I Am (a documentary)

What’s wrong with our world and what can we do to make it better?

I watched a documentary last night called  I Am made by Tom Shadyac. I absolutely loved this documentary. Tom Shadyac is better known for comedy (Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty, Nutty Professor) but after he experienced a life changing accident he decided to go around the world and ask famous philosophers, scientists and people in the church and ask them the question above, what is wrong with the world and what can we do to make it better?

I love any story that, sort of, restores your faith in humanity and reminds us that we’re all connected. That life isn’t about being bigger, faster, stronger, richer, or better than anyone else. The documentary tells about how connected we really are, how my emotions can affect the person next to me whether they’re good or bad and whether I’m silent about them or not. How our hearts are stronger than our minds. We are wired to care about each other, that is why we feel pain when we see someone in pain, we experience joy when watching a child reunited with their parent who was maybe away at war. Scientifically we are connected; our bodies are hardwired for this connection “from the Vagus Nerve which releases oxytocin at simply witnessing a compassionate act, to the Mirror Neuron which causes us to literally feel another person’s pain. “ That’s pretty powerful, and we experience it all the time.

Another part of the documentary that really interested me was Random Event Generators or Electronic Random Number Generators. Princeton University started The Global Consciousness Project in 1998, the purpose of this project is to prove basically that our emotions can have an effect on the things around us. These random number generators are like flipping a coin 200 times. What they’ve found is a correlation between major events and the randomness of the generators. The largest example is September 11th. They found that the numbers were no longer random at the time of these attacks, the remarkable part is that these changes in randomness started on September 5th, suggesting that it may be possible to predict a catastrophic world event. The same thing happened to the generators when the Tsunami struck in Japan 24 hours before the Tsunami hit. Their research shows the same patterns in 300 world events both tragic in nature or upbeat, anything that would cause human emotion on a large scale.

For a quick look at information on this click here or for the full in depth study from Princeton click here.

This kind of information absolutely fascinates me. They had done some experiments on Shadyac to demonstrate this idea. They showed how monitoring your heart rate can measure your emotions. Between each heartbeat there is a measurable frequency ( I know that’s maybe not the right word, but clearly I’m not a scientist) that shows whether you are happy, sad, grossed out,neutral, etc. So they would show a picture to Shadyac and measure the reactions in his heart. After a while his heart would show the reaction he would have for the next picture before the picture was even shown to him. Amazing right?

There were countless experiments shown that just really blew me away. I really believe in this type of thought. That we’re all connected, that my mood can affect your mood. That people around me experience my pain as if it were their own, both because we are naturally compassionate people and because we all give off energy that can be read by each other. Honestly if you believe you have a soul, then you believe that you are more than just your human body. Interestingly enough, the book I just finished reading called Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, explored these thoughts as well. In the book Mr. Alexander, a neurosurgeon, that believed in science only, until he contracted an unheard of disease and completely recovered from it when doctors believed there was no possible way it could happen. While he was in a coma he believes he experienced heaven and knew that everyone was connected, that love was the main drive and focus of everything around us. That so much more existed than we were aware of. Funny that I came into contact with these two things at the same time. They’re both hard for me to refute. And I absolutely wouldn’t want to.

Even if you think all of this is far-fetched.  That's understandable, there is so much more to this documentary than a few scientific experiments.  It’s about being the change you want to see in the world, the idea that what you do matters.  What’s in your heart matters, your actions matter.  Compassion is important to all of us, it’s essential to all of us.  Studies show that if your heart is in a position of compassion you will be a happier person.  That’s how we’re made.  We aren’t made to compete but to cooperate with each other.  It truly is a beautiful message.  An important message.

A big part of me just thinks there’s so much more going on around us than we realize and there’s so much evidence that suggests that. Not that I’ll become some lunatic that runs around prophesying about number generators and such, but is it so weird to think that we all have souls and that our hearts are powerful enough to put out energy that effects the things around us? I don’t think so. Is it crazy to think that we’re all connected to each other and have the power to change the world through good deeds and generosity, it don’t think so either. I highly recommend this documentary!