These links were culled from my Twitter feed. If you don’t already, feel free to follow me on Twitter.

• The long-term trend is clear — the world is becoming increasingly free and democratic. But there have been setbacks in recent years. Growing human rights abuses in places like Russia and China are perhaps especially worrisome. See Freedom House’s 2010 Freedom in the World Survey
• American Grace, a new book by Robert Putnam and David Campbell, documents a new and remarkable trend in America: the mass defection of young people away from organized religion. See American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us
• Quality work and multitasking are incompatible. People simply can’t do two or more thinking tasks simultaneously. See E-Mail is Making You Stupid
• In a provocative article in Fast Company magazine, Richard Watson cites two interesting studies. The first claims that we last, on average, three minutes at work before something interrupts us. The other suggests that constant disruption has a greater effect on IQ than smoking marijuana. See The Rise of Connectivity Addition
• According to an interesting piece in the New York Times, unhappiness often comes as a result of letting our minds wander. While there’s no doubt that distraction can lead to discontent, it can also lead people to creative solutions, which might make them happier in the long term. See When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays by John Tierny
• Arnold Schwarzenegger represents yesterdays California Dream, Richard Rodriguez observes in a terrific video interview with Sandip Roy. But tomorrow’s California Dream belongs to men like Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin. See Richard Rodriguez talks about California
• Spiegel Online reports that some 47 percent of Americans no longer believe in the American Dream. See Is the American Dream Over?
• For the eighth straight year, reports Time, Norway has topped the United Nations’ quality-of-life list in its annual Human Development Index. Oh, come on, Norway. The competition isn’t even fun anymore. See Norwegians Have It Better Than You
• Quantum mechanics is getting weirder and weirder. Experiments show that “reality is truly in the eye of the beholder.” See After a Short Delay, Quantum Mechanics Becomes Even Weirder in ScienceNOW

A few years ago, British author and philanthropist William Murtha invited me (and about 200 others) to do just that for a book he was writing. He also asked us to name five books that have profoundly influenced our thinking.

I reflected on it for several days. It seemed to me that our world is sorely in need of visionaries, yet most of us don’t know how to be one. We’re confused by appearances. We traffic in intellectual constructs and abstract formulations, but we forget to look within, to our own source of truth. We neglect the authority of our deepest knowing.

To be a visionary meant nothing, I felt, unless it involved looking beyond appearances to the essence of things. To be a visionary means perceiving with the heart — taking our cues from within and holding fast to that truth even, and perhaps especially, when the culture seems to contradict it at every turn.

This certainly seemed to be one of the common characteristics of the visionaries I have known and worked with as a journalist.

I remembered a line from the great British scientist Jacob Bronowski: “In every age there is a turning-point, a new way of seeing and asserting the coherence of the world,” he wrote. “Each culture tries to fix its visionary moment, when it is transformed by a new conception either of nature or of man.” It was my sense, then as now, that for those of us living in the West, this is our unique and visionary moment as a culture.

In the end, I sent Murtha 100 words on the subject of discovering our unique genius.

Now his book is out. It’s called 100 Words: Two Hundred Visionaries Share Their Hope For the Future and includes contributions from a host of remarkable people. They include Jane Goodall, Alice Walker, Angeles Arrien, Bill Drayton, Lynne Twist, Frances Moore Lappe, Julia Butterfly Hill, Ben Okri, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and many others.

Murtha calls them creative souls, passionate activists, way-showers, and doers who are paving the way for all of us.

He says the book represents “a testament to the hopes, resilience, courage, and life-message of the visionaries. This is their story. And best of all, their uplifting and courageous stories clearly demonstrate much of what is going right in the world.”

If you happen to be in Santa Barbara on August 15, 2010, please consider coming to a special book signing at Chaucer’s Bookstore from 3:00-5:00 p.m. I’ll be joined by fellow contributors Noah benShea, Barbara Fields, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and C. Jean Wiedemann. Chaucer’s is generously donating 10 percent of the proceeds to the nonprofits of the contributors.

Five of the people featured in William Murtha's "100 Words: Two Hundred Visionaries Share Their Hope for the Future" appeared at a book signing at Chaucer's Bookstore in Santa Barbara, California, on August 15, 2010. From left to right: Scott London, Barbara Fields, Noah benShea, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Jean Wiedemann. (Photo by Alka Arora.)

Links and further information

• “Sharing Their Hope” by Karna Hughes, Santa Barbara News-Press, August 15, 2010
• Additional photos from the book signing at Chaucer’s Books in Santa Barbara
• Five Books I Love — A blog entry about the 5 titles I selected for 100 Words
• Order 100 Words from Amazon.com