For me the purpose of life is to know other people…is to discover what life is. Who inhabits the world? What is it to be human? What can I give to the world which it doesn’t have…a gift for tolerating my presence in this world..…and unless I know the people, I can’t know what it does not have - Theodore Zeldin
Imagining seeing how everybody else lives, just for one day. Life In A Day was a historic global experiment to create a user-generated feature film shot in a single day, July 24 2010.
However, it's often very hard to be empathetic and to really try and put oneself into others' shoes. "Outrospection" describes those moments in which we are focused not on ourselves, but on others. As Peter Singer noted in his fight against the growing self-obsessed, therapeutic, inward culture, the answer may well lie within, but getting the right answer depends more on what one does without.
Imagine balancing self-interest and caring for others. If this is possible, then:
(1) What is the approximate balance between the two today - in individuals, organisations and societies? How much time do we really spend thinking about and then acting on other people's needs?
(2) How can we start an open and ongoing debate about what the balance should be - in 2025, in 2030 etc? I f we don't do this, then how can individuals really know how to lead a "good" life, how can organisations know what their wider responsibilities really are and can societies really know how to develop fair policies for all?
(3) How can we then best collaborate with one other, sharing our good practices and our ideas and reaching out for a consensus on the most effective actions, projects and policies to get us ever closer to that optimum balance between self-interest and active compassion?
What will be the best fora and media for involving as many people as possible in both the debate and the sharing?
What is short, are the human, personal, "ethical" development goals (EDGs) that we should nurture alongside the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
Halcyon intends to play a key role in starting to answer such questions.