50 People Were Asked To Enter A Room Full Of Balloons.....

[kpete]

:large
https://twitter.com/thereaIbanksy/status/588823211921383425

[gopiscrap]

1. I can use this in a sermon!

[okaawhatever]

2. Excellent. Thanks for posting. nt

[rhett o rick]

39. Good thing I wasn't involved. I would have started popping the ballons until

I found mine. Hard telling what the analysis of my behavior would have been. Probably consider a danger to society.

Great post.

[okaawhatever]

42. Funny, that was my first thought. I'd have been popping them.... nt

[7962]

49. See reply #28

[Martin Eden]

3. Excellent Lesson!

And I think I'd like to move through that room full of balloons whether or not I was looking for one with my name on it.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

4. me too!

And they're translucent gold? Even better! Prettyyyy!

[jwirr]

5. This lesson would be especially important in times of crisis.

[Cheese Sandwich]

8. I thought the moral of the story would be we can solve tough problems when we are organized

Disorganized we just bump into each other.

Still turned out to be a good story.

[Unrepentant Fenian]

6. Sweet!

[JDPriestly]

7. So true, true, true.

[kentuck]

9. Such an excellent example.

Bravo!

[tomm2thumbs]

10. Banksy has good taste in articles and stories

Glad he is spreading the good ideas and news in this world --

[merrily]

11. Happiness is a balloon with my name written on it? Who knew?

What's wrong with these people that they frantically to do this silly task? And it takes 5 minutes to find one balloon out of 50?

I am not buying the set up, but the moral is wonderful and true. Think of any mutual gift-giving occasion. If you think you've bought the perfect gift, all you do is look forward with excitement to the other person's reaction when they get it. You don't even think about what you might receive as a gift.

Imagine if you gave them something they absolutely needed, like a meal for a needy, hungry person. Or a clean, safe place for a homeless person to take a shower and do laundry. (What's wrong with us as a society that we can't even do that for the homeless?)

Or a visit to a lonely, long-term patient in a nursing home, with maybe a small gift of cookies (if they are allowed them, of course) or toiletries or a magazine.

Gratitude is also an effective mood lifter for me. A relative always looks at people who have more material things than she does--and she has a great deal-- and gets pissed off. I look at people who can even get to the bathroom unassisted and feel so blessed. In turn, feeling so blessed creates feeling a need to give back. What a beautiful cycle for happiness that almost anyone can afford! Good for your own physical and emotional health, too.

BTW, if those 50 people had organized and worked together, each picking up some balloons and calling out one name at a time, they would have been less frantic and finished sooner. Another great moral of this story.

[BlueJazz]

12. I did a quick estimate of those balloons and there's over 500 of them. I notice that only one is...

...going in there at a time. I smell Aliens. You can see the one guy trying to get out.

[eggplant]

13. It would have gone much quicker if they had pins. n/t

[Gidney N Cloyd]

28. The repub way. "Not mine" (POP) "Not mine" (POP) "Not mine" (POP) "Not mine" (POP) "Not mine" (POP)

[eridani]

14. Ezcellent. Note however, that adulthood--

---never survives contact with bubble wrap.

[alphafemale]

15. Amazon has those huge ones now.

Really quite loud.

My cat hatez. Goes under the bed when she sees them.

[eridani]

17. Not popular with my kittehs either n/t

[alphafemale]

16. Even finding one of the 50 balloons in that mess would have been a luck upon.

I think I would have naturally called out the persons name.

A right-wingers response to finding a balloon with someone else's name would likely be to pop it.

[treestar]

20. Great analogy!

Exactly! They think "winning" involves damaging other people.

[7962]

50. See response #39!

[JHB]

18. If they can ENTER the room, the room was not FILLED with balloons.

Q.E.D.

[uppityperson]

23. maybe they were given pins?

[JHB]

48. Ah, but upon application of the pin, the room ceases to be full of balloons

[treestar]

19. How intriguing!

I do believe the happiest people are the ones who think least about themselves.

[Gothmog]

21. Thanks for posting

This is very interesting and moving

[Surya Gayatri]

22. K & R for a universal life lesson...

[Buzz Clik]

24. That story made me sad.

Why was I not given a balloon?

[deurbano]

27. The story of my life.

[randome]

25. This could make for an interesting swinger's party, too.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

[Dont call me Shirley]

26. We are all our sisters and brothers keepers. Cooperation rocks! Opposition sucks!

Funny when I read the first part of the challenge, grabbing a balloon and calling out the persons name on it was the first thing that came to my mind. A smile came to me when I saw the second part of the challenge.

[KittyWampus]

29. wouldn't true happiness be just popping all the balloons and not caring whose name

was on which balloon?

Subvert the dominant paradigm!

[jtuck004]

30. So why do we start teaching everyone to be an individual and compete with each other

from day one, telling them who is good and bad, what sex they must be, etc?

Then gripe when people become selfish and racist and unappreciative of what others have sacrificed to get them here. After we taught them to be like that. lol

We must be some of the least self-aware people on the planet.

[liberal_at_heart]

34. Why do we have a Federal Educational program called Race to the Top? That clearly

says we don't care about those who can't keep up with the winners. Our next generation is screwed from the very beginning.

[samsingh]

31. i like the message, but i'm not sure i follow the logical connection

its more of a lesson in work flow optimization.

[GCP]

32. It's called Cooperation

He hasn't invented the wheel here.

[Xyzse]

33. Interesting and thanks.

[Helen Borg]

35. A lesson on cooperation.

That is why you need "rules of the game" beyond simple local competition.

[NM_Birder]

36. .

^B^A^L^L^O^O^N
^T^H^U^N^D^E^R^D^O^M^E

[tclambert]

37. To the Koch brothers, the purpose of life is to score as many points in the money-making game

as possible. If it involves subverting governments (including ours), fighting wars to maintain our dependence on foreign oil, polluting the environment on a massive scale, causing the entire world to warm up, and then pay propagandists to deny such warming exists; in other words, if it involves making the world a much, much worse place to live for everyone else, . . . well, that's fine. Remember, the whole point of human existence is to score points in the game of making money.

[randome]

38. Hm. Sometimes a balloon is just a balloon.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

[BeanMusical]

40. That's really neat. K and R.

[olddots]

41. don't let politians near that room

they would break them all .

[IronLionZion]

43. I like giving evilDUers happiness

it makes me happy!

[oberliner]

44. Who were these 50 people and what was the seminar?

What was the context?

[Stevepol]

45. And not just happiness

but FREEDOM as well.

Edgar Cayce was once asked in a reading he gave during or shortly before WWII, what was the spirit that Russia had come to represent in the world. He said something like this:

"Freedom. Freedom. That each man will live for his fellow man."

To me this is the essence of freedom and it's the only principle that, if followed, would bring total civility and fairness to society and peace internationally.

[BumRushDaShow]

46. This was posted last year on DU

I knew I saw it here before!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024663278

Definitely bears repeating!

[graegoyle]

47. I would have just wandered through them and bopped them around.