With my life, I want to help build a world that works for all. What is a world that works for all? I can only reply with an abstract answer: It is a world in which we all collaborate to create the world that we collectively want to see. Defining, tangibly, such a world that works for all is impossible for me alone. I can describe a world that works for me. You can describe a world that works for you. My roommate can describe a world that works for him. Only together, by sharing with each other our vision for the ideal world, we can begin to get an idea of what a world that works for all might tangibly look like.

It may seem illusionary that we could ever bring the entire world together under a single vision for the ideal world: Too different are our opinions, too opposed are our interests. But is through two of my favorite authors that this concept of the “basic incompatibility of humanity” is challenged: William Ury in Getting to Yes and Stephen Covey in The 3rd Alternative. Each of them separately discuss the concept of position vs interests. When conflicts get stuck on positions, resolutions are difficult. By returning to our core interests, however, we can create win-win situations. This alone does not prove that it is possible to create a world to every human's liking — but neither does it provide conclusive evidence that it is impossible.

If we assume that a world that works for all was to be possible globally with 7 billion people, it must also be possible with any subset of the world, such as a local community (this is not necessarily true for the reverse). Following this statement, we can conclude the following: If creating a community that works for all its residents is possible, then creating a world that works for all may also be a possibility. If creating such a community, however, is impossible, then creating a world that works for all is also impossible.

My vision for my contemplative interdisciplinary studies is exploring, prototyping, and testing what a process might look like that allows the community members of Naropa - students, faculty, staff - to create a Naropa that works for all.

To build a community empowerment platform around creating the Naropa we want, I need to learn about (1) problem-solving, (2) community-building, (3) group intelligence, (4) models of (decentralized) governance, (5) creating strategies, (6) individual and group empowerment, (7) “us-vs-them” and collective mentality, (8) transforming passivity into proactiveness, (9) theories about local change to global change, (10) systems theory, (11) measuring progress, (12) facilitating collaboration, (13) building a social movement.

I am probably still in the introductory phase which makes it difficult to get more specific on each of the topics. My concentrations, peace studies and social innovation (and, possibly, environmental studies), cover some of these topics but not all of them. Self-motivated learning will play a big role in pursuing my learning agreement.

The next step is to make sure that my Independent Study courses next semester are aligned with learning more about these topics. I need to narrow each of these topics down to the questions that I am trying to answer and identify readings to help answer these questions.

To evaluate and analyze my research results, I would like to use a combination of traditional research methods and arts-based methodology (that we learned about in the special topics class Portals to Compassion in Fall '16). I am curious to explore what happens when these two distinctly different methods of generating knowledge meet and come into synergy. This is actually already manifesting in my life. Together with my roommate, Vishal Saharan, we have embarked on a journey to commence a new project called World We Want. World We Want is an interdisciplinary research project aimed at testing the hypothesis that the world that all of us human beings desire is, on a fundamental level, the same. In other words, while we do see division and polarization on a surface-level within society, there is actually a comprehensive unity – that is our hypothesis, anyway.

To test this hypothesis, we are inviting people to share with us their vision of what an ideal world would look like. We are inviting these contributions in whatever format people feel drawn to: stories, descriptions, bullet points, haikus, poems, music, drawings, performances, and any other forms of expression. With these contributions, we are creating a collection of world visions on www.world-we-want.com.

In addition, to asking people for their vision of the world, we are also allowing them to write down their social identities: gender, political affiliation, religious affiliation, country of origin, ethnicity, and many others. Once we have collected a representatively large number of world visions, we will rely on those social identities to investigate similarities and differences that exist between the visions of people from different backgrounds. This is where the more traditional means of analysis and research come in. The effectiveness of this approach of mixing arts-based research and traditional research methods is yet to be determined, but to me it is an exciting project and exploration of the potential that might lie in the combination of these two quite different approaches to knowledge-generation.

I spent a large part of this semester searching for my mentors, peers, and allies. They are important because they provide feedback on the work I do.

I have had a discussion with each of these individuals asking what it is that, in their opinion, is holding us back from overcoming global poverty and climate change. I grouped and categorized their responses into problem clusters. From these problem clusters, I derived a set of action steps and a set of principles to tackle these problems: Process of Change

It is difficult to make a prognosis of this process far into the future. The next steps is outlining a specific proposal for what a tool or platform might look like that could allow Naropa to create the community they want. To get specific, I will need to learn more about each of the steps and principles: How can they be facilitated? How can they translated to the Internet? How can they be scaled to large numbers of people? After designing a specific proposal, it will be time to build a prototype.

I know that I am sustained by passion, urgency, hope, and inspiration. These can come from allies and mentors, videos, or books. I greatly enjoy ideating and envisioning but I can be bad at following through and finishing what I start. It is important for me to identify ways to sustain my energy beyond the idea stage of a project.

Much of the work and projects I engage in involves my assistance as a web developer. At the moment, I am involved with the International Panel for Social Progress — an international panel bringing together 200+ researchers from across the social sciences and humanities to envision a better future. My help is centered almost exclusively on improving their website. And I really enjoy it. The self-employed work I have done in the past also revolved around web development: Building websites for clients.

But as much as I love working with computers, I also love working with people and seeing the smiles I put on people's faces. I thoroughly enjoyed my volunteer work in a soup kitchen and my volunteer work with refugees in Germany.

While I did enjoy my experience interning with a large energy company in Berlin, I would not want to do so again. My biggest issue was that I personally could not relate to the larger mission of the company, which seemed to be to generate profits. But I also did not enjoy the mundane tasks I was assigned and the incredible amount of time I spent inside just sitting in front of my computer. I wanted to be challenged and I wanted to use my creativity.

From these experiences, I have concluded that it is important to me to have a job that is meaningful, challenging, and creative/innovative.

Core Seminars

Core Area Requirements

INTD Requirements

Optional INTD Electives

Concentration I: Social Innovation (12 credit minimum)

Concentration II: Peace Studies (12 credit minimum)

Completed INTD credits: 40/60

Pending INTD credits (approval): 9

Pending INTD credits (Spring '18): 12

TOTAL INTD CREDITS: 61/60

Completed credits: 110/120

Pending credits (Spring '18): 12

TOTAL CREDITS: 122/120