The experiments, conducted over a period of 3 years, deceived Harvard students and subjected them to severe stress and cruelty. At one point in the experiments, students were asked to write an autobiography and detail very personal accounts related to their sexuality, toilet training, and other intimate experiences. They were told they’d be meeting with another student, who had also written an autobiography, to discuss their various experiences. Instead, they were placed in brightly lit interrogation rooms, hooked to electrodes to monitor their responses, filmed through a one-way mirror — from which they were being observed — and then ridiculed, humiliated, insulted and victimized by an older stooge, not a peer as they were expecting. They were later required to watch the videos of themselves undergoing this humiliation and trauma.

Ted Kaczynski was one of the students in these experiments, and although he wouldn’t talk about them with Chase, it turns out that he had a huge negative response, according to the monitors of his stress levels. Chase explores whether these experiments influenced Kaczynski such that he became more predisposed to carry out his murders as the Unabomber.

When I heard about these experiments, and after getting over my shock that they were ever conducted, I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened had a different experiment been performed. In one of the experiments Murray did, the students wrote their life philosophies. What if an experimenter asked students to write a combination autobiography, personal philosophy and goals for their lives and a “stooge” validated their ideas and encouraged their interests and supported their goals, and rather than humiliate them, extolled their virtues. What if they went over the top in the other direction? I’m not suggesting that this would be a good thing to do, but I wonder what the result would be. What might the students do with such praise and validation? Who might they become? How might Ted Kaczynski’s life have been different had this been the experimental protocol conducted over three years? And lastly, where are the social psychology experiments that seek to bring out the best in people so that we can learn how better to foster compassion, courage, honesty and integrity for a healthier world?

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

Image courtesy of myguerrilla via Creative Commons.

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I’m what you might call a reactive person. Zero to one hundred in a split second. I don’t know how to stop my reactive nature, but I do know that I can consciously choose not to act upon my immediate reactions. In other words, if my heart races as adrenalin rushes through me; if my brain has generated immediate, but unwise words; if my body is in flight or fight mode, I can still, albeit with enormous effort, refuse to indulge my reactions and pause long enough to follow Mary Pat’s good advice.

There will always be others who enrage us; who hurt us; who cause us great fear and consternation. But to have integrity, to be true to our deepest values, we must remind ourselves again and again that no matter what another does or what behavior incenses us, we and only we are responsible for our actions and our words. Unless we have been imprisoned or live under a dictatorship (or, as women, under some patriarchal strangleholds), we adults should blame no one else for our actions. We can seek to understand the ways in which we don’t live with full integrity, courage, or honesty. We can look to cultural norms and unhealthy systems that influence us, but as soon as we say or do things that defy our own values, we must look nowhere but in the mirror.

Imagine how your life and those you impact would improve if you were to let no one else decide how you would act, but instead acted based on what you believe and value with your most deepest and fervent effort.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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While it is true that there are systemic and situational forces at play that influence our behavior, as revealed powerfully by Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment and described in his book, The Lucifer Effect, it is also true that not all people do nothing. Not everyone is apathetic, cowardly, or lacks empathy in situations that have the potential to bring out these qualities. In this recent example, the story only begins when Hugo Tale-Yax chooses to risk his life to help another. That twenty people walked by and did nothing (one even snapping a picture!) to help him as he lay bleeding on the sidewalk, should be a wake up call.

We are all susceptible to the bystander effect, and we must be vigilant about cultivating and nourishing our own empathy so that when our time comes to act, we will be ready. We won’t have allowed cultural norms, peer pressures, creeping inertia and apathy, situations and systems that push us toward inaction, or the deadening of our sensitivity to violence, to eclipse our values.

As the late Howard Zinn wrote:

“People are practical. They want change but feel powerless, alone, do not want to be the blade of grass that sticks up above the others and is cut down. They wait for a sign from someone else who will make the first move, or the second. And at certain times in history, there are intrepid people who take the risk that if they make that first move others will follow quickly enough to prevent their being cut down. And if we understand this, we might make that first move.”

Hugo Tale-Yax was a good Samaritan who needed others. He might have lived if only one of those people walking by him had stopped to help. Can’t each of us do such a small thing?

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind and Claude and Medea, Moonbeam gold medal winner for juvenile fiction about young heroes

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“There are myriad systems that need transformation: food production, electronics production, energy, schooling, conflict resolution (can’t we come up with an alternative to war?!), architecture, suburban sprawl, transportation, and so on. Even if our individual daily choices do have a positive impact, that isn’t enough to fully transform unsustainable, destructive, and inhumane systems into ones that are restorative, healthy, and just.

But here’s the great news: when we not only harness our energies toward making healthy daily choices, but also uncover our most creative and viable solutions to solve systemic problems, we discover that we have never felt more alive, joyful, and purposeful.”

Read the complete post, leave your comments & please share it with others!

(Posted by IHE staff.)

I recently had the great honor and joy of being the first Morton Series Lecturer on individual responsibility at the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee (FUSM), and below you’ll find a copy of what I shared at the services on April 25.

Last week I read Erik Reece’s essay, “In the Presence of Rock and Sky” in the April issue of The Sun magazine. Reece is a writer and environmental advocate who has written about strip mining in the Appalachians, and in this essay he shares his experience in Norway, the land of his ancestors. He explores Norwegian cultural perspectives, extolling Norwegian virtues of modesty, humility, and environmental stewardship. When he contrasts Norwegian values with the atrophy of empathy in our culture, he shares the following personal story which I’m going to quote in full:

“One morning a few years ago, on a visit to New York City, I was trying to navigate the subway when a train approached my platform. A throng of businesspeople rushed from it, and in that mad dash someone’s careless foot came down on the slender white cane of a blind man, breaking it. He fell to the concrete and reached furiously around for the remnants of his shattered cane. No one, including me, stopped to help him. ‘Do I have all the pieces?’ he cried out. Bystanders showed no sign of listening. I stood there, paralyzed. Whydidn’t I do something? Why didn’t anybody else? Had we all inoculated ourselves against such daily pathos? Would I be embarrassed in front of these New Yorkers, to be seen helping this man – embarrassed by my empathy? Finally a man in a yarmulke stooped to gather up the scattered sections of the blind man’s cane, then helped him up the stairs to the street. And that simple act stung me with a shame I carried for days.”

When I read this paragraph I was honestly stunned. First of all, I grew up in New York City, and New Yorkers are not, despite our reputations, callous, unfriendly, unhelpful people. In fact, when my mother took a fall a couple of years ago, within moments two people had come to her aid. Sure, there are nasty New Yorkers, and sure the “bystander effect,” in which the likelihood of helping another declines as the number of witnesses rises, influences whether we’ll come to someone’s aid, but it is astounding to me that Reece observed so fully the details of this blind man’s fall, from the stepping on the cane, to his cries for help, to the lack of response, to the final denouement when Reece watches a man in a yarmulke lead the blind man up the stairs and to the street and yet Reece still did nothing. Apparently, he was not among those rushing to get on the subway himself or he would not have been able to observe all this and in such vivid detail. No, he just watched. And then felt a shame he, quote, “carried for days.”

It’s hard for me to imagine someone carrying such shame for only days. I like to think that a person who did nothing as a blind man fell before their eyes after his cane had been broken by a careless passerby (whether or not he cried for help) would feel some shame for the rest of their life – not a destructive shame but an instructive shame that helps to transform them. I like to think that like Reece, they would seek to understand their lack of response and wonder about the ways in which their culture molded them into a person who fails to help another in distress, but I would hope that they wouldn’t generalize to the degree Reece did, elevating Norway and decrying America’s loss of empathy and simply stop there. After all, the bystander effect, in full force in Reece’s subway story, could happen in Oslo, too. Even in his essay, Reece shares the response of a Norwegian man (with whom he says he does some U.S.-bashing) to Norway’s low crime rate and the Norwegian responds, “We don’t have that many people here. If we had as many people as you do in America, we’d have a lot of crazies, too.”

No, I think there is different lesson here, one Reece neglected to explore. When we only blame our culture for our behavior, we implicitly fail to take responsibility for ourselves and our choices. The truth is that while the systems around us powerfully affect our behavior and choices, we are still responsible for our choices, and we are also responsible for our efforts to transform inhumane or destructive systems to the best of our ability.

In the story, “The Emperor and the Seed,” that Kim shared, we meet the character Ling, a boy who demonstrates perseverance by never giving up on the seed the emperor bestowed upon him; honesty by not planting a new seed like the other children, and courage by bringing his bare pot to the emperor’s gathering, ready to face ridicule by his peers and possible anger and grave disappointment from the emperor. Ling has grown up in the same culture as his peers, with children who quickly resorted to deceit, but if deception is a cultural norm, Ling will have none of it. No, Ling takes responsibility for himself and his actions and in doing so embodies several of the best qualities of human beings. The wise emperor recognizes that leadership requires that we are virtuous, true to our values and beliefs, committed to our own integrity. Thus, Ling’s great virtue brings him great power.

I have come to believe that when we consciously put our deepest values into practice in our lives, embodying them through our daily choices and interactions as well as our acts of citizenship, our work, and our efforts at transforming unjust, unsustainable and inhumane systems into ones that are peaceful and restorative, we become more powerful than we may ever have imagined. We may not become emperors like Ling, but we become effective changemakers for whom meaning, purpose and joy are daily experiences. We become agents of our lives instead of cowardly or apathetic bystanders.

I don’t need to describe the world’s grave threats and problems to you. Most Unitarians are aware of such challenges as global warming, genocide, escalating worldwide slavery, institutionalized animal cruelty, habitat destruction and extinction of species, lack of access to clean water, poverty, and so on. You didn’t come to church today to hear a litany of woes. But I suspect that many, if not most of you, are deeply concerned about these issues, and that for some of you, they may bring dark nights of the soul, may take you to the edge of despair, may bring such fear for your children and grandchildren’s future that instead of feeling empowered to make a difference, you may become too despondent to act.

And so here’s my good news, the news that I hope will stir your soul, inspire your good works, enliven your spirit, help bring about solutions to our challenges, and, simultaneously, bring you a large measure of inner peace:

What you do matters. You, acting from your values and using your talents, can make a difference, and when you choose to do this, you will likely find, as Joan Baez put it so beautifully, that “Action is the antidote to despair,” a beautiful win-win in which your effort brings about positive change for others while powerfully enriching your own life.

Let me give you some examples of individuals whose work to change unjust, inhumane, or problematic systems have led to significant, sometimes amazing positive effects in the world.

Many of you have likely heard of Mohammad Yunus. He was an economics professor in Bangladesh, and during the terrible famine in his country he wondered what all his education was for if he couldn’t help the poorest people starving all around him. So he visited a village and asked 42 people what they needed. They considered his question and came back to him saying that collectively they needed $27 to bring rice to market. He loaned them this money and thus launched the microcredit movement. Mohammad Yunus came to believe that the typical banking system – where you have to have money (or collateral) in order to borrow money – didn’t make sense, and he wanted to change it. Those with nothing most needed loans. So he opened Grameen Bank to provide small loans to very poor people, mostly women, so that they could lift themselves out of poverty. He had a 95% loan repayment, and microcredit slowly began to sweep the world lifting millions of people out of poverty. Now people like us can go to a website like kiva.org and make small loans to people around the world, choosing the individuals and the businesses we wish to support.

Mohammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize. Not the Nobel Prize in Economics mind you, but the Nobel Peace Prize, because when we end poverty, we create peace. One man, one idea, created a revolution. Recently, Mohammad Yunus came up with a new idea – social businesses. Instead of the either/or of for-profit or not-for-profit corporations, Mohammad Yunus is promoting social businesses that make a profit doing a social good. His new book, Creating a World Without Poverty, describes what we might achieve with this third approach to business.

So now I’ll tell you about someone who’s following this new business model. Dara O’Rourke was a UC Berkeley professor who was putting sunscreen on his 5-year-old daughter when he suddenly wondered what was really in this stuff he was smearing on his child. So he did some research and found out there was a toxic ingredient in it. He realized that while he had the wherewithal to find out this information, other parents might not, because we don’t have transparent production systems in which consumers have access to knowledge about the ingredients or full effects of the things we buy and use. So he put together a team of scientists and technology experts and launched goodguide.com, a for-benefit business to provide consumers – that’s all of us – with the most comprehensive, credible, and useful information so that we can make conscious and conscientious choices about what we buy. In so doing, O’Rourke is hoping that our collective conscientious choicemaking will influence companies so that more humane, sustainable, and healthy products are produced in the future.

Here’s a third person. Back in the mid-1970s a man named Henry Spira, a gruff union organizer and teacher, learned about product testing on animals, an entrenched system in which products from cosmetics to dish soap to oven cleaner are put into the eyes of conscious rabbits, force-fed to animals in quantities that kill, and smeared on their abraded skin all without painkillers or anesthesia. Wanting to do something to stop this, he had an idea. In 1980, he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times with a photo of a rabbit with its eyes blacked out and the caption, “How many rabbits does Revlon blind for beauty’s sake?” Within a year Revlon had donated three quarters of a million dollars to research alternatives to animal tests and soon after discontinued their own animal tests, followed by many other companies. Now, largely thanks to Henry Spira and the movement he launched with that ad, we can buy personal care and cleaning products that aren’t tested on animals. I’m guessing many people in this church already seek out such products, looking for the leaping bunny logo or the words “cruelty-free” on products so that you don’t participate in cruel animal tests. You can do this because one man had an idea and launched a movement to change a system.

Here’s another story, this one about a woman who decided to use her professional training to change an unjust system. Her name is Katie Redford, and when she was a law student she visited Burma and discovered the human rights atrocities being perpetrated by a military dictatorship that was securing a pipeline through Burmese villages for the California company, Unocal. Invoking an obscure 18th century law called the Alien Tort Claims Act, Katie Redford wrote a paper in law school arguing that Americans should be able to sue U.S. companies for their human rights abuses abroad. She got an A. For some that might have been the end of their effort, but Katie Redford’s work had just begun. It took her nine years with a team of other lawyers to bring her case to court. And she won. And as the lawyers here know, setting a precedent in the law is system-changing. Katie Redford harnessed her passion and her skill as a lawyer to create a system change in American jurisprudence.

Now I’ll tell you my idea for creating change. The system I want to change is schooling. Currently, if you ask most people, “What is the purpose of schooling?” they’ll likely say something like this: that it is to provide verbal, mathematical and scientific literacy, along with some basic historical and other knowledge, so that our graduates can find jobs and compete in the global economy. So here’s a thought-experiment for you. Imagine if every child in the U.S. were to pass their No Child Left Behind tests with flying colors and either find a job after high school or go to college and find a job or go to college and graduate school and find a job so that we had 100% employment. Would we think that we were successful at meeting our educational goals? My guess is that most people would say yes. But I don’t believe this is enough. Given the grave problems in the world, I don’t think preparing our children to enter a workforce that perpetuates many of those problems is good enough. I think we need a bigger purpose for schooling. Beyond verbal, mathematical and scientific literacy, which are obviously foundational, I believe that we should provide all students with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be solutionaries for a better world so that, whatever careers they pursue, they will be committed to making sure that they are creating healthy, just, and humane systems through their professions, whether they’re engineers, urban planners, custodians, politicians, fashion designers, businesspeople, health care providers, and so on. I’m working for the day when schools have as many solutionary teams solving problems as there are debate teams arguing about who is right and wrong in fabricated either/or scenarios. Just imagine how quickly we could solve all the pressing challenges of our time if we raised such a generation to be fully engaged and knowledgeable citizens and changemakers.

So I’ve described a few people and their ideas. What issues in the world concern you most? What systems do you want to change? What ideas come to mind? What skills and talents do you have? How can you bring those skills and talents together with your ideas? You may not have answers come to you immediately, but I urge you to ponder these questions and don’t stop until you’ve hit upon your great idea. Because just like Mohammad Yunus and Dara O’Rourke and Katie Redford and Henry Spira and a host of solutionaries in the world, you can make a difference, too. And there is little that will be as fulfilling and satisfying as that. As each of us finds our calling to create positive change; as each of us takes responsibility for ourselves and our choices, we find great joy. And at the same time we will leave the next generation a better world, resting a bit easier that we’ve done our part, not burdened by a shame that we failed to act.

Unless an idea has already popped into your head, you may wonder how you will find your calling and embrace it fully. There may be a voice inside you that says you’re too busy or too old or too young or too focused on raising your family or caring for your elderly parents. Some have said to me after hearing my talks, “Zoe, I’m no Gandhi.” Well, as children’s advocate, Marion Wright Edelman once said, “A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi to come back, but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.”

In my book, Most Good, Least Harm, I interviewed three people whose lives, each very different from one another’s, represented to me a profound and moving effort to make a difference in the world. One of those people is Kim Korona, who just shared the story of “The Emperor and the Seed,” and in the interview for my book Kim said this:

“There are so many problems in the world, and I used to wonder what the most important work was. Then I realized I needed to ask myself a different question. Based on who I am, how can I best serve the world? We must consider our best talents and strongest interests, and discover how we can put the two together.”

Kim went on to say that some may wonder if such a life might be difficult because of the sacrifices they may be called upon to make, but as she said, “I find that as one realizes the positive impact one is having, nothing feels like a sacrifice. Life feels rejuvenating because itisn’t superficial.”

I don’t know if I have convinced you. To be honest, even I, someone who has spent my whole adult life working to bring humane education to people across the globe in an effort to create a peaceful, sustainable, and humane world, have days when I think that we will not succeed. But even in those moments, I choose to work just as hard, because whether or not I reach my lofty goals, I still have to live with myself and having integrity is its own reward. I want to die knowing I did my best. The alternative, giving into apathy, is soul death and cowardice. It is no life. And it brings the sting of shame, which I do not want to carry. And so I consciously and tenaciously choose effort and optimism, and I urge you to do so, too.

Alex Steffen, founder of Worldchanging.com, calls optimism a political act. He says, “Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience. What’s really radical is being willing to look right at the problems we face and still insist that we can solve them.”

So imagine if we promised each other and ourselves that we would solve the problems we’ve created and improve all of our lives in the process. Imagine the world we would create. Imagine the joy and inner peace we would experience. We are already on the way to creating such a world. The question is, will we succeed?

The answer begins with each of us, which means it begins with you and me.

And so, may each of us commit to both proximal and far-reaching kindnesses. May we always stop and help an individual in need and may we harness our skills and match them with our passions to bring about a better world for all.

I will end today with two quotes, the first from William Penn:

“If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.”

And the second from Unitarian Minister, Edward Everett Hale:

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.”

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind and Claude and Medea

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When he contrasts Norwegian values with the atrophy of empathy in our culture, he shares this personal story:

“One morning a few years ago, on a visit to New York City, I was trying to navigate the subway when a train approached my platform. A throng of businesspeople rushed from it, and in that mad dash someone’s careless foot came down on the slender white cane of a blind man, breaking it. He fell to the concrete and reached furiously around for the remnants of his shattered cane. No one, including me, stopped to help him. ‘Do I have all the pieces?’ he cried out. Bystanders showed no sign of listening. I stood there, paralyzed. Why didn’t I do something? Why didn’t anybody else? Had we all inoculated ourselves against such daily pathos? Would I be embarrassed in front of these New Yorkers, to be seen helping this man – embarrassed by my empathy? Finally a man in a yarmulke stooped to gather up the scattered sections of the blind man’s cane, then helped him up the stairs to the street. And that simple act stung me with a shame I carried for days.”

When I read this paragraph I was stunned on so many levels. First of all, I grew up in New York City, and New Yorkers are not, despite our reputations, callous, unfriendly, unhelpful people. I’ve certainly helped many people in New York, and have been the recipient of many kindnesses as well. Nor is “daily pathos” all that common these days in New York. It is unusual to see anyone fall down, let alone a blind man whose cane has just been shattered. Sure, there are nasty New Yorkers, and sure the “bystander effect,” in which the likelihood of helping another declines as the number of witnesses rises, but it is astounding to me that Reece observed so fully the details of this blind man’s fall, from the stepping on the cane, to his cries for help, to the lack of response, to the final denouement when Reece watches a man in a yarmulke lead the blind man up the stairs and to the street and still did nothing. Apparently, he was not among those rushing to get on the subway himself or he would not have been able to observe all this and in such great detail. No, he just watched. And then felt a shame he “carried for days.”

It’s hard for me to imagine someone carrying such shame for only days. I like to think that a person who did nothing as a blind man fell before their eyes after his cane had been broken by a careless passerby (whether or not he cried for help) would feel shame far longer than that. I like to think that, like Reece, they would seek to understand their lack of response and wonder about the ways in which their culture molded them into a person who fails to help another in distress, but I would hope that they wouldn’t generalize to the degree Reece did, elevating Norway and decrying a cultural lack of empathy and simply stop there. After all, the bystander effect, in full force in Reece’s subway story, could happen in Oslo, too. Even in his essay, Reece shares the response of a Norwegian man (with whom he does some U.S.-bashing) to Norway’s low crime rate noting that in Norway, “We don’t have that many people here. If we had as many people as you do in America, we’d have a lot of crazies, too.”

So, while I appreciate the humility that it took to share his story about the fallen blind man, I worry about stereotyping Americans as lacking empathy. I think there is another lesson here, one Reece neglected to explore. When we blame our culture for our behavior, we implicitly fail to take responsibility for ourselves and our choices. America is filled with extraordinary, compassionate, and heroic people, working diligently every day to right wrongs and create a sustainable, peaceful, and just world. I know many such people, and what they have in common is a refusal to shirk their responsibility for themselves, other people and other species, and for a restored and just world. Frankly, I cannot imagine any of them neglecting the blind man fallen on the subway platform.

I hope that Reece will carry the shame he experienced in New York forever, not in a burdensome and destructive way, but rather in a powerfully instructive way that reminds him that he is indeed responsible for his choices, and if he chooses to embrace that responsibility, he may yet cultivate in his readers and his fellow Americans the qualities he admires so much in Norwegians.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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Whenever I have seen or heard this position put forth as a viable solution to the situation in which we find ourselves in the 21st century, I’ve thought it both ludicrous and misanthropic: ludicrous because it simply will not happen that billions of people will willingly return to a pre-technological era, and misanthropic because such a return would necessitate the death of much of humanity.

But until I read the current issue of The Sun magazine and the interview with “environmental optimist” and founder of Worldchanging.com, Alex Steffen, I’d never seen a critique of such a position so well articulated. Steffen argues that the return to a Stone Age way of life would cause catastrophic human suffering, saying:

“We know that way of life can’t support a population in the billions, so trying to go back to it would require the death of most of the world’s people. Beyond that, I think it’s obvious that nature is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Humanity, Inc. We have the capacity to take it down with us if we choose, and people are put into desperate situations will do just that. There’s this sort of college-town anarchist idea that if we let it all fall apart, out of the ruins will come something clean and noncommercial and egalitarian and more in touch with nature, but that’s just crazy. Hungry people don’t think about the future. As my colleague Allan AtKisson says, a world of starving people will be a world without panda bears, dolphins, or rain forests. By the time we got back to the Stone Age, we wouldn’t have the same world we had during the Stone Age. We can’t go back; there’s no ‘back’ to go back to.”

Steffen insists that it’s equally deluded to believe that technology will “magically find a way to let us continue living wasteful, suburban lives based on throwaway consumption.” To me, this means we need to find a way to move forward, and that will happen when we don’t romanticize the past as a perfect template for a viable future and we don’t cling to the present as an ideal to spread across the globe, but rather begin to envision a world in which we are all able to live joyful, healthy, meaningful lives which meet our physical and emotional needs peaceably and sustainably. Yes, this is indeed hard to imagine. For some, it may seem unimaginable. But what else should we do than make the effort to imagine such a world and put legs on our vision?

In the same interview, Steffen is asked, “How do you look at all these problems and stay optimistic?” He responds:

“Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience. What’s really radical is being willing to look right at the problems we face and still insist that we can solve them.”

I don’t pretend to know how to solve all our problems or how to change the many systems (economic, political, energy, agricultural, legal, commercial, etc.) that perpetuate them. I do know, however, that there is one system whose transformation will lead to changes in all the other systems. That system is education. If we as a society redefine the purpose of schooling and provide all students with the knowledge, tools, and inspiration to themselves envision a sustainable and peaceful world, then these young people will bring that knowledge, those tools, and their enthusiasm into all the professions they enter, transforming each in turn.

While we don’t need to know all the answers, we need to believe that those answers are obtainable, both by us today, and by our children tomorrow. We must not abdicate our responsibility to harness our own creativity and critical thinking skills and to insist that our children’s curiosity, creativity and critical thinking capacities be cultivated and encouraged with the goal of a peaceful, sustainable world as their grail. This is the way forward.

Zoe Weil
Author of Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times and Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life

Image courtesy of sardinelly via Creative Commons.

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“Some may be pessimistic that MOGO (most good) living can truly change intractable problems and create a peaceful, humane, and healthy world. Yet the MOGO principle is not just for the optimistic. Walking the MOGO path is joyful and meaningful in and of itself, and inevitably restores our hope as we, and others who share our vision, persevere and create healthier lives and a healthier world. As former Czech Republic president, Vaclav Havel, has written: ‘I feel a responsibility to work toward the things I consider good and right. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to change certain things for the better, or not at all. Both outcomes are possible. There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.’”

~ Zoe Weil, author of Most Good, Least Harm

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This shouldn’t be too hard, as I am profoundly blessed and privileged. I have all my needs met and so much more. I have a happy 20-year marriage and a healthy, bright, generous son. I share my warm, spacious home with three great dogs and a spectacular cat. I have good friends and live in a wonderful community. I do work that is meaningful to me and others. I have so many freedoms and opportunities that I’ve become almost oblivious to them. There is nothing, not one single thing, that I lack.

Yet I complain all the time. Whether it’s my son’s failure to remove dirty dishes from his room, my husband’s forgetfulness, a slow driver in the fast lane, the weather (too cold, too dreary, crusty snow, wet snow, icy trails), too many demands on my time, extremists in the media, school systems, political systems, economic systems, health care systems, cruel people, prejudiced people, sexist people, homophobic people, myopic people, greedy people.

You see what I mean?

I’m going to try to turn this around, not because I don’t think that there are wrongs to right in the world and things that justify our anger, but because complaining isn’t a positive response to anything.

My plan is to try to reroute the deep complaining grooves in my brain and turn each complaint in a new direction. As I find myself snapping at my son for some infraction or railing against a poor driver, I will try to remind myself of what I’m grateful for (my son’s good qualities; the fact that I am lucky enough to have a car and roads to drive on). When I am distraught over a lack of critical and creative thinking, I will try to remind myself of my own challenges in this arena, my own unexamined biases, and make an effort to compassionately respond with a non-judgmental question, a letter to the editor, a new approach in teaching these skills. In other words, I’m going to attempt to turn reactive negative responses into proactive positive ones and cultivate my gratitude, fortitude, and initiative in creating a healthier, wiser attitude in life.

You may notice I keep using words like “try,” “attempt,” and “endeavor.” I have a friend who doesn’t like such words. “Just do it,” she says. If only it were that easy. Those mental grooves are deep and entrenched, and I know that it takes great persistence and perseverance to divert them and form new grooves. It’s as hard as shifting a mighty river. And so I plan to be persistent, as well as gentle. I’ve asked for my husband’s support. I know it won’t be easy.

May your own new year’s resolutions garner both your own persistence and gentleness, too. May you, too, find support. And may the new year find you growing in wisdom, kindness, and positive responses to a world that needs you.

~ Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and Claude and Medea

Image courtesy of aturkus via Creative Commons.

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“Desire is the key to life, because desire is power. The deeper the desire, the more power it contains. The Upanishads say:

You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your deep, driving desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

Ah, but we are filled with such conflicting desires! And the strongest-willed among us, those who might become dedicated changemakers, leaders, visionaries, and doers, may also be those who are driven to fulfill desires that do not further a better world. What do industrial tycoons and Mahatma Gandhi have in common? Powerful wills to achieve their passionate desires.

As Easwaran’s excellent article explored, our desires are manifold and our will to manifest them a double-edged sword. He quotes the Bhagavad Gita: “The will is our only enemy; the will is our only friend.” As someone who has been accused of being strong-willed since I was a little child, I know this well. My strong will made me a challenging child to raise because I was endlessly attached to my desires and often inflexible. Yet, my strong will also became my great ally in achieving my goals and living according to my principles.

Making MOGO choices in our lives requires a strong will. Inevitably we will have conflicting desires. We may desire a certain food or product that is produced inhumanely or unsustainably. We may desire certain pleasures that have negative effects upon other species, other people, and the environment. We may also deeply desire a life of integrity and purpose and the unfolding of a peaceful, restored, and compassionate world. These desires may compete, and this is where we must harness our will.

Recognizing the range and breadth of our desires allows us to focus on those that are aligned with our values and pursue these with tenacious wills while acknowledging, but not indulging, those desires that don’t ultimately serve our greatest goals and the world we hope to create.

This is no easy task. But the very struggle can be rewarding, because when we wrestle with our desires and direct our will consciously, we create more freedom in our lives – freedom from the incessant pursuit of pleasure; freedom to create the lives we want most; freedom from advertising, peer and societal pressures; freedom to choose with wisdom and compassion.

What is your greatest desire? Your most fervent hope? Harness your will towards this end.

~ Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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