| My name is Ivan Tucakov. I provide a wide variety of workshops, resources and reviews that explore ways of bringing more empathic connection to our world, communities, loved ones and ourselves. I love to organize events and offer traninings and workshops that relate to the subject of "connection". I also maintain a blog to offer commentaries, stories and reviews on various events, public lectures, interviews, articles, books, movies and more. Thank you for being part of creating more connection in our world and helping us move toward an empathic society! |
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(by Ivan Tucakov)
I just watched a video that’s gone viral in a day, where a father empties a round of bullets into his daughter’s laptop because she wrote a complaining post on Facebook about him. I noticed that the large majority of people who watched this video full-heartedly supported this action and child-rearing technique. I am writing this post to ask people who support this behavior a few questions and to reconsider how they see human relationships.
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How many times have you seen a debate, where you loved and praised the person you supported and were annoyed by and scorned the person that you were not supporting?
This is because debates are by definition constructed to produce this result. The point of a debate is for each side to use any means to persuade the other side until one prevails with a “superior context”, rather than to find understanding or even common ground in one another’s viewpoints. Debates are about winning an argument, rather than creating mutual agreement, even if the agreement is at least: to agree to disagree. If someone listens to understand the other side, it’s in order to find ways to argue against it. (more…)
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With all the “occupy” movements these days, it’d been increasingly on my mind how I can contribute in my way. One thing I believe we all need to do is find the best possible tools that educate people to be foremost compassionate, self-aware, respectful, and additionally also fair, logical, assertive, strong and resourceful. We need to learn these ways of living and work on creating a good life for our immediate communities, and people closest to us and strategically and insistently educate others, especially our children. As it spreads, it can bring forth a life of wellbeing through some of the most basic human needs for everyone, especially when we address big world problems where we reach out to the people who seem to be caught up in the big money rat-race and want our voice to be heard.
(by Ivan Tucakov)
Just over a year since it’s publication in June 2010, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s book Sex at Dawn has gained considerable attention. They introduced a whole new narrative to explain people’s struggle with long-term fidelity, why sexual passion tends to fade as love deepens, why people risk everything just for a fling, what we can learn by simply observing the way our bodies are built and in the big picture, simply understand our place in the modern day world. Their research suggests many previously un-thought-of traits our pre-agricultural ancestors had: shared sexuality, long human life expectancy, resilient immunity, very little violence, etc.
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Ken Robinson delivered one of my favorite TED talks to date. His simple message explains how important it is to cultivate creativity within us and our children and also how important it is to recognize our natural aptitudes that give us full meaning and then pursue them. I am also impressed by how naturally he draws in his audience with humor and then switches back to important matters. His points explore shortfalls of the western educational system and how it affects and suppresses people’s creativity, their ability to grow, change, see things anew and not take things they are used to for granted. Overall, he suggests a revolution in our education, not just a reformation but a transformation and it’s exciting that so many people are getting on board with this vision! Ken’s work reminds me of the writings of Alexadner S. Neil I had read many years ago, about a self-governed school called Summerhill, which he’d started at the beginning of the last century in Suffolk, England. Visions toward the betterment of our education had sparked my interest and passion ever since then. (more…)
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I just watched this interview with Margie Gillis by sun news host Krista Erikson, and I was very surprised, even shocked, by the Ms. Erikson’s aggressively hostile approach to her guest.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/971454253001
At the outset, Ms. Erikson began with an introduction filled with praise and recognition of the considerable cultural credentials of Ms. Gillis. She suddenly changed tack to a dismissive, contemptuous tone and began attacking the very legitimacy of Ms. Gillis’ art form while accusing her of profiteering at the expense of taxpayers. Ms. Erikson characterized modern dance as a bunch of silly hand waving, clearly not worth the value of the grants awarded to her over her long and (admittedly) distinguished career. (more…)
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Imagine a man whose arteries around the heart are so blocked that he needs a bypass surgery or he will likely die. Suppose this person starts to believe that the sickness will go away if he only visualizes his arteries starting to clean, and that thinking that he’s getting any sicker will only attract sickness and that he need not worry about doing any surgery. Just like gravity pulls us, he will pull health toward him and the right positive frequencies of the universe will deliver clean arteries.
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