Power of Unity - Martijn Kersten
Two nations. Two protests. Two disparate causes. Yet the pictures were strangely similar. In India, a protest was staged by students at Jantar Mantar regarding examinations. In Nepal, a protest was started by the youth due to an imposed ban on social media use; however, the movement quickly expanded to include issues of governance and corruption.
Neither began with large numbers. Both protests started with individuals feeling the need to speak up. However, when one individual's frustration is shared by another, the personal becomes political. An individual becomes a dialogue. A dialogue becomes a collective force.
And here enters the relevance of Martijn Kersten's TEDx talk titled "The Power of Unity". In his speech, Kersten explains how people can go from simply gathering to being united. His theory is based on alignment along three points: purpose, vision and thoughts. Merely being present in the same space is not enough.
Purpose gives people the cause to come together. Vision gives people a goal. Once people start to align their thoughts and actions for it, the resulting collective strength is much larger than that of individual components.
The aforementioned Indian and Nepali protests are excellent examples of such a process. While students involved in the movement did not necessarily have the same experience and the same opinion, the thing which united them was a single reason to join forces. "This is happening to me" became "this is happening to us".
While social media could be what helped them come together, it was a shared purpose which made their actions collective.
Perhaps the power of unity lies precisely in that: not in making people think alike but providing enough commonality to give different people the reason to move together.
People are in the same space. United people are in the same direction.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu
Credits
Isha Goel
2026-2028
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