How Can You Reduce Violence Around You?

The solution is joining the police force right?

Well, that is one option.

However, it seems like this is not the only option.  In fact, some studies show that if we participate in Transcendental Meditation focused on well-being of others, with sufficient numbers, one can achieve better results than any number of police departments.

I personally, postulate that groups of people doing any kind of well-being focused group meditation over time, can achieve the same results.

There is little explanations on how this exactly works except for explanations from meditation gurus that promote the idea, but the results seem to be real and validated by officials and statisticians.

This effect is simply called the Maharishi Effect, because many of the experiments in real life were done by the Maharishi University of Management in 1993 and then again in a larger scale experiment between 2007 and 2010.

It's all very mysterious from a scientific point of view.  They say that when sufficient amounts of minds focus on well-being, the magic number being the square root of 1% of the nearby population core, using the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi technique (according to the Maharishi University of Management), this creates a significant influence in the overarching consciousness towards the focus point, well-being, which in turn reduces instances of violent crime in the populated area.

In 1993, the group went to Washington D.C. for several weeks with thousands of members from around the world, peaking at 4,000 on the last week.  Now according to the web, the population of Washington D.C. at that time was 600,000 people.  If we take the square root of 6,000 (1% of 600,000), you have 77.  So according to the Maharishi University of Management, the group had way more people than that to have an effect.

In fact, if I do my math right, we'd need less than 2,000 meditation practitioners in the US to impact the whole country.

Now the results are amazing:

• At week 4, there were only 1,200, and the instances of crimes against a person & robberies (together) had decreased only 2%.
• As time went on and more people gathered to meditate, at week 5, there were 2,750 people meditating together and the crime rate reduction calculated was then about 7%.
• At the end of the 8 weeks, the group size was at its biggest, shy of 4,000 people, and the crime rate had reduced by 23.3%.

The final analysis of the Maharishi group, which was supervised by a 27 -member Project Review Board over the experiment composed of criminologists, sociologists, other university people and the police department was this:

"Based on the results of the study, the steady state gain (long-term effect) associated with a permanent group of 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs was calculated as a 48% reduction in HRA crimes (crimes against a person) in the District of Columbia."

So what they are saying is if large amounts of people would meditate and focus on peace and well-being over protracted slabs of time, or better yet constantly, crimes against people would be cut in half.

With these results, I don't really care so much how it works.  I'm interested rather in the results.

The group had similar results when they did a longer duration stint between 2007 and 2010 in 206 urban areas of high population (100,000 citizens or more).  They compared the homicide rates of the nation between those dates in the cities with the homicide rates of the same areas from 2002-2006 and found that during the 2007-2010 period, the homicide rate declined in these areas by 21.2% (5.3% per year).  Violent crimes went from a flat trend between 2002-2006 to a declining trend between 2007-2010 of 4.6% per year, totaling 18.5% in the meditation period.

Now, one could say that other factors could account for some of that reduction over years such as better policies, better education system, and whatnot, but since these are years of hardship with the economic collapse of 2008, I'm hard pressed to think that.  

However, I don't have all the data.

What I do know is that there is something there, and meditation towards the well-being of our fellow human beings is not only good for our health, but good for our society as well.  So there really isn't anything holding us back to just do it.  

I know from personal experience that it feels real good.

My philosophy, the Raelian Movement, meditate a lot and teach it a lot so it's easy for me to just do it.  Also, in 2012, our philosophical leader, Raël, started urging us to practice meditation focused on other people's well-being together and in great numbers if possible.  The meditations are simple emotional focus exercises directed towards peace and love of others.  Everyone can do it, and we started gathering and inviting people to join in regularly, to just take a minute of their time every day, or every hour (if people wish) to do a short 1 Minute Meditation for Peace.

We also organize online meditations in multiple languages in Canada on Mondays and sometimes other days of the week.  We often have about 100 participants showing up online very Monday from all over North America.

Why?  Well, though we don't understand exactly HOW it works, we know that the larger amounts of people that do this sort of meditation regularly, the lower the instances of violence (see the data from the Maharishi Experiments above).

Since meditating for anything is a personal decision, I decided that on top of participating with my philosophical group, I can also take it upon myself to do it more frequently in my personal life, and of course, being a scientist, attempt to measure my impact on others through the exercise.

I thus decided to post a video or picture of me in my daily life Meditating for Peace (1 minute only) and posting it on Facebook for all to see.  I decided I would do this for 30 straight days no matter what I was doing.  

The purpose was to SHOW people I'm doing it, explaining to people what I'm doing and hoping that others seeing it in my network would share and perhaps take a minute as well upon seeing me doing it.  And then maybe, they post their own photo and so on.

Here is more information on this whole effect in the video below as well as additional comments on my 30 day social experiment:

I have to say, this put me on the spot since I typically use my Facebook and Twitter accounts to talk about scientific stuff and only on occasion about philosophy.  Now I was posting pictures of me meditating, intentionally not always on my best looking days or situations.  But that was the point.  I wanted to show that meditating on loving others and hoping peace on others could be done without makeup, without being shaved, or clean, or lying on your bed.  No.  It's only a minute of focused thought.  

It can be done outdoors, during a wash, before eating dinner, while cooking dinner, in any area, on bad hair days (I have one of my meditation pics after I got out of the public pool.. you can imagine the wet disheveled hair....).  Anywhere.  Thing is, it's not about you.  It's all about everyone else.

I thought to myself, if I can show others what I'm doing and they do it too, I can perhaps influence the city I'm in. Or perhaps more?  

Unfortunately, I wasn't set up to measure the level of violence in Ottawa during those 30 days.  And frankly my FB friends are really all over the place, so I didn't even attempt to look into that.  The objective was to see what was the influence of a single person on others to take the action itself.

As shown in the Maharishi experiments, if you have sufficient numbers doing it in the same period and being regular about it, you can reduce violence.  So I set out to see if a population that cares enough could mobilize without any centralized organization and potentially generate the same effect as the Maharishi experiments using social media as a way to communicate intent and spread the word of the effort.

Here are my official results after 30 days of publicly showing me meditating on Facebook:

• 30 days of meditation, 1 minute commitment per day = 30 minutes of my time
• 427 Likes on Facebook (I have roughly 3,000 Facebook friends)
• 13 Shares and 42 Comments on the posts

Now, I estimated that many of the people that Liked the post probably paused and took a minute knowing that my network is similar to me in mindset (at least those that Liked).  So I figured 50% of these people probably were prompted to take 1 Minute and meditate for Peace.

That's 214 people + my 30 meditations.  So at first glance, my actions gave birth to 244 minutes of meditation for Peace over a month.

Now, I also assume that a small percentage of those that Liked perhaps posted their meditation, following my example and that they provoked a similar ratio in Likes where 50% likely meditated...  I stopped there because I didn't want to go nuts in assumptions in a chain.  That is still another 87 minutes added by secondary influence.

So, including me, a total of 360 minutes of meditation happened during the month of September because of my little 30 personal minutes.  That's still 6 hours of focused meditation for peace that wasn't going to happen before.

Now if we project in numbers a little bit, assuming the average Joe doesn't have 3,000 Facebook friends, and say that for each person that meditates and shows they are doing it on social media, they influence 5 people to meditate.  Not necessarily show their picture, but just take a minute.

Well, that means a small group of 400 regular meditation practitioners, wherever they are in North America, that post their meditations would influence 2,000 meditations for a total of 2,400 meditations per day.  This is apparently enough, based on the Maharishi University of Management's numbers, sufficient to reduce violence and crime rates for the whole of North America.

So what I say to you guys is this:  whether you believe this has any real effect on violence, or not.  This is a great social action that can have HUGE impact on yourself, your family and the continent.  The health benefits alone are sufficient reason to do it.

For those of you who are shy about posting on social media, that's fine.  Do it anyway because others are.  For those of you who aren't shy and wish to make the world a better less violent place, I recommend you post yourself meditating and use #1Min4Peace and share on your favorite social media.  The domino effect by being visible to others that respect you will make it all just stronger.  

Do it in public at work, when you are at the restaurant before a meal, do it when you are at the dentists office.  Let people see you and tell people what you are doing.

People like feeling good right?  People like peace and harmony and non-violence right?  Many will pick up on the habit because you're doing it an you are showing that it is ok.

So take 1 minute and think about that.

Then do it!

The Theories of Creation - my point of view

This is typically a controversial subject, but since it came up several times in discussions within business meetings recently (in 1 on 1 conversation or small groups), I thought I'd pore my thoughts about it here.

As always, I have created a video for those of you who prefer watching than reading.  There is likely more info in the video too:

There are generally 3 different theories running around:

1. The God Theory
2. The Evolution Theory
3. The Scientific Creation Theory

Only one of them is an actual scientific theory (the Theory of Evolution) tested and trialled in labs around the world. 

The funny thing is, in discussions with young professionals recently, the one that seemed to come up as the "logical" one, is the WAY less popular Scientific Creation Theory.

To be precise, the theory advanced here is that scientifically advanced aliens came to Earth a long time ago, and used the planet as a biology lab to create, at first, simple creatures like bacteria and unicellular algae, and through iteration and further genetic manipulation, they eventually created Humans that looked like them.

One reason this theory came up in conversation is because we were talking about how things like myths and legends, science, religious scriptures (or stories), and folklore all fit together nicely, as well as to explain the diversity of life.

I think another reason this came up is due to the disillusion about any theistic philosophy (Islam, Christianity, Judaism etc...) being just a little bit.... crazy... and the fact that the Theory of Evolution has a few major holes that science has so far been unable to plug.

As a scientist, I like the part of the Theory of Evolution that Darwin worked on:  Natural Selection.  This part is all about how a species will adapt to its environment by letting those members of the species survive and proliferate better if they have characteristics favorable to its survival whenever the environment changes. 

What most people consider the Theory of Evolution is in fact about how species came to be from building blocks, to unicellular life to fish, to lizard to mammal and to human.... 

While natural selection has strong evidence Darwin explored back in the 1800's and we have proven time and time again, the HOW species evolved from step to step through random mutation through huge amounts of time is still a mystery.

Scientists simply assume it happened through chance even if the probability is super low given the huge amounts of time allotted.

However, we are as of yet unable to demonstrate abiogenesis and the evolutionary hops between discovered species (through fossils mostly) in good scientific form.

 

Abiogenesis:
The Miller-Urey experiments and others similar afterwards do show that somewhat complex organic molecules can spontaneously appear from the primordial oozes.  No experiment so far was able to demonstrate that process being able to form the simplest working and reproducing archaeobacteria.  Some insinuate that the first bacteria may have ridden an asteroid from elsewhere to bridge that gap, but one still wonders how those came to be in the first place...  Complex life has to form somehow somewhere!!!  See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment



Evolutionary gaps:
People complain about "the missing fossils" in the gaps between species.  With reason.  These gaps are filled up by scientists saying that mutations in one species through natural selection processes could have done large "hops" about every 100,000 years or so, to explain the differences in fossils observe, the fact that we can't find the "in-between" bones, and the very low to nil probabilities of beneficial mutations in the first place. 
See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

The E.Coli long-term experiment was set to motion in 1988 to try to prove (or disprove) the possibility of these major positive leaps in mutations creating very new species.  65,000 generations later, today, the scientists supervising this experiment have observed approximately hundreds of millions of mutations overall, with 10-20 of them being beneficial with the most remarkable being a very small change in an enzyme structure allowing for the bacteria to process citrate as an energy source in aerobic conditions.  Since the bacteria was already able to process citrate in anaerobic environments, and already had all the chemistry machinery in place to process the citrate within, its not a big jump.  So the theory of "large jumps" in evolution between fossils where there would be significant genetic and phenotypic differences looks harder and harder to swallow.

Intelligent Design:
Though often ridiculed because the Catholic Church is attempting to have this the God Theory adopted as science in the classrooms in the United States of America, the concept of Intelligent Design makes more and more sense.  At least to the intellectual elite and entrepreneurs I hang out with.  They come up with the theory of ancient aliens coming to Earth and making life by themselves and their own reading.

In a nutshell, the hand of intelligent scientists easily explains abiogenesis and also the gaps between observed fossils (iterations of a model that was released in the wild for a while, observed and then removed most likely to make way to a new variation or species better suited to the scientist's idea.  Can easily explain how genes are carried from species to species and why genes and chromosomes are often reorganized from one species to the next somewhat.  Again, design helps a lot in plugging the holes.

I've adopted this theory more than 25 years ago already (see www.rael.org ) so its nowhere new to me as a Raelian. 

Of course, no way to prove right now the presence of ancient aliens on the Earth...   It makes sense, but without hard evidence, its hard to make it stick well.

Just fun to talk with intelligent people that are looking for alternative ways to see how everything connects together. 



In this case, Scientific Creation theory connects:

• Ancient myths, legends and folklore
• Old religious stories and scriptures
• Ancient structures from around the world (see:  http://www.daniken.com/ )
• How the different species have come to be on the planet
• How life started simple, and complexified
• The gaps between evolutionary hops

All those theories should be further discussed and why not?  Eventually we'll figure it all out, through proper application of scientific principles.  :)