Humanity 2.0: A Call To Action

To define Humanity 2.0, we must first define humanity. Humanity is the combined group of people with the qualities that accompany the act of being humane. To be humane is characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed.

The first aspect of Humanity 2.0 has its base in Web 2.0 ideals. To understand this concept one must know that Web 1.0 is the one-way flow of information through websites which contain “read-only” material. The idea was to go to the Web to get information. Web 2.0, on the other hand, is the decentralization of the production of the content on the Web; it became “user-generated”. Different social medias such as myspace, twitter, and blogs are products of Web 2.0 and are tools that are primarily used via the internet and mobile devices, and can now be used for inter-user discussions and presentations of important issues or be simply the backdrop for interpersonal recreation or networking. Now the idea is still to go to the Web to get information but has changed to include going to the Web to give information as well. It is the union of sharing and learning.

Concordantly, Humanity 2.0 is still the idea that one must be humane but is now changed to include the idea that one must act using the social media options made available by the Web 2.0 interconnectivity. Humanity 2.0 is collaborating that which is already useful in the already developed world with that which will become and is already becoming useful in the developing world.
The second aspect of Humanity 2.0 is crowdsourcing: the act of taking a task traditionally performed by a working person, and outsourcing it to an unidentified, generally large group of people in the form of an open call. Crowdsourcing is a synonym for “participatory collaboration”. Ideas without action are of little value. Changing ones thought patterns without changing how one behaves is not social reform. We need to use crowdsourcing to generate ideas and tasks via these social media options made available by Web 2.0.

“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary belief for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe.”
– John F. Kennedy

Kennedy may not have foreseen Web 2.0, but he did foresee the idea of Humanity 2.0—communal cooperation for the change of society and for the destruction of world poverty, of child malnutrition, of the lack of proper education, and of many other social negatives.

It is not social reform if you only change the way you think; actions need to be present for reform to even exist. Many ideas have risen throughout the years that for some reason have simply not been enacted into society. Why is it that great ideas die out over time? The reason is because there were no actions. As a history major, it is my job to study socio-philosophies and ideas that have risen and fallen, risen and fallen. There is only one of three outcomes for the teleology of any idea: 
• Category 1, it will change the ideas of the society; 
• Category 2, it will change the actions of the society, but only insufficiently enough to be a tainted and corrupted percentage of the original idea, having been manipulated by greed and lust for power; 
• Category 3, it will change the actions of the society in its pure form based on the intelligence, integrity, and influence of those the idea impacts.

Unfortunately the vast majority fall into Category 1 and we are forced to watch sadly as the idea falls out of the scope of the society to join the ranks of the illustrious—the innumerable ideas that over time have been known and understood but simply not been enacted. Some examples of this common phenomena are 
• power that does not corrupt, 
• honest leadership, 
• and even world peace. 
Ideas that we have all agreed to be beneficial for our society, but have never had the unity to put them into action in our society.

A much smaller percentage fall into Category 2 and make it into actions that unfortunately are made by corruptible, power-hungry, and greedy CEOs, politicians, and many other positions of social pull and power. Some examples of this are:
• communism, 
• Christianity
• capitalism, 
• and even freedom.
Ideas that, in theory, would be completely beneficial for all the members of the society, but are, upon the attempt of incorporation into society, sadly twisted through greed and the selfishness of people in positions of power.

A very miniscule amount of a very small percentage of ideas fall into Category 3 and arrive intact and whole on the side of action in a society. Some examples are: 
• The Protestant Reformation,
• the Enlightenment,
• modernization
• and the Industrial Revolution, 
Now although many of these ideas had faults in practice that were not directly inline with the perfect idea, the end result of the actions were close to the original intent. They make it into society and are incorporated for a time. The sad truth is that they so seldom stay for any meaningful length of time in comparison with how often those ideas of the corrupted Category 2 seem to guide our governments and civilizations. John F. Kennedy observes that “united there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do—for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.”

Although neither I nor JFK, I am sure, want to sound pessimistic, I cannot help but see the possibility that this failure to gain action symptom might happen to our idea. But there is only one solution to stopping the onslaught of unhealthily corrupted ideas, and that is to be a socio-unified family and coalesce together to maintain the proper leadership, proper distribution and delegation of power, and proper participation of the populace.

However our world is not in this mindset. We are fighting internally and tearing ourselves apart from the inside. The last time our country was fighting internally it was when slavery and continued misconduct of both the Northern and the Southern States drove our country from secession, and war shortly thereafter. After four years of unparalleled bloodshed up to that point, the reelection of a haggard and worried Abraham Lincoln signed the near-coming end of the war. What remained was a broken, scarred, and ununified Union. The solution was the Reconstruction. Whether radical or reserved, everyone in the country agreed that a reconstruction process was needed. Through their actions the end result of all the states entering back in the Union and their governments being rebuilt was achieved.

This time in our own personal histories right now may not be the same. We are not at war with ourselves… or are we? We are not slowly destroying our economy through greed, miscommunication, and hubris… or are we? We may not be walking up and down the streets with guns and killing the members of the opposing forces… or are we? We need to wake up and realize that although we may not be in a Second Civil War—an event that would be horrendous and frightening, but not surprising in the sense that it would be proclaimed—we are most certainly in a hidden war with ourselves, a hidden war against certain geographic locations, a hidden war against misplaced stereotypes. And what is more dangerous and self-damaging than the war that you do not even know that you are in?

There needs to be two things happening: the ending of this Hidden Civil war, and the beginning of the Second Reconstruction. Through changing our actions and unifying our minds and aspirations for Social Reform we can land the idea of a Second Reconstruction into Category 3—into actual incorporation in the physical world that we live. JFK once gave a similar call to action as he called for “a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.” 

These ideas of Humanity 2.0 and the Second Reconstruction are only just words if we fail to act upon them—if they become carelessly lain aside to gather dust in the inevitable tick of time. But if they are acted upon then they become more than just words—they become change, they become restoration, they become freedom, they become revolution, they become the end segregation, they become the rights of single mothers, they become woman’s suffrage, they become peace, the become equality, they become a Second Reconstruction. Through actions and unity, anything is possible. It is up to us to see that our words become the end of poverty, that they become the end of ethnic cleansing and holocausts worldwide, that they become the beginning of a return to intellectual, responsible, and integrity-filled leadership. May we unite to bring about the changes that our family of strangers requires of us: the generation of power.

“This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly abound in our suffering (Latin American) lands.” – Che Guevara

Adam T. Wamack–A Young Influence
Rubén Harris