Hope is a Verb With Its Sleeves Rolled Up

Posted on October 29, 2008 by zoeweil

David Orr, professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College once wrote, “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.” I love this quote.  It reminds me of Joan Baez’ famous comment, “Action is the antidote to despair.”  We don’t have the luxury or the time for despair and hopelessness.

Many will say that hope and despair are not only nouns, rather than verbs, they are also emotions, not actions.  True enough.  But we cultivate either hope or despair, either apathy or action, either myopia or wisdom by our behaviors.  Commitment and motivation may come from internal resources that seem mysterious, but self-discipline is something we can practice, and we have the capacity to choose to roll up our sleeves and act.  When we do, we discover that hope accompanies us, attached at the hip to our MOGO (Most Good) deeds.

MOGO choices feed our faith that we can succeed in creating a healthy and peaceful world, and enliven our spirits as we do the work it takes to solve our challenges.

So make some MOGO choices today.  Get involved in changing systems while you take steps to maximize the good and minimize the harm your daily choices have on yourself and others.

~ Zoe

Filed under: MOGO (Most Good), positive choices | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

We Are All Indigenous

Posted on October 27, 2008 by zoeweil

For a long time I’ve had an ambivalent relationship with the concept that indigenous peoples and cultures are essentially better than others enmeshed in industrialized civilization; that indigeneity is essentially good while industrialized civilizations are essentially bad. While I’m deeply impressed by many indigenous cultures and their healthier, more sustainable manner of living, and think that our modern culture has much to learn from indigenous peoples in order to restore our world and lead saner, more peaceful lives, I also know that some indigenous cultures have not acted sustainably or peaceably. (See Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: Why Societies Choose to Fail and Succeed.)

At Bioneers, I attended the lectures of several indigenous people, including Jeannette Armstrong, a member of the Okanagan Syilx Nation, who spoke about “re-indigenizing everyone,” and who described indigeneity as “understanding what the local land needs.” As I absorbed this definition, I wondered whether one can be indigenous to the Earth, whether one’s sense of indigeneity can be planetary. After all, the kinds of solutions we need to solve our environmental, species, economic, social, and human rights crises are global in nature and require an appreciation for and understanding of a borderless world. While understanding what the local land needs is part and parcel of global solution-making, I believe that our sense of indigeneity must not end at our local doorstep.

Later, I listened to Oscar Miro-Quesada, a Peruvian shaman and UN Observer to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, say that we are all indigenous. I breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, we are all indigenous to this Earth and our places on it, and it’s up to each of us to take responsibility for our participation in restoring what we have damaged by living with awareness, respect, compassion, and creative service. We cannot help but be indigenous, but we can make choices that revere our indigeneity or ignore it.

As always, the connection to humane education is obvious. We can and must teach the lessons that those who have embraced their indigeneity to live peacefully, humanely, and sustainably have deeply cultivated and ignite a passion among our students to take these lessons and, with enthusiasm, bring their growing knowledge and their modern lives to the great task to learning to live as grateful indigenous peoples of this Earth, solving our crises with their ingenuity as well as their indigeneity.

~ Zoe

Filed under: humane education | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Solvability vs. Despair

Posted on October 22, 2008 by zoeweil

I’m back from Bioneers full of new ideas and information, and in the coming days and weeks I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts from this amazing annual conference. Today’s post was inspired by a comment made by David Orr, environmental studies professor at Oberlin College and leader in environmental education, who spoke at the conference. He said that he worried more about despair keeping us from solving our environmental problems than about their inherent solvability. I find this a profound and critical observation. Given the massive ecological crises we face that will require the collaboration of nations, the commitment of governments, the action of individuals, the full alignment of educational systems, the attention of global media, and the ingenuity and genius of inventors, builders, farmers, healers, economists, and systems thinkers, it is interesting to consider the greatest threat to success to be despair. I would add to that apathy and myopia.

Like David Orr, I have confidence that we are absolutely capable of solving our escalating ecological problems, but we will fail if we succumb to despair and apathy, and if we remain stuck in short-sighted thinking. Confronting these – our greater challenges to success – is not easy. We must work to retain hope, vigilance, and commitment, and to cultivate long-term, wise thinking. These don’t always come easily to us.

Not surprisingly, this is why I’m so committed to humane education as the underlying answer to all our challenges. Humane education cultivates the very qualities we must embody (both individually and societally) to retain our hope, motivation, and creativity and get to work in a host of fields – from engineering to politics to economics to farming to architecture – that actually solve the problems we face.

As we teach about the crises of our time, we must do so engendering the hope and inspiring the commitment to create meaningful and utterly doable change.

~ Zoe

Filed under: humane education, positive choices | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

The 7th Key to MOGO: Strive for Balance with Your Relationships

Posted on October 10, 2008 by zoeweil

When we choose to learn about the effects of our choices (on ourselves, other people, animals, and the environment), and when, as a result of our commitment to learning, we adopt the MOGO principle to do the most good and the least harm in relation to everyone, we inevitably make changes in our lives. We might change our shopping habits, our diet, our recreation and entertainment choices, our work, our parenting, our activism, and more. And our new choices – positive though they may be – may be imposed (to greater and lesser degrees) on our family members, associates, and friends. Or, if not imposed, our choices may certainly impact our loved ones.

It’s one thing to choose to change; it’s another to have unasked for change suddenly thrust upon you. And so, an individual in the process of using the 3 Is (Inquiry, Introspection, and Integrity) to make MOGO choices faces a quandary: How can we live with integrity and respect the different path our loved ones may be on?

In my upcoming book, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and a Meaningful Life, I describe 7 Keys to MOGO. The last key, and perhaps the one that knits the others together, is “Strive for Balance.” We will face both internal and external challenges in choosing a MOGO life — one of which is respecting the different perspectives of our friends and family. By compromising, accepting limitations, and striving to find a balance that preserves and strengthens our relationships while making new choices in our lives, we allow ourselves to embody MOGO more fully.

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of Brent and MariLynn.

Filed under: MOGO (Most Good), positive choices | Tagged: , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Model Your Message AND Work for Change

Posted on October 8, 2008 by zoeweil

There are people who strive vigorously to make MOGO (Most Good) choices in their daily lives. They choose foods, products, transportation, clothing, housing and furniture, family size, and recreation all with the MOGO ethic in mind. They live simply (that others may simply live). They model their message of sustainability and compassionate living, and this is their primary effort at creating a better world. They may assiduously avoid activism and politics, content to be doing their individual part in living a humane life.

There are others who strive to create systemic change as activists, thought-leaders, writers, policy-makers, and legislators. They may point out that simple living – though admirable – won’t change dangerous and destructive systems, and that taking action against unjust systems and transforming policies is the primary way that we create abiding positive change. They may pooh-pooh a focus on daily choices as largely irrelevant to real change and argue that whether they themselves drive an SUV or have more than two children or eat at McDonald’s is not relevant.

I think you know what’s coming.

Modeling our message and working for systemic change are both necessary components of creating a humane world. Without effort to create structural changes, our individual choices are very small components of changemaking. But without modeling our message in our daily choices, our policy efforts become empty rhetoric. Neither approach can be fully successful on its own. Without changes that create just, peaceful, and sustainable systems we’ll always be faced with daily choices that cause harm. We won’t truly be able to model our message to the greatest extent. And without modeling our message, we will lose our integrity and our credibility, crucial ingredients in successful social change.

To the greatest degree possible, we must each strive to model our message and work for change, and to do so with humility, humor, and honesty.

~ Zoe

Filed under: MOGO (Most Good) | Tagged: , , , | Comments Off

Make Clean Energy Cheap

Posted on October 1, 2008 by zoeweil

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (required reading in our Master of Education program at the Institute for Humane Education) have an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times today, which argues that, instead of focusing on making dirty energy more expensive (to promote conservation and efficiency), we must focus on making clean energy cheap.

As I wrote in my post about a better bailout, it’s paramount that we invest in positive solutions to our economic challenges. These solutions will not only save our economy but will also fix a host of problems. Positive solutions replace unhealthy systems. As I’ve written before, change happens not only because individuals make healthier, more sustainable choices, but because systems are transformed and people’s situations change so that positive choices become easy, available, and appealing. This is the essential insight that Dr. Philip Zimbardo reveals in his book The Lucifer Effect, and we ignore it at our peril.

Walk your talk to the best of your ability, but fight for systemic change at the same time. Only when we do both — model our message and work for real change — will we hope to see the unfolding of a peaceful, healthy world. Let’s heed Nordhaus’s and Shellenberger’s words.

~ Zoe

Filed under: economy, energy policy, positive choices | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off

Speak Out So That Sarah Palin Will Speak Up

Posted on September 25, 2008 by zoeweil

So far, the McCain campaign is not permitting Sarah Palin to talk to the media on the record or to answer questions at open events, beyond a couple of selected venues (one of which was with a right wing conservative commentator, not a respected news anchor).  I presume they believe this is the MOGO (Most Good) choice for increasing their electability, but it is clearly not the MOGO choice for the public, the country, or the world.  How can voters make an informed decision about this critically important election if we are unable to hear unscripted responses to a range of media questions and our own concerns?  We can’t.  Given Senator McCain’s recurrent melanoma and his age, it’s awfully important that we be able to ask and receive answers from his Vice Presidential running mate, whose chances of being president if Senator McCain wins are not insignificant.

We must demand that Governor Palin answer our questions.  It’s MOGO to do so.  How can we make such demands?  By speaking out forcefully (letters to the editor, blog posts, with neighbors, in our communities) and emailing John McCain.

Making MOGO choices is impossible without accurate information.

~ Zoe

Filed under: accurate information, critical thinking, politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off

Eating on $1 a Day

Posted on September 22, 2008 by zoeweil

One of our M.Ed. graduates at the Institute for Humane Education, Christopher Greenslate, and his partner, Kerri, have embarked on a new project. For a month, they are eating on less than $1 per day each. You can read about their journey on their blog.

As I read their first week of blog entries, I found myself thinking about how important it is to break out of the unexamined routine of our lives. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Yet, how many of us actually examine our lives and challenge our assumptions, our ideas, our beliefs, and our behaviors?

When Christopher and Kerri end their experiment they will have learned so much: about poverty, desire, and themselves, and about the billion people in the world who go to bed hungry every night. They will have become cleverer and more resilient, more introspective, more aware. They will have cultivated their ability to persevere, their courage, and their creativity. They will have paid more attention to what surrounds them – not only to the availability of free food at fast food restaurants and in dumpsters, but also to plants and trees from which they can forage. They will have learned about the systems of food distribution and production.

And they will have deepened their capacity to make MOGO (Most Good) choices. What often makes living according to the MOGO principle difficult is that our desires, fears, and habits compete so vigorously with our commitment to lead an examined, intentional, positive, generous life. Most of us resist change; we become attached to our habits and mistake our desires for needs.

I love what Christopher and Kerri are doing for so many reasons, but what is most compelling to me is that by embarking on this challenging project, they open themselves ever more deeply to the possibilities for positive change because they have cultivated their ability to understand, to act, and to choose.

~ Zoe

Filed under: food and diet, MOGO (Most Good) | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

10 Technologies for MOGO (Most Good) Living

Posted on September 18, 2008 by zoeweil

In its latest issue, Discover Magazine describes 10 relatively simple technologies to help change the world. I love these, not only because they are practical, doable, and creative, but also because they demonstrate that there are so many ideas being generated all the time to solve our challenges.

At the same time as we are hearing “Drill, Drill, Drill” and “More Nuclear Power Plants,” inventors, engineers, scientists, and changemakers are developing simple, sustainable, and practical new technologies that we can put into practice now. As climate change looms as an unprecedented threat in human history, and as an economic crisis threatens to overtake the globe, we need solutions that solve both.

The MOGO (Most Good) principle must be applied to everything – all people, all species, and the environment, and solutions need to take all into consideration. That’s why Discover Magazine’s list is inspiring, and why we must be wary of solutions that invest hundreds of billions of dollars into more drilling and decades-long projects for nuclear power instead of sustainable, green technologies for a better future for all.

~ Zoe

Filed under: MOGO (Most Good), positive choices, technology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Want Real Communication? Leave Your Agendas Behind

Posted on August 25, 2008 by zoeweil

During the communication sessions during our residency week at the Institute for Humane Education we do an activity called “Spectrum.” Participants find themselves on a linear spectrum of choices that they make in relation to animal protection, human rights/social justice, environmental preservation, and consumerism. After doing the spectrum four times around these separate issues areas, people begin to notice something: often, an individual will feel a wee bit righteous about their great choices in relation to “their issue,” but suddenly find themselves making less compassionate and less intentional choices around an issue that deeply concerns someone else, but with which they are not personally engaged.

When we do this activity we ask people where they stood on the spectrum a decade earlier, and more often than not the person was making less humane choices. When I ask why they moved along the spectrum, it’s never because someone was hostile or judgmental toward them. Usually, they learned something, read a book, saw a film, or were inspired by a friend, colleague, teacher or family member.

Initially, this activity can make people feel exposed and vulnerable, but in a safe learning community, this vulnerability usually dissipates and along with it any sense of judgmentalness. That’s when Joanne comes in. “Joanne” is my fictional neighbor, a composite of several people I know in rural Maine who live simply, largely out of necessity. On the consumerism scale, Joanne lives lightly. But for those members of our group who are especially concerned with animal protection, Joanne is on the other end of the spectrum. Her family hunts, fishes, and breeds dogs who live outside year round.

I let the group know I’m going to get Joanne, who has graciously agreed to come talk to them and answer their questions. Before I step out I tell them to try to learn from Joanne, to treat her respectfully, and to build a bridge where there might seem like a chasm of separation. When I come back in, dressed in different clothes, I am Joanne.

Our group is usually respectful, but Joanne can tell when questions are really just opportunities to teach her what’s good and bad, right and wrong. Some are genuinely curious about Joanne, her family, and her lifestyle, while others really just want to change her opinions. Joanne, like all of us, knows the difference, even with the most well chosen, friendly words.

Khalif Williams, our executive director at the Institute for Humane Education, watched the activity unfold and reminded us of something so very important. We need to leave our agendas behind for real communication and understanding to happen. We need to focus on the relationship we can forge with someone, not on teaching them what we know or trying to make them be like us. When true relationships develop, so does true learning and the possibility that we can all grow and change in positive ways.

~ Zoe

Filed under: compassionate communication, positive choices | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 446 other followers