The Susan Boyle Phenomenon

Posted on April 29, 2009 by zoeweil

I’ve been curious, delighted, and dismayed by the media response to Susan Boyle’s instant notoriety after performing on Britain’s Got Talent. Her performance has generated over 60 million views on YouTube, , and she’s become the new singing sensation. But most of the conversation has been around her appearance. Even Talk of the Nation, a radio show that usually covers meaningful issues, devoted a segment to her looks. Recently, the New York Times had an article analyzing the reasons why her looks are such a topic and assessing stereotypes and human psychology. At least now we’re delving into the phenomenon, rather than taking part in Boyle-bashing based on looks.

My curiosity revolved around the speed at which one woman’s unlikely success became an international phenomenon. As someone who’s trying to gain media attention for efforts in humane education and the MOGO principle, and who has come to realize just how difficult this is, it’s remarkable to watch what can happen when someone becomes a media sensation overnight.

My delight revolved around Susan Boyle’s success based on talent, not on beauty, wealth, youth, or whom she knew.

My dismay revolved around the overwhelming focus on her appearance, including the specificity of the critique. There was an inordinate amount of attention paid to her frizzy, greying hair and bushy eyebrows, which infuriated me. She is being criticized for leaving the hair that grows on her body alone, instead of buying products to change it and removing parts of it to meet conventional standards of beauty. Listening to a debate on the media about what sorts of makeover would be appropriate, I found myself alternately shifting from outrage to wonderment. Is this really what we care about? Is this really the topic of the day? With all the pressing issues of our time, we readily turn our attention to the grotesquely unimportant: Susan Boyle’s physical appearance and what she should do about it.

I keep wondering what we could do to generate this kind of attention for humane education and MOGO living. Every idea that could generate media attention seems ridiculously gimmicky and lacking in integrity. So dear readers of this blog, any suggestions for creating a media phenomenon for MOGO?

~Zoe

Image courtesy of ITV.

Filed under: Cultural Issues, media literacy, MOGO (Most Good), news media, values | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Let’s Embrace MOGO Living as Quickly as We Adjust to New Technologies

Posted on April 27, 2009 by zoeweil

During my current 13-day book tour (I’m writing this on day 6), I’ve relied heavily on relatively new technologies: email and a GPS accessible on my cell phone, for example. In six days I have slept in six beds and traveled 750 miles to many different locations. I have supplemented my GPS with Mapquest, MSN and Google Maps, just to be certain that, if the GPS loses signal, I’ll still be able to get to my daily new destinations. These technologies are a few years old. For decades I’ve been getting to new places by carefully writing down directions and using a map. No longer. I don’t even have maps of the areas I’m traveling to on this tour in my car. Instead, a little device tells me where to turn, and if I fail to do so, it calmly recalibrates and tells me how to rectify (usually to make a legal U-turn as soon as possible).

I was amazed by GPS technology for about 10 seconds. I was amazed by Mapquest for even less time than that. I adjusted to these new technologies so readily that I became irritated by their failures almost immediately. What do you mean you don’t get a GPS signal in this area?! Why is the Mapquest mileage off by .5 mile?!

When I watch the YouTube video “Did you Know?” or witness the next generation’s ability to utilize technologies so quickly without ever being taught, and when I pause to consider what is happening inside our brains, I marvel at our capacity for adaptation — even at the impressive speed of current changes. And, I marvel at our just as quick failure to adjust back, if our technologies fail us. To clothe and feed and shelter and warm and cool ourselves without the perks of civilization’s ever-increasing technologies. Our capacity for rapid adjustment is extraordinary. Our capacity to readjust when technologies fail less so.

But the truth is that it’s time to rapidly adjust to new ideas of sustainable living, to paradigm shifts about what education is for, to the MOGO principle, not just to new technologies. If we can embrace new technologies with barely a notice, we can embrace a new perspective on living that puts conscious choicemaking and engaged changemaking for a better world at the forefront of our behaviors and goals.

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of Rotorhead.

Filed under: MOGO (Most Good), systemic change, technology | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

That’s the Funny Thing About Judgments and Assumptions…

Posted on April 24, 2009 by zoeweil

This past weekend I led a MOGO Workshop at Bard College. My car had broken down the night before, and so I borrowed my niece’s SUV to drive to the workshop from my brother’s house ninety minutes away. I begin MOGO workshops by exploring assumptions and judgments. I ask participants their impressions and assumptions about me carrying different bags: a Tiffany & Co. bag, a Victoria’s Secret bag, and a WalMart bag. The judgments fly. I’m alternately told I’m rich and vain, sexy and slutty, and poor and (believe it or not) evil — and lots in between. This particular workshop, I had the opportunity to ask the audience what they thought of me when I told them that I drove an SUV there. I asked them to be honest. Some were clearly disturbed. What sort of hypocrite was leading a MOGO workshop and driving an SUV? Others, wanting to like me (after all, they’d just paid money to learn from me!), tried to give me the benefit of the doubt. Maybe because my drive from Maine was so long, and because there was so much to bring to the workshop, I needed the big gas guzzler, one participant offered kindly. MOGO wasn’t about being perfect one lovely young woman reassured me and the audience.

There was clearly a sense of relief when I revealed that my car had broken down and I’d borrowed the SUV. One high school girl exclaimed, “I knew it!”

Funny about our judgments.

And so I asked the group to park their judgments and assumptions at the door, and to assume just one thing: that everyone in the room had something to teach them and that they had something to teach everyone in the room. I’m confident this proved true.

~Zoe

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The Humane Educator’s Paradox

Posted on April 22, 2009 by zoeweil

It’s painful to learn about the terrible injustices and cruelties in the world. Sometimes, the more we know, the more hopeless we become. Even when we also learn about the great courage, generosity, wisdom, and dedication of countless changemakers, even when we see success in their efforts to create new systems that solve the great challenges of our time, we can still become despondent in the face of persistent exploitation, destruction, and oppression.

The question “How can we choose to know and still maintain hope in the face of ghastly atrocities?” is a seminal one for humane educators and reflects a paradox that is difficult to resolve. We must know in order to create positive change. Knowing leads to what Buddhists call “right action” and Jews call “tikkun olam” (repairing the world), but it can also to lead to rage, depression, fear, and violence, and even, paradoxically, to apathy when we simply cannot absorb or care about so much.

Most of us know angry activists who turn off more people than they turn on, whose actions are counter productive, who fail to model the peace and compassion they seek to create in the world. These people “know” but their “knowing” actually inhibits their successful changemaking.

And most of us also know activists who tirelessly create healthy change while inspiring others. What is the key to their success? How do they both know and radiate kindness, acceptance, patience, and openness? I believe that most such changemakers find a practice that grounds them, as well as outlets for experiencing joy and inner peace. They may spend time in the natural world, or meditate, or read inspiring works, or find strength from their religious beliefs, or gather with friends to laugh and play. They self reflect, they revel in all that is good, they acknowledge their own sadness and frustration as worthy emotions, and they persevere in cultivating their own best qualities.

Humane educators must not only cultivate all this within themselves, but also in the students we teach. If we create a generation full of despair, rather than a generation enthusiastic to play their part in creating change, we will have failed. If, however, we honor our students’ sorrow, fear, and anger and help them transform these emotions into “right action” we will have created a generation that can embrace the humane educator’s paradox and move toward the unfolding of a better world.

~ Zoe

(Since I’m currently on tour: a repost from 6/2/08.)

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Peter Barnes’ Ideas Go to Washington

Posted on April 21, 2009 by zoeweil

In a recent Washington Post article, the ideas of Peter Barnes, author of Capitalism 3.0, may finally gain some ground in Washington. Capitalism 3.0 offers solutions to the problems that free market capitalism creates, and now Barnes has specific suggestions for addressing climate change that will help solve the problem while putting money in the pockets of those who conserve. Read it here.

~ Zoe

Filed under: changemakers, global warming, systemic change, U.S. policy | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

There Are No MOGO Experts

Posted on April 20, 2009 by zoeweil

I was recently asked for my opinion on an ethical quandary facing a friend of a friend. I was asked because I was perceived as somewhat of an expert on ethical issues due to my role as a humane educator, president of the Institute for Humane Education, and a writer about MOGO choices. I was surprised that someone would consider my opinion on an ethical matter more valuable than someone else’s, though, and when I took the ethical issue in question to our staff, a group of people whose moral compasses I admire immensely, we were pretty much split on it. So much for expertise.

I’ve always been bemused when an ethical issue arises in our culture, and the media call in an ethicist to offer an expert opinion. I don’t generally find such opinions to be more valid than my own or others’ perspectives. People’s opinions on ethical matters differ not because someone has studied philosophy while another has not, but because ethical decisions are often highly complicated as well as steeped in personal values, experiences, and beliefs.

This does not mean that I don’t think ethics is an important subject to study, nor that I would do away with ethicists. My life was radically shifted in 1984 by philosopher-ethicist Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation, in which he lays out not only the cruelties perpetrated on animals but also the philosophical reasons for desisting in such cruelty and exploitation. The MOGO principle stems from what I learned from Professor Singer almost 25 years ago, and my own career as a humane educator is ethically driven and ethically informed. I teach people to consider what is right and good, which is a large part of what it means to be a humane educator. But I believe that ethicists are not experts. Rather, they’re deeply engaged seekers of ethical truths for a better world. Instead of looking to ethicists, each of us must commit to becoming an ethicist for our own lives and choices. Of course we can and should ask people we respect for their opinions on ethical matters, but it’s ultimately up to us to make MOGO choices through our own commitment to inquiry, introspection, and integrity – the 3 I’s I refer to regularly in this blog.

Does this mean that MOGO is always relative, that there are no right and wrong answers to ethical questions, and that whatever you personally decide is right? No. Many ethical questions are pretty clear, and moral relativism is often simply a way of justifying harmful decisions. But many choices are complex, especially when taking into consideration not only yourself and your family but also all people, all species, and the earth itself, and these require our commitment to MOGO. We won’t be experts, and we won’t always make MOGO choices, but the more we hold MOGO as an ideal toward which to strive, the more we will slowly but surely choose MOGO as a matter of course.

~ Zoe

(Since I’m currently on tour: a repost from 5/1/08.)

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Zoe’s Book Tour Schedule

Posted on April 17, 2009 by zoeweil

Between April 16-28 I will be traveling to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to speak about MOGO and my new book, Most Good, Least Harm. Below is the schedule for events that are open to the public (for more details see IHE’s Events page):

  • April 19, 9:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. – MOGO Workshop, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
  • April 20, 7:30 p.m. – Oasis Café, Long Valley, NJ, MOGO presentation and book signing
  • April 21, 6:30 p.m. – Runnemede, NJ, presentation and booksigning
  • April 23, 6:00 p.m. – Western Connecticut State University, Student Center Theater, Danbury, CT, MOGO presentation
  • April 26, 2-4 p.m. – Animal Haven, Manhattan, NY, Free Mini-MOGO workshop for activists

~ Zoe

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Tweenbots: Another Sign of Hope for Humanity

Posted on April 15, 2009 by zoeweil

One of the graduates of our Humane Education Certificate Program sent me this link to Tweenbots. Take a look.

Recently, I’ve found myself absorbed in thinking about the Milgram Experiments, conducted in the 1960s at Yale University, in which ordinary men and women were willing to administer electric shocks – up to 450 volts – to a fellow participant in a study on learning (or so they thought; the test was really about obedience to authority, and no shocks were actually administered). Prior to the study, 14 senior Yale psychology students were asked what percentage of people they thought would administer the maximum voltage. The average of their guesses was 1.2%. This was far, far different from what transpired. In the experiments, nearly two thirds of participants were willing to administer the maximum voltage, thinking they were harming — and possibly killing — their compatriot. Even psychology students, less than 20 years after the Holocaust, could not predict humanity’s enormous capacity for harm and cruelty.

Then along comes something as simple as Tweenbots, and I’m reminded of humanity’s equally great capacity for kindness – even kindness to a robot.

If only we could crack this nut – figure out what forces conspire to lead us to acts of altruism, heroism, and simple kindness and what ignites such events as the genocide in Rwanda, or the everyday exploitation of millions of people who are enslaved around the world.

As a humane educator, I believe that if we give youth the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be positive choicemakers and changemakers for good, then we will shift societal systems that are cruel and destructive towards ones that are healthy and sustainable. This is an act of faith. When I teach courses, I make sure that my students learn about the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments. I want them to understand what we humans – and they themselves – are capable of, so they can shield against such obedience to systems that are designed to be destructive or cruel. I also teach them about acts of goodness and about changemakers who make a profound difference in the world.

But now I will add the Tweenbots – not because this little experiment reveals the best in us, but because it demonstrates very ordinary kindness and desire to be helpful, when it matters not a whit, yet still inspires our care. And because it’s a light and joyful little example of simple virtue, and makes us each a little more likely – I hope – to do good.

~ Zoe

Image copyright Kacie Kinzer.

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New: Most Good, Least Harm Reading Group Discussion Guide

Posted on April 14, 2009 by zoeweil

We wanted to let you know that there is now a reading group discussion guide for Zoe’s book, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life.

Here are the first 4 questions, to give you a sneak peek:

1.    How do you feel about the concepts, information and suggestions you learned about in Most Good, Least Harm? How have they changed the way you look at the world? Which concepts or suggestions did you find yourself most drawn to? Which did you find most challenging?

2.    The primary premise of Most Good, Least Harm is that “When we do the most good and the least harm through our daily choices, our acts of citizenship, our communities, our work, our volunteerism, and our interactions, we create inner and outer peace.” What’s your reaction to this concept? Talk about a time when you have helped create inner and outer peace.

3.    In Key 1, “Live Your Epitaph,” Weil describes a future scenario in which a child asks you what role you played in helping create a humane world. What would you want your answer to be? How much have you thought about the impact of your life on other people? On the planet? On animals? On the future?

4.    Many books on sustainable, green or healthy living have focused on individual actions. Others focus on policy changes. Weil states that both are vital ingredients for real and lasting change. Do you share her perspective? Why or why not?

You can view the entire guide online, or download it as a PDF file.

(Posted by Marsha Rakestraw, IHE’s Web Content/Community Manager.)

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What Happens When We Pay Attention?

Posted on April 13, 2009 by zoeweil

Visit: http://www.sicklesinsight.com/experimental-psychology-human-perception/ and watch the video. Make sure that you do not read the information below the video until after you have followed the instructions carefully. And don’t read the rest of this blog post until you’ve done the above, too. Then come back and read the rest.

——————————————–

When we bring our attention to something specific and concentrate very hard, we miss all sorts of things – even big things – as the experiment above reveals. There are so many ways in which our attention is diverted, and so we constantly miss the gorilla in the room. Whether it is diverted by fear-mongering, or images of success that are unsustainable and destructive (but which sway us as they simultaneously create anxiety), or what is happening in our immediate lives that distracts us from the greater world — or, conversely, what is happening in the greater world that distracts us from our immediate lives — where we put our attention largely determines what we believe and how we behave.

Intense focus on a narrow subject is often good and useful, but not if we become unable to shift our focus and expand its range.

Because I’m committed to the spread of humane education, I’ll “attend” to that subject in this post, near and dear to my heart as it is. What are our students typically asked to attend to? Where is their attention? It’s on the details necessary to pass mostly multiple choice, standardized tests in various subjects. It’s on sports. It’s not on how we can live sustainably on this planet, or peacefully, or humanely. It’s not on the role we can and should play to solve our challenges and create a thriving, healthy world for all. It’s not on getting along.

If our schools asked our youth to pay attention to what makes them most enthusiastic and engaged, or to what they most care about, or to the fixable problems we face, or even to what we’ve actually learned from history (as opposed to the names and dates of battles), we might actually start attending to what so desperately needs our attention. We would see the most important gorillas.

~ Zoe

Filed under: Cultural Issues, education, humane education, systemic change, values | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

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