Gladwell claims that The Beatles accumulated over 10,000 hours of (practice) at their craft and that when they came back to England, they were an instant-hit. Gladwell also cites the example of Bill Gates who, when in high school, gained access to a computer. Gates spent nearly all of his free-time on this computer, accumulating hours and hours of (practice), which eventually led to .

Another interesting quote from the video:

You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say I’m gonna build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built. You don’t start there. You say, I’m gonna lay this brick, as perfectly as a brick can be laid. And, you do that every single day, and soon you have a wall.

I’m sure this concept is not new to anyone, about “,” but it’s something that I think is worth repeating, and I think it’s also adds a different level of authority to hear someone like Will Smith say it.

I want to do good. I want the world to be better because I was here.

Wouldn’t it just be fabulous if we all walked around with this attitude: wanting the world to be better because we were here. Performing acts, volunteering, making a difference – making the world a better place.

I just believe that. I believe that I can create whatever I want to create.

Around of the video, he begins talking about how our thoughts are physical things in the universe.

Our thoughts, our feelings, our dreams, our ideas — are physical in the universe. That, if we dream something, if we picture something, if we commit ourselves to it, that is a physical thrust towards realization that we can put into the universe. That the universe is not a thing that’s gonna push us around. That the world and people and situations are not something that’s gonna push us around. That we are gonna bend the universe and command and demand that the universe become what we want it to be.

Celebrities can be a mixed bag. They can run the spectrum from those that are having a hard go of things, like , to those like Will Smith who use their celebrity for other means. Whenever I learn that a celebrity is involved in the kinds of thinking that Will Smith is, I can’t help but smile just a little bit, knowing that maybe our world really is changing faster than we know.

Mass Collaboration Will Change the World

One of the benefits to being a , is that you’re able to subscribe to other users. If there is a particular user that publishes videos that you’ve liked in the past, say maybe (you may have seen one of their videos — they’re the ones who write on a whiteboard depicting the ideas from the presenter’s presentation), then when you login to YouTube, if this user has published any new videos, you’ll see it right on your homepage. Additionally, you can also get notifications of new videos via email, but who likes a cluttered inbox, right?

I recently logged into YouTube to find that one of users I’ve subscribed to, [the same user that has uploaded such popular videos as: ] had uploaded a new video called: . I like music, but I like collaboration even more, and most importantly, I was intrigued by the idea of a ‘virtual choir.’ I clicked on the video and watched the presentation by Eric Whitacre. Wow! Wow! Wow! I’ve embedded the video into this post to the right of this paragraph and strongly suggest spending the 15 minutes to watch it [Be sure to watch it in full screen mode, too!].

What struck me most about watching Eric’s presentation is the element of collaboration. In the first video [embedded in the next paragraph], , there were 185 voices in over 12 countries. In the second video [embedded at the end of this post], (which debuted quite recently, April 6th of this year to be exact), , there were 2052 voices in over 58 countries. Can you imagine singing with over 2000 people in person much less, virtually and across the world? This project reminds me a bit of , where they had people in over 156 countries join together and sing at the exact same time. Projects like these get me really excited!

Projects like these give me hope for the future of the world. It is absolutely moving that there are causes that motivate people to gather together across obscure places. The first (Lux Aurumque) of Eric’s videos was moving, but the second, was even more moving! More than two-thousand people decided that this was something that they wanted to be part of. This project was something that they wanted to contribute a piece of their creativity and flare to. This project was something that they thought was inspiring. And can you really disagree with that?

This bit of collaboration demonstrated by the people who spent hours perfecting a video to send to Eric Whitacre makes me think of the possibilities… What if we could get 10,000 people singing together? What if we could get 100,000 people singing together? What if we could get a whole country to sing together? I wonder what kind of positive emotion and inspiration we could invoke from the people of a nation, if they were all singing a song (like the ones in these videos) at the same time. I wonder what that could do for “world peace.”

Would You Take a Pill to Make You Smarter?

I had the chance to see the recent film, , and I must say, the premise makes for a good conversation. The protagonist is a failed writer who stumbles into a secret drug that allows him to harness his intelligence prowess. I won’t go into any further detail of the film, but I do want to talk about this perceived ‘super-human’ ability that the movie is based on.

Let’s say that you’re given the opportunity to take a pill. This pill will allow you to use your own ability to its full extent. Meaning, the pill won’t add anything to what you have, but will merely allow you to access all of it more readily. This pill, also, will not have any side effects. The drug has been tested up the wazoo for any potential “negative” side effects and there aren’t any. Would you take it?

This, to me, is a very interesting dilemma. Initially, one would think that it’s only a as there isn’t currently a drug on the market that has these capabilities, side effects or not, or is there? Part of me thinks that if someone can make a movie about it, there is probably some truth to the premise. So, maybe there is a secret drug that enhances one’s abilities. Maybe this secret drug doesn’t enhance one’s abilities as much as the movie portrays and maybe the side effects are worse than what they talk about in the film.

Either way, it’s something interesting to consider. I think, for me, it would be a very tough decision. Thankfully, I do not currently possess a drug with these capabilities, so I am not faced with this moral dilemma. And isn’t it partially a moral dilemma? Taking this kind of drug would, at least partially, change the person who took it. The argument could be made that the person is really just a better version of themselves, but then the counter-argument says that changing one’s self (even for the better) is changing who you are.

Let’s face it — it would be really cool to be able to ‘access’ all of one’s abilities just by taking a pill. Something tells me that we probably can access all of our abilities (like the protagonist after ingesting the pill) and not have the ill-effects from the drug. Many people would consider , (the act of describing targets [people, places, etc.] at a distance) to be a somewhat super-human capability, but we, as humans, have already been able to do this (without the use of drugs). In the 1970s, the. Heck, you can even to see if you can “remotely view.”

There really is so much already written about this topic that a post like this could turn into a thesis or a dissertation. These ‘special powers’ have been part of some of the world’s religion for thousands of years. buddha tibet buddhismIn Buddhism, they have what is known as a . The Sanskrit word, Siddhi, translates to perfection, but what it is referring to is psychic powers. So, in this sense, some religions already believe that humans possess the capacity to attain these abilities without the use of drugs.

Overall, the idea of increased intelligence is fascinating. For me, it would be important that to whom this ability was bestowed (or earned or however it happened) be to someone who was highly ethical and moral. I really wouldn’t want a super-human trying to swindle money from people. From my perspective, increased intelligence or (enhanced ability to access one’s intelligence) could come in very handy for engineering peace between nations.

Revolution, Revolution, Everywhere!

I recently was lucky enough to bear witness to what is likely to win a number of awards at this year’s Oscars — . While the writers of the film did their best to maintain , of course, some dramatic liberties were taken. Nonetheless, I thought it was a rather smart movie and really allowed the audience to peer behind the curtains of what it was like for King George VI in the earlier part of the 1900s.

One of the things that surprised me in the film was when one of the character’s pointed out that if England were to go to war with Germany, it would mark the second world war that some of the citizens of the country would have witnessed. I can’t imagine being alive at a time such that I would have been able to see not just one world war, but two! Regardless, it reminded me that the state of our world is still not quite where I’d like it to be — peacefully — that is.

I suppose that with each passing day, something is learned, or at least I hope that’s the case. Why else would we be seeing the that we are seeing in Egypt and Tunisia? And now, countries like Bahrain and Libya are seeing what happened in nearby countries and want to stand up and be heard. I think it’s great that we are living in a time where the actions of one group in one country can affect the actions of another group in another country — instantaneously!

Without the internet and the speed at which news can travel in our modern time, I doubt that Egypt (or even Tunisia?) has the success that it did in the peaceful demonstrations. The miracle that is the internet is allowing to succeed without literal “close contact” and instead, it is close contact through social media. Things are happening really fast nowadays, wouldn’t you say?

It was only just about a month ago that the riots started happening in Tunisia. Since then, we’ve already had reform in Tunisia and an uprising and reform in Egypt. As mentioned earlier, now countries like Bahrain and Libya seem to be joining the fray as candidates for reform (although the governments of these countries, and , might not go down without a fight).

So adults living at the time of King George VI got to say, although probably not felt as a privilege, that they witnessed their country enter into two world wars. Adults living today get to say that they’ve been able to watch the fall of two governments in just under a month with the prospect of others to follow. The year 2011 is still quite green… I wonder what else oh-eleven will bring us.

Same News, Different Perspective

The 2011 trade deadline for the National Hockey League () is nearing and with that, the propensity to move players from team-to-team has increased. Late last week, there was a particular trade that sent one player, , from the to the in exchange for a couple of . While this seems a bit like inconsequential news in the scheme of things, I found it absolutely perfect to illustrate a point about how the same facts can be talked about in different ways in the media.

We have a fact: Mike Fisher was traded to the Nashville Predators. It would seem that there really isn’t anything more to this story than one team is trading a player and one team is acquiring a player, right? Well, that’s what most people would think, at least. But, it just so happens that Mike Fisher is married to a very popular female in the country music business and… it just so happens that Nashville is the “seat of power” for country music.

Quickly, the news that became . To the sports world, it mattered that it was , and to the entertainment industry, it mattered that . It’s of no surprise that news can be important to different people for different reasons and as such, the news will be reported in different ways to different people.

I find this fascinating because it’s the same piece of news being reported on differently. The NHL is of seemingly little importance to the political arena, national security, or education reformation, but these are all different areas of news that can be reported on in just the same way. Meaning, there are going to be different angles on the same piece of political news (the angles reported to the Democrats and the angles reported to the Republicans are the angles we hear the majority of the time).

In my research of collecting articles/links for this post, I noticed that one of the articles I found actually spoke to both of the angles in the same article. That is, , addressed that Mike Fisher was traded to the Predators and that Carrie Underwood’s husband was traded to Nashville. While the trade’s importance may not be of global importance, I was still happy to read that the author was reporting on more than just the sports-angle or the entertainment-angle. I wish that all news was reported in this fashion, with at least an acknowledgement to the implications of the facts from more than one perspective.