Quote of the Week: Robert Kennedy’s ripples of hope
From a wall in the John F. Kennedy Museum:
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy, June 6 1966 (South Africa address)
Ecological Footprint for One Planet
One of the best efforts I have seen at explaining the way we are consuming and living beyond sustainability in this world comes from The Global Footprint Network. At the Skoll World Forum a couple weeks ago, Mathis Wackernagel handed me a business-card sized brochure that very poignantly and clearly explains how consumption in the developed and oil-producing world is depleting our globe in measurably dangerous ways. You should visit the page tracking human development growth and related ecological footprint growth. Their solution, not easy to implement but succintly showing the only way forward, is to aim for sustainable human development.
You can take a quiz to establish and track your own human footprint.
Big theories and little details
It’s rare, but once in a while you feel vindicated for the bad habit of keeping old newspapers around to catch up. This very good piece by Lee Siegel was worth it. It weaves economic, political and social theories to provide a 30,000 foot view of the sense and senselessness of unifying and decoding humankind’s journey.
Unsustainable Living meets Artificial Economy
Tom Friedman wrote a provocative article about how we have been living our lives and running our economy at the expense of the next generations - and how the environment and the planet will not bail us out.
Peter Thum, the co-founder of Ethos Water (later sold to Starbucks) and I had a conversation a couple weeks along these lines - about how successful new business models will strive to ensure retail, food, entertainment gifts and consumption are sustainable.
The advent of the internet and related electronic worlds and virtual worlds could theoretically provide some clues here - except for the sobering fact that a lot of these seemingly cost-free worlds and avatars actually cost a ton in terms of energy/electricity, storage, etc. Whoever decodes this will make a huge contribution…
Herd Mentality on Cap and Trade
Thank goodness Ben Stein is an independent thinker who can elucidate why exuberant enthusiasm over a cap-and-trade system is misguided and dangerous. I am afraid we are condemned to this inefficient dreamed artifice, whereas straight taxation of emissions would be far more effective.
Peaceful baby
His face is so calm
Full of love and tranquility
How blessed we are
to have warm shelter and peace for him.
How hard and how painful
for the millions upon millions
who lack peace, or water or heat,
who may not have bread or milk to give their children.
How hard and how painful
for the parents who’d lose a baby to a missile
or the babies who’d lose a parent to a bomb
and the nations who’d lose their innocence along the way.
That juxtaposition gives me anxiety:
the peaceful nap of our little baby
against the horrors and hatred brewing around our world,
whether a few blocks up, or 7,000 miles away.
For my baby’s peace cannot be guaranteed
his Spring cannot be counted upon
so long as babies anywhere else in our globe
are suffering, being targeted or killed.
It is for our baby here
that peace must be waged there.
This is the Hour
Susan Collin Marks, a dear friend and John Marks’ partner at Search for Common Ground, sent a beautiful note to baby Roman when he was born last December (which also explains why I have not gotten a chance to blog for a while - and may have less in the future also). It is worth sharing:
Welcome dear Roman. I am so grateful to you for coming to our planet at this critical time in the development of human consciousness. I know your lineage through your mother and father so I know that you bring purpose and love. I will know of you as you grow. Meantime, you are small … this is what the great Persian poet and mystic Rumi has to say about that.
I am so small I can barely be seen
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small,
But they see enormous things.
You will soon grow into your eyes, and see this amazing world in all its beauty and difficulty. Here is what we are being called to do, and what you may want to remember when you are old enough to choose your life:
We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour
And there are things to be considered.
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in the right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our head above the water.
See who is in there with you and Celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all ourselves.
For the moment that we do,
Our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over, Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration.
"We are the ones we’ve been waiting for…"
The Elders, Hopi Nati
Quote of the Week: Anne Frank and the Power of One
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
- Anne Frank
Glasshouse Forum Fosters Enlightened Capitalism
I just learned from Daniel Sachs about this think tank - the Glasshouse Forum - to encourage serious thinking towards a more enlightened version of capitalism, one that reflects on the dangers of rampant consumerism (same which we can now witness more clearly with the current financial crisis, not to mention related environmental consequences from consumerism) and related problems like short-term financial objectives and behavior, as well as the impact of globalization on the middle class.
A couple of provocative thoughts about the studies they are setting out on:
…the fact that capitalism is a necessary basis for a free society does not mean that it is a sufficient basis.
…There are tendencies within capitalism itself which cause it to saw off the branch on which it itself is sitting. (ie, the reduction of the Middle class and its buying power)
Capitalism has constantly to stimulate our desires and encourage us to want to satisfy them immediately. This stimulates an infantile character, whose attitude to life can be summed up in three words: I. Everything. Immediately.
[Under unfettered capitalism], Is it our duty to consume more and more in order to keep the economy going, even if we then as households live above our means? While we are focusing on the bubbles in the financial markets – sub-prime, asset-backed securities and others – the largest bubble in terms of long-term impact is the consumption bubble. At some point, the Western world will come into a period of considerably lower consumption levels. This is a structural change that will obviously have a dramatic impact on retail and consumer goods companies as well as on advertising, media and ultimately on our standard of living. Can we cope with such a development?
Has the time come for not-Only-for-Profit models like PeaceWorks to become the rule rather than the exception not just in business but in our economic structures and frameworks?
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