By Humberto Braga
Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Do you think humanity is f*cked?!?

Considering the destructive and unconscious actions of many people around the world, it can be easy to fall in to despair. But I always remind myself of the following facts when I get upset and it always fills me up with an infallible optimism, conviction, love, and purpose. I hope they bring you light when things seem dark, and uplift your spirits when the world gets heavy.

5 Facts to Make You an Optimist!

1) We can’t judge the conscious evolution of humanity based on the stagnancy of those who aren’t interested in consciously evolving.

These “basic” kinds of people have always existed relative to more conscious, educated, and multifaceted people, and there has always been more of them. Evolution by its very definition means the new development, diversity, and complexity of an existing system, so therefore conscious evolution is always going to be determined by a relatively marginalized minority, as it always has.

By Christina Lavers
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

“It only takes one drink to get me drunk, but I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or fourteenth.” ~ George Burns (1896 – 1996)

Excessive alcohol consumption is often considered a central part of being social and having a good time. One of the reasons it is so popular is because so many people in today’s society are affected by stress and self-consciousness. And as alcohol is considered a legal, ‘socially acceptable’ substance that helps us to relax and lessen our inhibitions, it tends to be the drug of choice for many.

Unfortunately alcohol isn’t as innocuous as the playful, comforting advertising campaigns would like us to believe. It is a drug, after all. The damaging effects of excess alcohol go beyond the humiliation of doing something silly, like dancing on our boss’ desk at the annual Christmas party. Many studies have clearly demonstrated that alcohol can have extensive negative effects on our social, psychological and physical health.

By Carolanne Wright
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Just when we thought it couldn’t get much worse on the fracking front — polluted groundwater, poisoned environment, destroyed ecosystems — a dangerous new practice for ‘disposing’ of fracking wastewater has been put into action: spread it onto roadways for ice and dust management. Not only does the the flowback water from fracking contain a range of toxic compounds — including ammonium, iodide, heavy metals and bromide — it can also contain radioactive material.

For those unfamiliar with the process of fracking — known as hydraulic fracturing — a bit of history about the technique is helpful. Halliburton developed the process in 1949 and utilized the technology for decades with oil and gas wells to increase production, as they began to run dry. In conventional fracking, the well is stimulated by pumping-in water at high pressure. But hydraulic fracturing used for shale rock is a relatively new process and the one we hear most about today.

By Christina Lavers
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

“To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.” ~ Hopi Indian saying

There is not one culture on Earth that does not have a long tradition of dance. This suggests that dancing, the act of moving in time to music, is central to the experience of being human. It is such a key form of cultural expression that it has been called the “universal language”. Every culture in the world has a customary style of dance that communicates aspects of the group’s identity, creativity, rituals, history and meaning. In fact, it has even been suggested that a person could learn as much, if not more, about another culture through participating in their dance as they could reading an anthropological paper.

A recent study led by researcher Bronwyn Tarr from Oxford University produced further evidence that demonstrates that dancing plays a role in supporting and strengthening social cohesion. Tarr, a dancer and experimental psychologist, postulated that dance, being essentially cooperative in nature, could have played a role in our evolution by encouraging social bonds and other pro-social behaviour between community members.

By Nanice Ellis
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Perfectionism is sneaky – on the surface it sounds like it could be a good thing. After all, what’s wrong with perfection?

It is true that perfectionism is a strategy for success, but when you measure success by your ability to be consistently perfect, success is perpetually out of reach. The strategy of perfectionism, sooner or later, does the opposite of what it was intended to do.

If you look closely you will see that, like a wolf in sheep’s clothes, perfectionism is just another name for self-judgment. In the name of perfection, we give ourselves permission to be self-critical and undermining every time we fall short. Never quite meeting our own standards of perfection, because good is not good enough, we become our own worst enemies. If there is such a thing as perfect, and we believe that we must live up to this unrealistic ideal in order to succeed, we set ourselves up for perpetual disappointment, failure and maybe even depression.