Filling the Bathtub One Drop at a Time: Small Choices Matter

Posted on August 1, 2011 by zoeweil

I came upon this quote by Gil Fronsdal some time ago and tucked it away in a list of quotes I keep:

“Just as drops of water will eventually fill a bathtub, so the accumulation of small choices shapes who we are.”

It’s easy to dismiss the power of small choices. In the scheme of things, what difference does it make if you use a disposable bag at the supermarket or buy a cup of non-organic, non-fair trade, non-shade grown coffee in a Styrofoam cup, or eat a hamburger or chicken leg, or buy a new cell phone? No number of compact fluorescent light bulbs is going to save the world, and with all the problems we face, it’s easy to decide that our every day choices don’t much matter.

And really, if all a conscientious, compassionate person were to do was focus on small everyday choices to ensure they were as MOGO (most good) as possible, the good that would come from this might well pale in comparison to the work of an inventor who creates a solution to an entrenched systemic problem, or an activist who changes a system, or a lawmaker who bans a type of cruelty, even if that inventor or activist or lawmaker made a host of less-than-MOGO small choices each and every day.

Which is why I’m always advocating a both-and approach to changemaking: model your message by making conscious and caring personal choices AND work for systemic change. But Fronsdal’s quote struck me as a new lens with which to view the power of our every day choices. The accumulation of our small choices, how we treat others each and every day (others being not simply those with whom we interact personally, but also those people and animals whose lives we affect through our daily food, clothing, and product choices) adds up. These are the choices that largely define who we become over a lifetime. They matter.

So let’s try to remember each drop of water we are adding to the bathtub that comprises our life and choose it with respect and kindness.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of missmoney via Creative Commons.

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Affluence and Affluenza

Posted on July 13, 2011 by zoeweil

The film and book, Affluenza, explores the mostly modern condition of relentless consumerism, debt, yearning for more, dissatisfaction and sluggishness, and a treadmill life that leaves people feeling empty and stressed simultaneously. In our recent Summer Institute for teachers, high school English teacher, Mark McGonagle, came up with an activity that explored affluenza through a quiz for students whose score determined whether or not they “suffered” from this condition.

A question arose. Is affluence the same as affluenza? The answer is clearly “no,” yet there is sometimes a subtle (and often a not so subtle) judgment by social justice and environmental activists against those who are affluent. It’s true enough that most who are affluent are bigger consumers than those who aren’t. They have larger houses filled with more stuff, more vehicles (and motorboats and sometimes private jets), travel for leisure more often, and so on, contributing to greater environmental destruction than those who do not have these luxuries. They certainly appear to suffer from affluenza. Yet, it’s critical not to lump affluence with affluenza. Having money can be a phenomenal tool for change, and I know people with money who are profoundly generous, live simply, and create substantial systemic change through their donations to social change organizations. This could and perhaps should be the model for affluence.

Most people want to be more affluent, and most want money to buy more stuff. What if we were to transform the image of affluence? Imagine if money were perceived less as a vehicle for luxury and more as a vehicle for the power to create positive change. If we identified those affluent people who have eschewed personal luxury in favor of a deep and abiding commitment to use their wealth for systemic good, we would have models for “compassionate consumerism” that went beyond fair trade, eco-friendly, cruelty-free products and that embraced thrift and simplicity coupled with generosity and philanthropy for a better world for all.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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I Married a Vivisector: Challenging Our Perspectives

Posted on May 4, 2011 by zoeweil

At a recent MOGO (most good) talk at the University of California at Berkeley, I spoke about the most good, least harm principle and how we can put this principle into practice in our lives, consciously and conscientiously. While I can’t remember the context for sharing with the audience the fact that I married a vivisector (someone who conducts experiments on animals), I do remember one member of the audience asking, “How could you?” She did not emphasize the word “could” (as in, “How could you?”), which would have been a bit rude, but rather the word “how” because it so perplexed her that I could date someone (let alone marry him) whose values were so opposed to her own, and presumably to mine, since I was a budding animal rights advocate when I met him.

I shared with the audience that when I met my husband 26 years ago, while I called myself a vegetarian, I actually still ate sea animals. Since he killed about a dozen amphibians a year in his research on vision, and I ate way more sea animals simply to please my tastebuds, I could hardly condemn his work. Ironically, while I still enjoyed going to zoos, because I loved seeing the animals, he told me he didn’t want to go to a place where wild animals were so confined and miserable. Suddenly the seeming disparity between my husband and me because less clear cut. Suddenly the black and white thinking to which so many of us gravitate (myself included at times) became awfully gray. I went on to become vegan and my husband went on to become a veterinarian, giving up his grant and his work as a scientist. People can change.

When we wonder how someone could marry someone seemingly so different in some fundamental way, perhaps it’s time to challenge our assumptions and stretch our thinking. Love is a great tool for seeing the world from another’s perspective, but we can bring this tool to all our interactions and relationships. In Aikido, a martial art which I practice, we are always attempting to blend with our aggressor and see the world from their perspective. It’s a great tool for life, too, enabling each of us to grow in understanding, awareness, and the capacity to evolve in new ways.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

Image courtesy of coba via Creative Commons.

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A Must Read: Half the Sky

Posted on April 4, 2011 by zoeweil

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book, Half the Sky, explores perhaps the most pervasive human rights violation of our time: the horrific abuse of women and girls, primarily in Africa and Asia. It is easy in industrialized and democratic countries to think that the struggle for women’s rights has largely been won, because in many countries, like the U.S., young women are attending college in significantly greater numbers than young men; because girls in affluent and democratic countries grow up believing they can have the same opportunities as boys; and because even though women are still paid less for the same work as men, we are still largely free to achieve the same goals.

We know that women fare worse in other countries, but it is hard to fathom the extent of misogyny and cruelty perpetrated on girls and women, because such information is rarely on the front page of the news. For example, before 9/11, it was generally only feminists who were calling for the ousting of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Had Osama bin Laden not been headquartered in Afghanistan in 2001, it’s doubtful that any action against the Taliban would have been taken, and its oppression of women under its brutal regime would have persisted, with little or no intervention from other countries.

With the publication of Half the Sky, the hidden abuse of women across the globe is no longer quite so hidden. Kristof and WuDunn have written a readable, albeit horrifying, bestseller that is bringing to light the unimaginable exploitation of half the human population. Their powerful book promises to help create real and meaningful change. It already has, and I believe that this book is one of the top three (along with Zeitoun by Dave Eggers and Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer) that people ought to read this year. In its pages readers will be shocked, but left with hope and concrete actions to take.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised that the single biggest avenue for change that Kristof and WuDunn advocate lies in educating girls to free them from poverty and provide them with choices which slowly, but inexorably, diminish their oppression by both their husbands and those who would use and abuse them for profit. While Kristof and WuDunn are talking about education that provides basics (literacy, numeracy and technological knowledge), I couldn’t help but wonder if there was room for humane education. It’s a tricky question. Much of what humane education explores – the interconnected issues of human rights, environmental preservation, and animal protection – would not find fertile ground in schools barely able to provide the basics of reading, writing, and math or in societies where women must ask their husbands if they may leave the house, but in its broad goal of educating a generation of solutionaries, my hope is that humane education can take root even in these schools, so that girls realize their capacity to create positive changes in their own lives, and perhaps systemically in within their societies to the extent that they are able.

My only frustration with what is a phenomenally important book lies in the ways in which the authors undermine the plight of animals, which is so unnecessary in a book that so fully uncovers exploitation and oppression of those without power. For example, when discussing a $9 billion estimate of the amount of money that would be necessary to provide effective interventions for maternal and newborn health for 95% of the world’s population, the authors write that this “pales beside the $40 billion that the world spends annually on pet food….” Of all the things to which to compare aid to women, it is odd to choose pet food, as if providing food for our companion animals is some sort of frivolity at best or moral failure at worst. Why not compare the $9 billion needed to spending on cosmetics or computer games or sports events? If this were the only place where the authors chose to mention animals in a subtly dismissive way, I would not be mentioning it, but it is not. It is my great hope that all forms of oppression, victimization, and exploitation will be seen as morally repugnant, and it’s worth pointing out that tens of millions of dogs and cats are brutalized and killed every year, and that they, too, are worthy of our compassion and care. Still, my small quibble is just that. Kristof and WuDunn have written a book we must read and heed, and I’m profoundly grateful for their courage, commitment, and tremendous effort to bring the plight of women across the globe to light.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Changing Behavior in 1.5 Minutes

Posted on February 18, 2011 by zoeweil

Check out this commercial:

Yes, this is an advertisement. Readers of my blog know the power of advertising. At the Institute for Humane Education we offer free activities for educators to download, and some of these activities focus specifically on learning to analyze ads. Ads are powerful. Even the best critical thinkers often become strangely brainwashed by the messages they receive through commercials.

So what if ads – those extraordinary, brief agents of what some might call manipulation, others mind control, others just “influence” — were deployed for the good? What change could come from them?

You may actually cry during this 1.5 minute ad. You might actually change a simple behavior, or someone you know might. Pass it on.

Zoe Weil, President Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

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Ethics Without Indoctrination

Posted on December 22, 2010 by zoeweil

In an essay entitled “Ethics Without Indoctrination” in a now 20-year-old issue of Educational Leadership, Richard W. Paul writes:

“If we bring ethics into the curriculum – and we should – we must take pains to ensure that we do so in a morally unobjectionable manner. This requires us to distinguish clearly between espousing the universal, general principles of morality shared by people of good will everywhere, and the very different manner of defending any particular application of these principles to actual life situations as conceived from a particular standpoint (liberal, conservative, radical, theistic, nontheistic, American, Russian, and the like.”

This is such an important point, whether written 1,000 years ago, 20 years ago, or 20 years hence, and it represents such a fine line to walk as an educator. Every one of us has a bias. Even if our bias lands us squarely in the mainstream and is perceived as moderate, it is still a bias. None of us is immune to the culture that shapes us, the opinions we hold dear, and the particular ideologies that embody our values in day to day life. It may appear that we have no bias if we find ourselves in the proverbial middle, but this is false. This is why Richard Paul’s quote above is so well-articulated, and so important for educators in general, and for humane educators who teach about the interconnected issues of human rights, animal protection, and environmental preservation in particular.

The universal principles of morality that Paul mentions would include such values as generosity, kindness, compassion, integrity, honesty, courage, perseverance, and wisdom and would exclude such things as cruelty, corruption, exploitation and abuse of others, deception, and so on. But what one person considers cruel may be different from what another considers cruel; and one person’s perception of exploitation may be another person’s perception of opportunity. How can the humane educator – whose goal it is to explore ethical issues, invite positive change, and encourage innovative ideas for a healthy world – balance her own vision of what that world looks like with what a particular student’s differing vision might be? How can the humane educator teach about ethical issues while painstakingly avoiding indoctrination?

Here are some ideas:

  • Choose one of these two approaches: Either be honest about your biases and explain their origin and your thinking OR choose to remain utterly impartial in discussions and encourage students to think critically, whether they are articulating your own position or one that you do not share. My personal approach is to be up front about my biases. The truth is that I am choosing texts that provide a point of view, and not choosing other texts. I may try to “balance” the reading, but there is a bias in my choices. Invite your students to critique you and your choices.
  • Be stalwart in your commitment to require those who share your views to be vigilant in supporting their perspective. And be open, receptive, and ready to learn from good critical thinking that leads to different positions. Further, be willing to being persuaded. Be as ready to change and grow from what you learn from your students as you hope they will be open to changing and growing because of you.
  • Agree on fundamentals. Invite students to generate a list of humanity’s best qualities and narrow these down until your class is in agreement that these are indeed fundamentals. Bring back all discussions about systems to whether and how they uphold these fundamental values. Be prepared for complexity and apparent contradictions. Remember physicist Niels Bohr’s statement that the opposite of a great truth is often a great truth.

All education has the potential to veer into indoctrination, not simply education about ethics. Be vigilant. Our world needs more critical and creative thinkers, not more believers.

Zoe Weil, President of the Institute for Humane Education and author of The Power and Promise of Humane Education and Most Good, Least Harm

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Dive Into Darkness to Uncover the Light

Posted on December 15, 2010 by zoeweil

I love December. Amidst the festivities, the sparkling lights and candles to brighten the darkest month, the singing and celebrating, the craft fairs and concerts, the spirit of generosity (albeit too commercialized, but that’s another blog post), the gatherings with friends and family, there is also another opportunity I relish: the opportunity to dive into myself and reflect upon the year that has passed and the new one before me.

At the Institute for Humane Education, January is when we offer our online course, A Better World, A Meaningful Life, based on my book Most Good, Least Harm. We offer this course in January because it’s a perfect way to begin a new year, providing, as it does, the opportunity to reflect upon one’s deepest values, build community with others who want to align their choices and lives more deeply with what is most important to them, and start the year by putting intentions into action. It takes New Year’s resolutions and grounds them in practice.

In the dark of winter, such a course is a wonderful opportunity to introspect, to inquire about what is most important to us and make our goals real in order to live with greater integrity and purpose. We know many people who not only decide to take this course themselves, but give it as a holiday gift to a friend or family member, creating the chance to share themselves, their values, their vision and their dreams with someone they love.

Here’s to the joyful, meaningful lives we can create for ourselves and the humane and healthy world we can build together. Happy holidays!

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life

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Life Is Short. Stretch Your Boundaries

Posted on October 20, 2010 by zoeweil

This summer my son started CrossFit training, an intensive workout approach that amazed me. I watched one morning as he and a friend set a timer and for 15 minutes did repetitions of the following:

5 pull-ups
10 push-ups
15 sit-ups

After the 15 minutes were over they’d done 45 pull-ups, 90 push-ups and 135 sit-ups. Let’s just say that on a very good day I can do 3 pull-ups in a row, and normally just 1 or 2.

I decided that I wanted to get in shape like that. So I joined a CrossFit class. I try to go once or twice a week, and then practice on my own another one or two times. I’ve been so sore since starting this a few weeks ago. I’ve also been exhausted. But in 15 minutes, I can now do 60 push-ups and 100 sit-ups and 160 squats, and I know that’s just a start. It feels great to be 49 and getting into such good shape.

Yet my friends who are listening to me moan and groan about how sore I am are rightly asking, “Why would you do that?” It’s funny this desire to do things we may dislike for a higher purpose. I had a goal for myself a few years ago to be able to run the mile up our local 900 foot mountain. It took a summer of practice to achieve this goal, and I still do it periodically, although I dislike every minute of it. So why do I do it? It’s not for the endorphins, because I’m so depleted afterward that it hardly feels like an exerciser’s high. It’s for the sense of accomplishment. It’s for the sense of competence. It’s for the sense of personal strength.

In a previous blog post I wrote about providing students with the opportunity to experience such a sense of accomplishment using their minds. It is not always “fun” to push ourselves to our limits, whether physically or mentally. Almost 30 years ago I began reading the book Godel, Escher, Bach. It stretched my mind far beyond its limits, so much so that after just 1 hour of reading I would fall asleep – a rarity for a non-napper like me. I didn’t make it through the whole book, but I felt fantastic about what I did learn and how I stretched my mind to its capacity, even though it exhausted me.

In answer to my friends who want to know why I’m doing CrossFit, I’m doing it because I want to stretch myself to achieve all of what I’m capable of achieving, physically and mentally. Life is short. I want to reach my potential.

Zoe Weil, author of Most Good, Least Harm

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Soap in Plastic?

Posted on October 1, 2010 by zoeweil

The simple bar of soap is becoming a relic. I remember when I first encountered liquid soap in a plastic container. It’s possible I uttered an audible moan. Of all things to package in plastic, this seemed preposterous. A bar of soap is a perfectly good means for washing; it does not need to be improved upon one bit. And it’s aesthetically pleasing: it looks good, feels good, and smells good. All this pleasure is lost with liquid or foaming soap in a plastic container. Plus, bars of soap leave no waste. When they are done, they are gone. Nothing to dispose of or recycle, freeing that little bit of time for a longer bath perhaps.

Yet, despite my prediction that few would ride this silly bandwagon, I see more and more people buying liquid (or now “foaming”) soap for their bathrooms. Meanwhile, in almost every community, there are local soapmakers producing lovely fragrant soaps, ready to be sensuously appreciated by those who would resist the marketing of more unnecessary plastic. Perhaps those of us real soap aficionados should make these our stocking stuffers this year during the holidays.

For an anestically clean world,

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life

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Environmental Responsibility — An Epic Pain in the Ass?

Posted on September 22, 2010 by zoeweil

I just read an excellent essay by J.B. MacKinnon, “In an Age of Eco-uncertainty,” reprinted in Utne Reader. MacKinnon begins: “Environmental responsibility, of late, is an increasingly epic-scale pain in the ass….” She goes on to say, “… every possible choice from diapers to cremation is overwhelmed by conflicting information about what’s better or worse for Spaceship Earth. That sound you hear? That’s every ounce of fun being sucked out of your life.”

I just laughed. MacKinnon is spot on and doesn’t hold back when describing “eco-douchebags,” those people whose holier-than-thou judgmentalness crushes every last speck of both blessed denial and even more blessed joy. But while naming the huge challenges we face in choosing accountability (as MacKinnon would say) or MOGO (most good), which I address in my book, Most Good, Least Harm, MacKinnon does not let us off the hook.

Doing nothing is not an option even as we struggle to decide what somethings are worthy of our time and energy and refuse to become self-righteous as we diligently research and strive for the accountability we wish everyone would embrace. Her rule of thumb for choosing which somethings to do? Those that feel like an adventure. That’s a nice alternative to epic-scale pain in the ass.

Zoe Weil

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